100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
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 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, 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, 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 [...]
Posted in Going Naked on Jun 20th, 2010
Upon today’s hive inspection I have one very clear realization: I have no idea what I’m doing. Why on earth did I think I could manage a hundred-thousand bees? I am not as smart as I look. Seriously, I get in there with those bees and all those cells and eggs and larvae and brood [...]
Posted in Beekeeping Philosophy on Jun 17th, 2010
You know, I’ve been thinking. I think I’d better stick with beekeepers who share my newly emerging philosophy of natural beekeeping: chemical-free hives, foundationless frames, small-cell comb, etc. Then again, if I don’t work with beekeepers who subscribe to other philosophies, how can I hope to spread what I’m learning about natural beekeeping? I don’t want [...]
Posted in Going Naked on Jun 5th, 2010
Yesterday I began the process of converting to foundationless frames. I’m going to let the bees do their thing without purchased, pre-formed beeswax. Why? Well, there are good reasons, none of which I will go into here—I think these past few posts have been sort of boring because there’s just too much detail. To prepare [...]