We are now focused on getting the 2019 crop into barrels and the bees treated for parasites. I never get tired of bringing home the first loads, priming the system, and getting the first few barrels full. Since the crop looks better than average this year, we have a busy several weeks ahead of us. […]
The main honey harvest month is upon us. Until several years ago, we waited until later in August to start stripping the hives of all their surplus boxes. We sometimes even got a strong late summer flow that filled 1-3 boxes after the first pull. Now we don’t even try for a late flow in […]
We left the honey flow scene for a bit and escaped to visit family out in Colorado. It turns out that Andrew is a respectable fledgling kayaker!!! I think the odds are good that he will remember this outing 🙂 I was excited to come back and see how the bees fared in our absence. […]
The clover bloom has held up quite well with the combination of moisture and heat. We’ve steamed our way through heat indexes in the +90F range, so the bees have bounced back from frequent rains much better than if it had been much cooler. It rained in the late afternoon or overnight quite often in […]
We are within several days of the most diverse collection of quality honey flowers that we will see in 2019. The windup has been fairly slow with very moist and relatively cool weather the past three weeks. Trefoil and yellow sweet clover are still near their prime, Dutch clover is strong, and white sweet clover […]
I have to wonder how many people google “nucs” and end up really confused about winding up at a bee blog. . . . A good laugh for the beekeepers of the world 🙂 Right now we have around fifty June nucs maturing. I went through and checked the queens, and they seem to be […]
We are getting back into the swing of moving bees. A lot of hives got stuck in my hayfield for a few weeks longer than desired due to the crazy rainfall of the past several weeks. There are still some locations too soggy to reach. I have one yard where the bees are on their […]
Today I sold the last three packages for 2019. There are usually a few that look for an owner due to various changes on pick up dates, but these went where they can be happiest. I had originally planned to get these packages from Wisconsin where the last of our package producers for 2019 is […]
Back in 2018 we were fortunate to be invited to place bees up in the Viola and Stone City area. It turned out that a couple of the landowners had developed a beautiful pollinator haven on the site that Grant Wood depicted in Fall Plowing in 1931. Grant Wood is most known for American Gothic, […]
We distributed most of the package bees that were preordered for 2019 this weekend. What an adventure! We normally work with one supplier that sends us one of the earliest loads out of California–usually arriving in the first weekend of April. The cool wet start to the California production season pushed everyone back three weeks. […]