Early October beekeeping hasn’t felt too much different from September beekeeping this year. The temperatures have stayed relatively high with moderate cooling overnight. That is good for the bees. It gives them a chance to get on the white asters and the sprinkling of other blossoms that close down the floral year once the goldenrod […]
Here is Andrew riding high on a 1935 Model B John Deere at the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion that takes place over Labor Day weekend in Mount Pleasant every year (except 2020 of course). He also had an introduction to our annual honey stand at Threshers and experienced the volumes of people that come through […]
Here we are sitting at the first Cedar Rapids Farmers Market back in June. I didn’t really plan to go to them myself, but Andrew really enjoys selling the honey and handling all the cash so it became a family event that he doesn’t like to miss. We are still selling off last year’s crop […]
We are pushing surplus boxes out of the building as fast as we can manage in hopes of catching the major honey flow. The intro image shows one of our flatbeds that took a nosedive into an underground spring as one of our crews was en route to a supering destination. We hooked up two […]
Early June has brought on a strong clover bloom and plenty of heat to let the bees have plenty of foraging opportunity. A lot of times we don’t get the right conditions for yellow sweet clover to yield anything significant in our area. The white sweet clover that blooms a few weeks later is generally […]
We are in the midst of hive creation 2021. We didn’t shake packages in 2021 because we knew that we had to do a lot of splitting from our overwintered hives. Packages are usually shaken out of the top box of a very strong hive, and then they need to recover population for a couple […]
We spent a record amount of time with the bees in California in 2021. I think it was worth it. The January trip is all about consolidation and stimulation. The February trip is about persistent mite suppression and selective population boosting. This most recent March outing was for creating splits on a rather unplanned and […]
The almond bloom is well underway here in northern California. Some orchards are in full bloom, and the later varieties are just starting to open. Last week and the next two weeks will be the most decisive for determining the almond set and how the bees develop. Fortunately the forecast for next week is favorable….daytime […]
We are winding up our survey of the Ebert bees out in northern California. The image above shows Alex in a set of 150 hives that graded out well and survived well. We sent two other semi loads this year. Overall it looks like we have enough good ones to keep the wheels turning, especially […]
Honey container and lid acquisition was one of the great challenges of 2020. During the spring there was a plastics competition as production and distribution logistics were disrupted at international levels. We sold a lot of plastic containers to a few places that were gearing up for the hand santitizer craze of the spring and […]