Archive for June, 2010

We pulled a good-sized colony from the walls of a home this weekend. Every single one of these is a learning experience.

According to the homeowner, bees have lived there for much of the last 30 years. Not the same colony, obviously and it’s not been continuous. They’re planning renovations to the house and they wanted the bees safely relocated so the contractor could do his thing safely.

We actually started the job two weeks ago. We arrived bright and early and pulled the old cedar siding down and located the entrance. Big problem: the bees were located behind the second floor rim-joist. Neither of us were comfortable with just blinding cutting in. We’re not big on risking demolishing our customer’s home. So we covered it up to do some research.

This Sunday we rolled in armed with the tools we needed and the knowledge that cutting the joist shouldn’t be a problem. Just to be safe, we pounded hardwood wedges in beneath the joist outside of the area were cutting to prevent it from possibly sagging. It wound up being no problem at all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Honey harvest will be beginning soon in our area and, have no fear, we’ll be offering the liquid gold for sale online. Watch for it here. We also expect to have things like hives and accessories as well.

The hive removal didn’t go as we planned, so we spent a couple of hours checking our hives and making another split.

On a day like today (beautifully sunny, warm, light breeze), when the blooming is still going strong and the foragers still have plenty of places to collect pollen and nectar, it can get busy at the hive entrance. Very busy.
Read the rest of this entry »

It will be interesting to see how it goes, but we’re removing a well-established colony from the walls of a house tomorrow.
The homeowner says that they’ve been there for much of 30 years. It should be an interesting day.

Two years ago this week, Greg and I picked up our first two packages from Geoff Wilson and moved them into our first hives. Whew, the things that we didn’t know that we didn’t know.

Fast forward two years and we’ve gone from two guys who had never looked inside a bee hive to two guys trying to take over the world with a new way of doing things.

We made our first hive split on May 2 this year. It’s almost unheard of to have enough drones out and flying that early to be able to raise new queens, but the early spring was on our side. The queen that they raised in that first split matches the timelines perfectly and the brood pattern is perfect. I’m going to try my hand at breeding queens and will be basing the line upon her.

So, from a low of three hives at the beginning of May, we’re back up to 8 and counting. With a great queen and a bit of luck, I’ll be able to make some nucs up soon and really kick into high gear. 

I picked up a digital video camera this week and after a bit of testing hope to put it to good use documenting more of the life of the hive. This was the activity at the entrance to one hive yesterday afternoon: