July 14, 2020 - Added 5th super

 Today I added a 5th super! Some frames were fully capped, but not enough to remove a box. Here's a little clip of the bees capping honey!

July 9, 2020 - Added a 4th super

 The bees were busy capping honey today...I added a 4th super!

June 24, 2020 - Guest starring on EPAG Kids' "Lunch Break!"

 Dad Phil Brandt and I had so much fun being guests on today's "Lunch Break," taking the kids from EPAGKIDS Elementary Church on a virtual field trip to visit the bees! Check out the replay here, where you can even watch a new bee "hatching" out of her cell!

June 11, 2020: Adding honey supers

Well, its been a little while since I've blogged, mainly because my GoPro died! However, I just bought a new one, and today I got to use it for the first time to check the bees. Today Dad and I added two honey supers. We check out all of the deeps, and found the queen was laying down in the bottom box. So, we kept that box on the bottom, hoping she'd work her way up. We re-assembled the hive as it was, took off the feeder pails, and replaced that with the queen excluder and two honey supers. The bees are looking great overall!

Our "hosts" had lots of daisies blooming today! I tried to catch a photo of one of the honeybees on a daisy but was unsuccessful. I did, however, snap a few pics of other types of bees! I am no expert on other bees, but after some Google searching I believe this is an Agapostemon virescens - aka "Green Striped sweat bee"

April 22, 2020; Checking for Eggs

This post is belated, but last week my dad and I went to check on the bees to see if the queen was laying eggs yet! Dad had a stroke last month, so it was a miracle to have him there this time! I'm so glad this visit was worth the drive and walk for him....the bees look great! Fresh, clean wax, and plenty of eggs, larvae and capped brood. We saw what we needed to see, closed up the hive, and increased the entrance size. The bees were coming back loaded with pollen, too! The insides of the feeder pail lids were crusted with sugar, so I scraped that off so the syrup would flow freely. That's all for today! I'll go back again early next week to check on them, and possibly add another deep!

Let the 2020 Bee Season Begin!

Today was "bee day!" Unfortunately my dad and bee mentor suffered a stroke last month, and while he's now thankfully home recovering, between that and the whole COVID-19 thing, he stayed home this year. However, I was able to go pick up the bees in Stillwater and get them installed today!

With the coronavirus epidemic going on, they had new procedures for picking up bees. Bee pickup was spread out between two days, and the time slot I was given based on my last name was 12:30-1:00 today. I was to put a sign in my window with my name, not open the window or get out of the vehicle, and allow them to put the bees in the vehicle.

I then headed home, made some sugar syrup, let it cool and headed over to install them! I think everything went well, but here is a movie from the day, including bee pickup!

Removing Supers & Counting Mites

Well, I haven't blogged much this summer for a couple reasons...I've been super busy with work and family camping trips, but also the bees haven't been doing much! We never did end up getting any honey in the supers this year. Oh well. The bee experts were really shocked we got any honey our first year with our first bees, and we've been happy with a little each year after...but now we can only hope they make it through winter so we can see was a second-year colony can do!

So on September 20th I removed all of the supers. At this point the honey flow is all over, and there is no point in keeping them on the hives. In the fall we want the bees to be storing honey in their deeps to eat over winter. My dad was on a road trip so I went alone this time! I spent about an hour and 15 minutes with the bees and sweat my butt off, haha! But I used weeds to brush all the bees off of every frame in the supers, and loaded them into my Jeep with just one hitchhiker. I wore my suit home just in case!

I counted mites, and ended up with about 2 mites per colony. Not too bad but we may treat anyway to be safe. I'm a little behind on everything this fall, but started feeding today too. I made some 2:1 sugar syrup (heavier syrup for fall), and put a pail on each colony.

A couple days later, once I had a chance to go buy more sugar, I brought back more syrup. Beeatrice still had some but Penelobee had emptied the pail. This time of year you should feed hard and fast, with 3 pails right on the frames. But, I only had 3 pails on hand. So, I filled up Beeatrice's pail, and then put two full pails on Penelobee's. I'll probably go back tomorrow to check and add some more!

So, no fun extraction day videos for this year, but here's one from what I did on the 20th!