Fair Day 9-2010

Spent a nice day at the fair with Terry, Eric and Abby.



Bee Inspection 9-10-2010

Did the following today:

Hive One - Removed a full super of honey and replaced it with an empty drawn super. This hive has a strong and rather aggressive population of bees. Bill and I think there may be some Russian blood in these. This hive has good brood in the brood box and a full super of honey. Not feeding at this time.

Hive Two- Placed a new queen into the brood box and the full super of honey from hive one on top. Blue dot queen is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Drove the bees from the super from hive one out of the box with a fume board of Bee Gone. Entrance reducer in placed to the narrow opening. Added two quarts of 2:1 sugar water.

Hive Three- Looked for the queen on Wednesday and did not find her but did see a good amount of brood , pollen and honey stores. Currently has a brood box and full super of honey.

Hive Four- Decided against combining hive two with this one, which I had done on Wednesday. This hive is strong and has good brood in the hive box. The queen looks like she might have been released already. She is a marked blue dot queen that is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Added 2 more quarts of 2:1. They had consumed both quarts from the feeding on Wednesday. They had also tore all the newspaper from the combine on Wednesday. Seems really fast. Hope to find the blue dot queen when I look again in seven days. Entrance reduced to large opening.

Hive Inspections

Removed the queen excluders and several boxes in preparation for the winter. Hive two is still small and weak. Will need to combine them with another hive. All of the other hives are very strong and full of honey. Will do a mite count shortly to see if they need to be treated. Due to lack of a flow right now all of the strong hives were a bit aggressive. Considering this normal for this time of the year.

Honey Harvest

Bill and I harvested some honey from our hives. Hives one and three yielded up about four gallons.

Idaho/Utah Summer Trip

Spent the last two weeks of July in Idaho for Ryan and Ashley's graduation from BYU-I.

The Blue Angels were performing at the Idaho Falls airport, this was Mom's first airshow. She really enjoyed the day's activities.

We also got to spent a day in Yellowstone.

This is from our last day in Utah. Ryan and Ashley are in Provo for the next two years while Ryan is pursuing his Masters at BYU. I could not resist buying our grandson an outfit. 

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Bee Inspection 7-20-2010

Inspected all the hives today. Added back the top feeder to the Brown hive and filled it to the top with three gallons of 1:1.5 sugar water. Cleared the tall grass from in front of mine and Bill's hive with Clarence’s weed whacker. Smoked my hive before doing so and should have smoked Bill's as well as I got stung from one of his bees. Also added a medium super to the Brown hive.
Added a super to hive one at my place because the top supper was full of capped honey and they have been bearding the front of the hive so they need the room. Added more sugar water to hives two and four. Hive four goes through 2 quarts in a 24 hour period. I am going to put the top feeders back on as we are leaving for Idaho on Wednesday. Hive three still has not drawn out the top super but I elected to leave it on for a while, at least till we get back.
I have also been feeding the bees sugar water on top of the compost bin lid, there are 100s of bees taking the feed and it goes very fast. I make a simple home made solar wax melter, it works very well in the hot summer sun. The bees also enjoy cleaning the honey from last winter harvested comb.

Bernie and Doug's Excellant Adventure

Terry's dad and I made a trip to the bee yard yesterday. Bernie had a great time. I was able to show him quite a bit about beekeeping. My main objective was to add two quarts of feed to hives two and four.
I even showed him how the bees sting but could not talk him into experiencing it for himself. It has been good to have him with us for a while.