Overwintering small colonies: Candy boards
This fall found me with a number of small colonies ill-prepared for winter. I had anticipated a deluge of late-season queen requests, requests that, unfortunately for my lovely young queens, […]
Category Archives: Queens
Queenright in the smoke: Late summer gambling, part 2
m Success! All four of the sections of my mating box contain laying queens! The sun was so obscured by smoke today that seeing eggs was practically impossible. Thanks to […]
Late summer gambling
It’s been a good season so far. With good foraging conditions and some timely splitting, I’ve made enough splits to compensate for some unprecedented winter losses. Increasing from survivor colonies […]
The good swarm
I discovered an unexpected benefit to negligence when a very large swarm found some of my equipment sitting around unoccupied. The hive bodies stacked in my yard awaiting a fresh […]
What did you do in the bee yard today? April 17, 2017
The last three years’ early, unseasonably warm springs have given way to our more “normal” rainy weather this year. I’ve hesitated to interrupt the couple of good foraging days we’ve […]
Fun with Queens
In the course of making my inspections over the past couple of weeks, I noted that my largest, strongest colonies still had significant drone populations. In my little valley, we […]
Moving Day, August 5, 2016
As I finally made my rounds after my month of travel, I discovered the colony at this out-yard was a dead-out. After a month, it’s a little difficult to say […]
