100% Local Ohio
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 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 Hive Management on Jun 14th, 2010
My weekly Sunday hive inspections yesterday revealed: Amazons—No signs of the queen yet. I’m choosing to remain patient, though, because I think it’s a little too early to see signs of her post swarm. Amazons swarmed 16 days ago, and it should take about 22-25 days for the new queen to be born, orient, mate, [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Jan 1st, 2010
The bees’ primary biological drive is to swarm. I read it this morning in Bee Culture magazine, and the moment I read it, it seemed right. Reader, if you’re new to bees, you’ll want to learn that when bees get too crowded in a hive, they raise a second queen. Once the new queen is [...]
Posted in Worries on Dec 28th, 2009
I’m worried about the bees. Perhaps because we have snow on the ground and our temperatures this week should be cold…highs ranging from 11 to 30 degrees. And I’m not sure the girls have stored enough food with which to winter. Weird to use “winter” as a verb. Last month, I fed both of our hives sugar [...]