The Wally-Gee Bee Journey 🐝

[drstratton]

I found your thread! I'll be following!

 

[WallyG74]

I did a quick inspection of both colonies this afternoon. So many bees!!! No need to check on the queens. They are thriving. The supers are chocked full of goldenrod honey. They are just as heavy as when I harvested honey this summer. Everyone got a healthy dose of smoke (coz, yes they still hate me) along with new AO strips and fresh beetle barns. Unless a tree falls on them, I am done until spring. I’ll be building new swarm traps over the winter and trying to decide if I will take the chance and split one of the colonies this spring. Good luck to all of you overwinterers up north! I know keeping a bee is lots more challenging for y’all. Thanks for all the advice and encouragement over the last couple years! Here’s to another great honey harvest in 2026!

 

[drstratton]

I did a quick inspection of both colonies this afternoon. So many bees!!! No need to check on the queens. They are thriving. The supers are chocked full of goldenrod honey. They are just as heavy as when I harvested honey this summer. Everyone got a healthy dose of smoke (coz, yes they still hate me) along with new AO strips and fresh beetle barns. Unless a tree falls on them, I am done until spring. I’ll be building new swarm traps over the winter and trying to decide if I will take the chance and split one of the colonies this spring. Good luck to all of you overwinterers up north! I know keeping a bee is lots more challenging for y’all. Thanks for all the advice and encouragement over the last couple years! Here’s to another great honey harvest in 2026!

So glad everything looks good for you. Ours are also looking good. The girls are still bringing in pollen. We're getting close to very cold temps and they will be clustering very soon. We're almost done for the year too.

Hope all of yours overwinter well and come out strong in the spring.

 

[WallyG74]

After the bee inspection I decided to render some wax. Ya know, get ALL the bee stuff done? Apparently Nov 1 is not a good day for that. The bees took it over after about 30 minutes. So, here I am at 7pm still rendering wax. Almost done, though. This isn’t candle quality. I’m just getting it good enough to put in a crockpot so I can roll it onto foundation in the spring.