100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
Even with the one hive of bees dead, I’m so so eager to get started with this stuff again. I’ve now got a basement brimming with pretty brood boxes, supers, bottom boards, inner covers, outer covers, feeders…and there’s nothing I can do with any of it until spring…meaning March or April. Okay…I need to settle [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 24th, 2010
It’s confirmed: We have one dead hive. Dead bees everywhere. But there weren’t as many as I would have thought…I just don’t think this colony was ever very robust. The temperature today is in the high 40s or low 50s, but it’s been raining all the danged day. So Deb and I headed out in [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 22nd, 2010
Don’t bug me. I’m down in the basement constructing and nailing and painting new hive boxes, new top feeders, and new screened bottom boards. There’s a possibility that temperatures will be above 50 degrees on Sunday, and if that happens, I’ve got to open the hive boxes and get those girls some food. Which means [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 21st, 2010
Don’t think the idea of some dead bees can stop me. Yesterday, I called Walter Kelley and ordered the supplies I need to complete my third hive. (I like the people on the phone at Walter Kelley’s; I always pepper them with a million questions, which they humor me to answer in that unhurried Kentucky [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 19th, 2010
Just so you know, it never got sunny and it never got warm yesterday. But after my freezing and gray bike ride, I leaned my ear against the weak-hive box and tapped anyway. Nothing. So, I leaned my ear against the swarm-hive box and I tapped there, too, just to have some sound to compare [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 18th, 2010
This blog looks bland. Flat. Blah. We need to snazz it up, don’t you think? But you know, most things look sort of blah in January. The hive boxes out back look downright depressing all dressed in black. I planted hundreds of daffodils on the bees’ hillside in October and November, and I’m itching to [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 17th, 2010
Posted in Winter on Jan 16th, 2010
I just mailed my $35.00 check for the March 27th Beekeeping School. I’m stoked about it. And I just learned that the queen begins laying her eggs again in February. Reader, have you noticed yet that it’s almost February?! The days are lighter longer…I noticed that these past few days…and this week we’re supposed to [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 14th, 2010
The snow outside the swarm colony’s hive’s box was littered yesterday with dead bees. I think this is normal, although there were very few bodies in the snow outside the weaker colony. I wonder if there are any bees left living in the weaker group. The weather warmed up a bit yesterday, and when I [...]
Posted in Winter on Jan 13th, 2010
Yesterday I hiked up to look at the bees in the snow. It was in the late afternoon when the winter light finally hits the hive boxes, and when I stooped to peek in the entrance a little bee flew out. I was so happy to see her! She flew out into the woods, and [...]