Bee Update

Bees from all four hives have almost taken all of the honey from the Brown hive. Video Link. Weather has been great. Saw bees bringing in pollen another good sign as they do this to feed the brood. Will need to remove the newspaper and inspect hive four sometime this week.

Winter 2011 Hive Inspections

Inspected the 4 hives in the home yard today. The Brown Hive had died and I had brought that hive back to house 3 weeks ago. I opened this hive and the bees from the home yard hives have been taking the honey. Still have 5-6 frames of honey in top super.

Bees are not interested in pollen patty. More than likely they are getting all the protein they need from the honey.

Had also moved hive one to the other side of hive 2 so that they could get more sun. Hives one, two and three all appear to be doing good coming out of winter. Plenty of stored honey and some capped and open brood. Not much yet but some none the less. A good sign of things to come. Found the queen in hive three, she looked good. Reversed the brood box and medium super on hive one as most of the bees were in the top medium super. Also took top super that is full of honey from hive 3 and placed in on hive 4 the weakest of the hives. Did  a newspaper combine on this hive.
Surprised to see so many small hive beetles. Need to set some traps for them.

Eric's High School Graduation

Eric did it!! We attended a very nice graduation ceremony tonight. We received his final transcripts and he finished with a 3.95 GPA and was ranked #3 of 428. I could not be more pleased.

Dogs

Argos is a big boy now. Eric and I think he is close to 85 pounds. Shelby tolerates him but just barely. She is approaching ten years old and has no time for his foolishness. Shelby suffers from occasional neck problems she had us all freaked out last Saturday night when she could not walk. Half a muscle relaxing pill from the Vet and she was doing much better.

Rooster

This is the yet to be named Rooster. I think Abby needs to name him. He is now the head rooster in my flock of 10 birds.

Bee Inspection 11-14-10

Looked at the hives one last time for this year. #1hive is the one on the left in the picture below.

Hive #1  is still a hot hive. Not happy to have me looking at them. Lots of honey stores and bees. Need to move it into the sun this winter as there were loads of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Inner cover had close to 50 of them. Tapped off the bees and tried to snuff out as many SHBs as I could.

Hive#2 decide to leave them alone. Previously  looked at them at the end of October and they were doing fine. They are still a bit on the weak side. They have a full medium super of honey. Just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope they make it till spring.

Hive#3 is the strongest hive in the yard. They have two full honey supers above them. I decided to leave an extra super on for emergency feeding in the spring.

Hive #4 is doing good. I had thought of combining this one with the #2 hive but decided against this after looking at them yesterday. Both hives 2 and 4 have a new well mated queen in them. Previous inspections revealed good brood patterns being laid. These are the queens from Wayne's stock.

Brown Yard Hive is doing good. Currently feeding this hive some more 2:1 sugar water. They have plenty of room for more. They are still taking it and hope they get it all in the next week or so before it turns too cold.

Nice October Days

 We have had a nice fall so far this year. These are from a Saturday outing to local garden center.

We made a trip to the Blue Ridge the next Saturday.

10-23-10 Beautiful Blue Ridge Day