Days of a Beekeeper

Have been doing alot of feeding the last month, bees are trying to get in gear, but are running short of stores.... so am feeding heavy mixture of sugar syrup to help them out until flowers arrive.

Trying to make some nuc's for increase, but with weather in 30-50 range, the girls are not happy with me... gota  do what ya got to do..

Comments (0)     

Was out of town last week... on a road trip to northern Calif with Heartland Honey to pickup a trailer load of package bees. We did a 4,000 mile road trip in 5 days and came back to kc with 425 3# packages of bees.

Comments (0)     

We have been busy feeding and checking the bees last week when warm... Most of the colonies appear to be in good shape, with the queens laying quite a few eggs. I am sure with the feeding we are doing. it will push them quicker. We will be doing our 1st 2013 queen graft on Thursday the 4th, so they will be ready to be put into nuc's when we get back from California with a load of 400 packages. I am helping out another beekeeper on this long journey, as it is going to be close to 4,000 miles in 6 days. Will be setting up another page with pictures of this adventure.  We have another 100 queens that are suppose to be shipped from California by April 8th, but not to sure if this will occur, as the weather in calif has been cooler, thus effecting the queen production.

Comments (0)     

Went over the Missouri to check on some colonies that we have not seen since around mid Dec... Only had to feed about 15 gallons of sugar syrup... Looked at about 50 hives and lost only 2.. that was a good thing. Most of the bees had a nice size cluster of bees, and with the weather warming up the next couple of days, the bees should start bringing in some maple/elm pollen... Really need to have some warmer weather so they can get started for the year.

Comments (0)     

Have been real busy in the workshop the last couple of weeks, have been putting supers and frames together, also putting in foundation... Have made up around 200 extra supers for this year. Was able to make up another 30 Nuc boxes from scrape lumber and old hive bodies.

Was wanting to try a first round of queen grafts that last of March, but that may be on hold unless we get some warmer weather.

Waiting to see how the colonies have done with the cold and snow... should be in the 50's later this week, so will be checking the winter yards, most likely will be walking in from road, as the pastures will be pretty muddy... like the moisture hope it will help with the honey flow in June.

Comments (0)