100% Local Ohio | Your Cincinnati Bee Connection
Posted in Food on Sep 10th, 2010
Last night I whipped up today’s sugar water for the bees. It’s sort of a messy process. I mix a 3:5 water-to-sugar ratio. In other words, I heat 3 cups of water and add 5 cups of granulated sugar to it…actually, I quadruple this recipe. If I had a good place to store the stuff, [...]
Posted in Honeybee Adventures on Sep 7th, 2010
Aren’t you getting tired of this? I am. Let’s just cut to the chase. We got the bees home, and the next morning they were crazy busy…and busy loooong before my other bees. The air and the garden and the woods were full of them checking out their new surroundings. When I went to feed [...]
Posted in Going Naked on Aug 8th, 2010
Once again, it’s time to start worrying if the bees will live through the winter. It’s just the weirdest thing to begin planning so early for winter, but the bees do it. They probably don’t worry, though…they simply do what they can do and that’s that. Maybe they’re too busy to worry. Maybe I should [...]
Posted in Food on Apr 1st, 2010
The past two days have been….drumroll….SPECTACULAR! High 70s and nooooo clouds. And the bees are flying like nobody’s business. They come back to the hive heavy with pollen. They’re not touching the sugar water. No.
Posted in Food on Mar 30th, 2010
I fed the bees a thick solution of sugar water, but it’s been raining and gloomy and they haven’t touched it.
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 28th, 2010
After bee school and before dinner at Lavomatic, I did some work with the bees. The weather was gorgeous, and it was the first time since fall that I could spend some time in the colony without disturbing things. So, I smoked the bees and then dug around in the brood boxes and examined 80% [...]
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 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 [...]