Checking for New Queen Acceptance

Today I stopped by for a short visit with the bees. It's been 10 days since we re-queened Beeatrice's colony, so the hope was to confirm she was accepted and is laying. Luckily, I saw eggs so we know she is in there and all is well! Woohoo!  I didn't look farther so as not to disturb them too much or injure her. Penelobee I just took one peek and saw more capped brood & larva, so left her "bee" too! :-) I refilled both pails of sugar syrup and that was it for the day! Here's a little recap of the day!

Checking for Eggs, Queen Acceptance & Re-Queening!

On May 4th we checked the bees for queen acceptance and eggs! First we opened up "Beeatrice" and unfortunately didn't find any sign of the queen laying...no eggs, no larvae, and after much searching, no queen.

We opened up Penelobee's hive and saw a frame with some eggs, larvae and capped brood! Woohoo! We also spotted the queen herself.

We refilled the sugar syrup pails, gave each one 1/2 of a pollen patty, and closed them up. Dad drove all the way to Cottage Grove to pick up a new queen, and back again, and we got her installed! We'll have to go back in another week or two, and check again...fingers crossed we'll see some eggs next time!

Here's a movie of our day!

2019 Beekeeping Season Begins! Installing the Bees...

Yesterday we installed the bees!! Dad was nice enough to go pick them up in Stillwater on Tuesday while I was at home trying to figure out the best way to care for my newly neutered (giant 77 pound) puppy! So, that was great...he brought them over on Wednesday and we installed that evening!

Here's a little movie of our evening, you can watch below or see it HERE on our YouTube channel! Scroll down for some photos too. Here's to the 2019 season...long live the queens! :-D

The resident & visiting kiddos got a kick out of the bees in their cages!

Photo bomber! My camera stand broke so I had to prop it up in this tree, haha!
Here we are going through the old frames, deciding what to use.

Getting ready to dump them in

In their new hive!

Installing the queen cage

All done!

Mystery Reader Day 2019

Every February our boys' elementary school celebrates "I Love to Read Month!" One of the festivities is "mystery reader" day, when parents, unbeknownst to their kids, volunteer to show up one day dressed in full costume to read a book to the kids! Each parent is assigned two classrooms to visit where they read their book, and afterwards the costumed parents go on a little parade throughout the building. Naturally, this year I just had to volunteer to read a bee-related book! This was also a great excuse for me to get the new shirt/veil that I've been wanting to get, since mine was a little grimy, and a new pair of gloves because one of mine somehow became ripped after I put them away last season!

I borrowed this cute book called "Bee and Me" from my parents to read! It was just the right length for the 10-15 minutes I had, has some fun moving images as the pages turn, and in the back has a couple pages of interesting bee facts that the kids enjoyed! And of course, EVERYONE has a story of being stung by a "bee," so it was a great chance to talk about how friendly honeybees actually are! I could spend an hour at least teaching kids about bees, but this was a fun event and I had a great time!

Showing the kids how much honey one bee makes in her entire lifetime!

I brought along my smoker and the kids really loved smelling the smoky puffs of air that came out if it!

All the readers dressed up!

 I really wanted to show a few pages from "Bees: A Honeyed History" which is an AWESOME book, super huge and gorgeous illustrations of all things bees!! But, time just went too quick....maybe next year!

Extracting Day 2018!

Today we extracted honey! We were really not expecting much this year, if anything, with the struggles we had just to keep one colony alive, so it was great to have any! We ended up with about 25 pounds this year. Here's a quick video of the extracting!

Removing the Honey Supers & Treating for Mites

On Monday this week we removed our 4 honey supers and put on some Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS)! I haven't posted any videos since July because my GoPro has been acting up...but now mysteriously seems to be working again...just in time to catch this week's visit!

It was a rough year for our teeny tiny apiary! With one colony not making it through the winter, our Nuc order falling through, and then our queen dying in our one remaining colony, we were just happy for them to survive this summer! But, we successfully re-queened our colony, built back up the bee population, and even got a little bit of honey!

Check out this week's video, and stay tuned for this year's extraction later this fall!

New Bee Hatching!

Today I checked on the bees and they are putting honey in the supers which is awesome! We weren't expecting much honey if any this year.  I didn't go too deep into the brood chambers so as not to disturb the queen, but went just far in enough on the top box to catch a video of a baby bee hatching! Super cool! My GoPro appears to be crapping out on me, so I took off a glove and used my iphone for this one. Enjoy!