Quick Check...

Today I had a chance to quickly check on the bees to make sure the sugar syrup was flowing, as there's more cold weather coming! I made up a gallon of sugar syrup in case they needed more, and went out to visit. I didn't do any filming this time, but snapped a picture of my peek inside...

They hadn't really taken any sugar syrup, but as you can see here they did eat up a good portion of the pollen patty. So, I slipped another one in on the other side of the opening, in the front of this photo frame, and closed it back up!

Now we go through more cold and snow...still not warm enough to take off the winter covers. We'll see how things look in another week or two!

First Peek of the Season!

Today we were finally able to get out and take a look at the bees for the first time this season! A couple months ago I knocked on the hives and put my ear to the entrance, and heard buzzing in Penelobee's hive.  No sound from Beeatrice. As we had suspected, today we confirmed that Beeatrice's colony did not make it.  However, I'm super excited to say that Penelobee's colony seems to be alive and well! There were lots of bees on the inner cover and up high, looking for more food. There was still some pollen patty left but we gave them a whole one, and put a feeder pail on top today.  It's still too cold to open them up and look farther inside, and too cold to remove the winter covers.  But, once it warms up a bit we'll get deeper into the boxes and see what we have to work with in 2018! In the meantime, here's a video of what we did today!

My Latest Project: Honeybee Afghan!

What do I do while waiting for bee season to start up again? Crochet!! :-D Here's an afghan I've been working on for a while, and recently finished!

Many people on Facebook have been asking me for the pattern, but I'm afraid I made it up as I went along.  I found a generic hexagon pattern online, and made up the bees. I used some scraggly yarn to make them look extra fuzzy, and put a little stuffing in them before sewing them on so they'd be a little three dimensional! :-) I do sell a few patterns on my design website, so if I do ever put together some sort of pattern for the bees, I'll be sure to put it there, or in my bee shop!