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Posted in Honeybee Adventures on Aug 12th, 2010
Every day lately, Reader, I get a call about bees. People call me to say they have a swarm of bees in their attic or in their doorframe or in a tree trunk. They don’t really mean “a swarm.” A swarm is a mass of bees that hasn’t yet found its next home. The people [...]
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 cycle on Jun 30th, 2010
The minute I put that wax melter out in the sun, the sun disappeared. Then the temperatures dropped. And no wax on earth will melt at 70 degrees and under cloudy skies. So, we’ll try when the weather heats up again. But doesn’t it feel great out there? Every single one of our windows is [...]
Posted in honey on Jun 7th, 2010
Reader, I know I got your hopes up for some honey. But I think our hopes may have flown off with the Amazon swarm. Yesterday’s inspection shows that all honey production has ground to a halt in Amazons. Because they swarmed, the remaining Amazons aren’t drawing comb or storing honey until their new queen gets [...]
Posted in Education on Jun 4th, 2010
Those bee colonies that swarm are strong, and I want strong bees. I hated that one of my hives died last year…the hive that died was always kind of slow compared to the Amazons (which I got as a result of a swarm from Chris’s hive). It makes sense that it you’ve got strong colonies, [...]
Posted in Hive Management on May 31st, 2010
After trimming trees around the house for much of the afternoon, we were taking a little iced-tea break on our deck. I began to see quite a bit of activity out in the bee yard…more than usual. It didn’t look like a swarm, but there were a lot of bees. You can see them when [...]
Posted in Hive Management on May 30th, 2010
I go from being happy to being sad about the Amazon swarm. Happy because some mighty fine and robust and healthy bees have propagated, and they live near me. Sad because half my Amazon hive is gone. Happy because half my Amazon hive remains. Sad because I just read in Bee Culture magazine that there [...]
Posted in Education on May 29th, 2010
We’d just settled down in the Adirondack chairs when I looked up into the tree. And there was something just not right about something up there…it looked odd. And then I saw it—the SWARM. My Amazons had swarmed and the swarm was drooping from the lowest branch of a tall tall tree. Too high to [...]
Posted in Hive Management on Mar 24th, 2010
I think my Amazon girls are getting ahead of me. It was at this time last year that this very group swarmed; and based on the activity I see out at their hive, it wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t try that trick again. But I don’t have time in the next few days to [...]
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 [...]