Days of a Beekeeper

Spent the day checking bees today, and for the majority looks like they are a month ahead of schedule, kinda like our weather. 

Started my (1st) cell graft for raising queens, should be hatching  3/31/2012.. Again really early for this.

Came home and checked the pollen trap on (1) of our local colonies, and looks like we collected 1 oz of LOCAL pollen... First time for us on this, had been using pollen from another source, but now we will have our own....As the flowers start to flower, our pollen quanity should really pick up...

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Been real busy checking bees that last (2) days, and with all the mild weather we are having, the bees are really looking good, of course not all are as big and strong as others, but overall will be able to make up the winter loss's and more. Strong colonies average 4 frames of brood,,, and it is only the 1st week of March. Looks like I will start my queen rearing early this year, probably around the week of the 19th or so...

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Been a busy couple of days...Have checked all our hives, and they all seem to have made it thru the winter so far... Put some feed on most of them, as the queens have started laying, and they will go thru a lot of food until the spring flowers start... Hoping for a good year, and get the colony counts up to over 400...most since 1993...

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Looks like we need to change gears a little today, awoke to a little snow on the ground, so out to honey house to start the fire, and do some frame/box cleaning and painting.. trying to get ahead of the curve this year .

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Just a normal day, doing some of the stuff that I normally put off to last, ie... painting box's, cleaning frames & installing new foundation, but hey... will be ready this year for the bees to do their thing...

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