Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Here comes the cold

It's getting down to 15 tonight, so I took the feeder off the Salomium. There were about one and a half pounds left of what was six pounds of syrup.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Honey excluder

Now I know why some call them honey excluders.

I went to inspect my supers today. There will be no Fall harvest to speak of. After removing the supers, the workers were clustering on top of the queen excluders. Even smoking them, they were reluctant to go through it.

I put another four pounds of sugar on.


Sunday, November 5, 2017

Pollen

I was surprised to see pollen going into the hive today. I guess the winter bees are growing.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

MAQS

I put a formic acid treatment into the Salomium today towards the evening. I also added a second super.

We are in the middle of the bamboo honey flow now. There are lots of knotweed blossoms everywhere you look.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Feed

Just a quick note to indicate that I put 4 lbs. of sugar into the Salomium a couple of weeks ago.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Spring harvest

We did indeed have a harvest yesterday. I pulled off the super and brought it inside the house. We had quite a bit of capped honey, half a frame of uncapped nectar, and a surprising amount of bee bread. I'll have to look into purchasing some pollen substitute.

Monday, July 3, 2017

More bad news

The Lucium died out sometime in March. We got two new hives: Benedictium II and Salomium II. The new Benedictium's queen died within a month, so I combined them into one hive.

We had a crazy rogue bee which harassed the kids until it stung me (OUCH) in the face. I made quite a splash at work the next day.

Yesterday I (finally) inspected the Salomium. I found a heavy super and under it some brood, and lots of angry bees unused to seeing their keeper. So I put in the bee escape, and perhaps we will have a harvest on the 4th of July.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Pollen!

We have light yellow pollen  going into the Lucium. Go girls, go!

Friday, February 17, 2017

Feed

I put four pounds of sugar on the Lucium last week, at $2.09 a bag. The weather has been so warm, I figured it was safe. Then yesterday we had a cold snap where it did not get above freezing. I'll have to take a look tomorrow to make sure that the feeder is still intact. I wonder what the freezing point of 1:1 sugar-water syrup is?

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Absconded

We had a nice warm day today, so I did a quick inspection and discovered that the Josephium and Salomium had both absconded.

I dosed the Lucium with oxalic acid dribble.