We ordered a new NUC of bees to be picked up on March 23rd, so that means we have to get another hive setup and ready for the new girls to arrive. I ordered an assembled deep box, but it came unassembled. Uh oh. But I figured 'How hard could it be? It's 4 sides [...]
We finally got a nice warm weekend where I could go out to Hye and check on the girls. I had seen some things online about people's hives absconding in December because it was so warm, and someone else posted a picture of a mouse that got into their hive and ate a hole in [...]
Not much going on with the bees lately....it's winter and they're busy gathering up the last of the available pollen and when it's really cold, they're hibernating. So for December and January, you don't do much with them except make sure they have food (sugar cakes) and water. Last weekend, I created insulated hive boxes [...]
With the weather turning colder, it's time to switch from liquid feed to solid feed. Apparently, having extra liquid in the hives (even in the feeder above the frames) can chill the hive when the temperatures drop. So, instead of boiling sugar into water to make a simple syrup, we put 7.5oz of water into [...]
Kona is near the top with a blue dot on her head. We did another inspection today to see how the bees are doing and to feed them again. Hive 1, of course, was thriving. They've been building comb and capping honey like crazy. Every time we open their hive, they've consumed ALL [...]
Today was the day...we planned to get all our other chores done, then open up hive 2 to check on Kona and what she'd done over the last week. Around noon, we opened it up and low and behold......she was still in her queen box! :( What's supposed to happen is that the box is [...]
The queen is larger than the workers and comes marked with a dot on her upper back. We FINALLY found someone who can ship us a new Italian queen. An Italian queen bred in Hawaii to live in our Texas hive. She's going to be quite worldly! Since she's coming from Hawaii, we've [...]
We did a quick check of the bees this afternoon, mainly just to feed them. Last weekend, we put a medium box on hives 1 and 3 to give the bees a little more room. Hives 1 and 3 have been building like crazy and we didn't want them to get honey bound during the [...]
We went out to the hives on Saturday to check on the girls. We noticed last weekend that hive 2 wasn't nearly as strong as the other two, so we wanted to check for activity and see if we could find the queen, or some indication that she is laying. We went about our normal [...]
