December 26, 2015

Christmas Day – honey bees on hellebores

Last week the hellebore has been blooming gloriously in the misty unusually warm New England weather. Today the sun broke out. I saw my bees were out foraging. Hard to believe on the last week of the year! I found some, collecting hellebore nectar. The hive entrance was pretty active with three or 4 bees passing in and out at any one time. I didn’t see any bees foraging around the pond on our afternoon boat ride. Of course – there are no flowers there. The only flowers around now…

December 25, 2015

a very warm Christmas!

My bees are out and about at the end of December! 61F now, and yesterday was a high of 68F. I don’t know if this is good for them. There are no flowers. I suppose they can get a drink and stretch their wings then go back to their honey stores.

September 15, 2015

honey!

I can’t quite believe it. I collected honey from my own hives! It’s a cool feeling. Yesterday I opened my white hive, the healthier of my two. it has two deep boxes and one super. I checked the deeps and they are full, with the exception of the far half of one outside frame. I didn’t pull out frames, just checked from the top. They are also full of lots of bees. It seems the bees have settled down – much less aggressive than they were in the heat of…

August 19, 2015

inspected!

I called the Middlesex bee inspector last week and told him I was a new beekeeper in the area. He was very quick to come by and inspect my hives. And it was exciting for me to have an expert take a look. The bottom line: I passed! Yeah. He said my hives look super. We started first at the far side of the yard, looking over at the hives. He said they are in a good location with lots of morning sun, maybe a bit shady in the afternoon.…

July 31, 2015

who’s laying – hive-produced queen or workers???

I spent some time inspecting my green hive yesterday. I took a bunch of pictures. Wish I could say I figured out the answer. But I didn’t. I am tending to think that things look OK – like a queen is laying and not workers. But I could use advice (help!). Review: 4.5 weeks ago, my brood pattern looked fine, but capped queen cells made it look like a supercedure was in progress.Then, at my next inspection, 10 days ago, there were no larvae and no capped brood. I looked…

July 26, 2015

queen check – someone’s already laying ….

Today I checked on the queen I installed 5 days ago. Oops! I was surprised to find the frames full of larvae and capped brood. Since it takes at least 9 days to develop capped brood, it couldn’t have been the new queen that I introduced who laid these eggs. Two options, I suppose. Maybe one of the queens that the hive made (I saw many capped queen cells several weeks ago – evidentially a supercedure) mated and returned to lay. Or, maybe workers laid the eggs. I don’t know…

July 21, 2015

the new queen is installed

I was worried about working with my bees today but ended up having fun. I just have trouble with that darned smoker. Need to learn how to get it going for more than a minute. I worked with it 15 minutes before I went down to the hive. Still, at the hive it would go for a minute then go out. But as long as I moved away from the hive, tended the smoker when it went out, the bees were good. No rushing, just keep at it, sweat dripping.…

July 20, 2015

i’ve reserved a new queen

I’ll drive up to Tyngsboro to New England Bees this afternoon and pick her up. In July, they have native queens bred from their survivor stock. I’ll get some advice on installing her and keeping the hive healthy, too.

July 19, 2015

no queen!

I checked my hives today. 3 weeks since I last looked inside. I didn’t do a complete check because its 95F and 12 noon. I think not the best time to check. Both hives were incredibly active. White hive: LOTS of bees. OMG! I didn’t open the boxes, just looked at the honey super. It has four nice frames on honey. I need to look up when to put on the second super. Green hive: These bees were really vicious. I checked 2 frames in each box. No…

July 1, 2015

my first bee sting

I got stung by one of my bees last Saturday. Ouch. It really hurt. It made me hurry to finish the hive inspection. The bee stung me on my ankle through a thin sock. I tuck my pants into my socks because I once had bees trying to climb up my leg. (That was when I installed my packages on a cold rainy day this spring. The bees were all over me then, but not up to stinging – fortunately for me.) My ankle hurt quite bad for a day,…

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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