100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
Posted in Hive Management on Oct 25th, 2011
I revved up the table saw and made three inner covers for my nuc hives, and I cut a round opening in each through which I can feed the bees their syrup. But when I opened the hives to give the bees their snug, new, inner covers, I discovered one of the hives dead. A [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Oct 4th, 2010
It’s turned cold these past few days. By “cold,” I mean the low temperatures are in the high 30s or low 40s and the highs are in the 50s. We haven’t yet turned on the heat, but we are sleeping with the electric blanket on low. And a few of my hives have those augur [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Sep 21st, 2010
Here’s the good news as promised, Reader. The bad news, as you’ll recall, is that the bees from the tree have now been combined with the Girls of Summer, and the small swarm I collected last week absconded. But on Sunday’s inspection of the remaining four hives, I found two absolutely gorgeous queens at work. [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Aug 6th, 2010
I had a happy sighting yesterday. Remember that split I made exactly 24 days ago? No? Well, let me remind you: I took a frame containing some queen cells I’d found in Tomboys, and I made a split…which means I began a new colony from an old one by placing that queen-cell-containing frame in a [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Jul 20th, 2010
Success! Yesterday I inserted a box I fashioned from two shallows between my two brood boxes in Girls of Summer. They’re the most robust of our colonies, and they’ve been mighty crowded and hot and bearding like crazy. So, I pulled deep frames of brood up from the bottom box and into the center of [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Jul 19th, 2010
Those bees are bearding like crazy. Which means they are hot and crowded. But they won’t move up into the new supers I’ve added in order to give them some extra room. And yesterday I found swarm cells in Tomboys again. Shit. I would normally add an empty box below one of the brood boxes [...]
Posted in Hive Management, Uncategorized on Jul 14th, 2010
I discovered a couple of swarm cells in Tomboys before I left for Florida last week. I thought for sure Tomboys would swarm before I returned, and they may have…hard to tell. Today the swarm cells were still there, so in order to keep the bees from swarming and to take advantage of the new [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Jul 5th, 2010
Gosh darn crazy bees are driving me nuts. I decided to begin my transition from 10-frame deep and shallow boxes to all 8-frame mediums, and I began the process today. I added a new smaller box to each of my three hives. Now they look a little bit lopsided and goofy, but transitions are tough, [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Jun 25th, 2010
This morning I brought up the idea of keeping a few hives of bees at the farm, and Deb did not say “No.” Actually, I think I heard an actual “Yes” somewhere in her response. The 80-acre farm in Waco, Kentucky is a 2-hour drive from here, and we get down there for a couple [...]
Posted in Hive Management, Uncategorized on Jun 23rd, 2010
I spent a little bit of time yesterday leveling my beehives. Why do that, you ask? Well, I’m slowly shifting from using foundation in my frames to using only foundationless frames, that’s why. And when bees build comb into thin air (and it is beautiful and perfect comb…I don’t know why we ever ever ever [...]