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all is well
The populations of the hives seem to be expanding – I think I’ve got bees now that were eggs when I bought the frames. The time it takes for the worker bees to develop, from egg to worker, is about 21 days, so that makes sense. The visit today went well. The mistake I corrected last time seems to have been taken in stride by all the lovely ladies in the hives. I noticed that the honeycomb I uncapped and scraped off a bit has now been re-capped, and everything fits better. In the hives I saw eggs, larvae, capped brood, and one queen. The other queen was hiding from…
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oops
Some people have to learn the hard way. I didn’t think I was one of those people, but apparently this time I am. In the beekeeping course I took, the concept of ‘bee space’ was drilled into us. It’s important to keep a certain small distance between the frames in the hive in order to keep them easy to work with. If you leave too much space, the bees will build crazy bulging comb and make the frames harder to work with. Guess what. Somehow I managed to completely forget that lesson. Oops. So, when I went to check on my hives, I had crazy bulging comb and frames that…
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many thanks
I have to say a big thank you to Ken and Steven for letting me tag along as they inspect their bees, and for all the sage advice I’ve received so far. Here are Ken and I, looking for a queen in this colony today. It took awhile, but Ken found her. She hadn’t mated yet, so she looked more like a big worker than a queen. I never would have spotted her! One thing I’m learning as I watch Ken and Steven is that it’s important to keep good records. They use a voice recorder to take notes on the temperature and weather conditions, what they see in each…
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watch and learn
I was able to hitch a ride with an experienced beekeeper today, as he went to check on his bees. Here’s what I learned, in order of importance: 1. If a bee stings you, scrape off the stinger and put a penny on the spot with duct tape. I swear it works. Normally I would have swelling but there’s absolutely none from the sting I got today. Before the penny was put on, I could feel it starting to swell into my thumb and wrist (sting was top of my hand/base of thumb). After the penny went on, the swelling went down and you can’t even see it now. 2.…
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big plans
After researching honeybees for approximately a year, and taking a course from the University of Guelph to see if I could handle working with them, I’ve decided to buy my first two nucs, or sets of bees. They’ll be ready for me sometime after June 7, so in the meantime I’m getting my supplies and bee yard ready. No turning back now….