Fall Feeding – The Bottomless Pit!

December 11, 2015 On November 7th, we had the candy party (details and pictures to come in a post from someone else — hint, hint Todd).  I used about 100 lbs of sugar to make candy for 4 full colonies, 1  2-medium-box colony and 1 nuc.  I filled 1/2 of […]


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August Notes

8/9 what’s difference a week makes! The queen castle is robbed out and the observation hive is well provisioned! 8/11 made a nuc from the orange hive to mate queen from Q7. To Mel’s to pick up queen — she’s dead.   8/13 Observation hive – Small hive beetle! Argh! […]


The Nuc – A Summary to Date

On August 11, I was expecting to house a queen from the Q7 round of queen rearing.  I made up a 4 frame medium nuc from my orange colony (the primary swarm from the observation hive).  When I went to pick up the queen, she was dead.  Darn.  The nuc […]


Q7 part 2

Q7 queens were installed in several hives amongst the group. Liz’ nuc that received a Pauw was abandoned after all. Last Sunday, Mel set up another nuc. Mel and I went to the farm to see if any of the reserve queens had emerged. We found one Pauw and one […]


July Notes

7/17 Pink – 5 frames drawn; 3 frames brood; queen with red mark seen Green – 7 frames drawn; 5 frames brood; queen with red mark seen Orange – 27 frames drawn; top box empty – removed; middle box 3 frames stores 5 frames brood and eggs; bottom box mostly […]

She survived but isn't laying.

Q7 queen cells distributed into 8 hives

Q7 was started on Sunday, July 26th, 2015. I used the same nurse hive as for Q4 and Q6 at the farm: bottom deep with open brood, queen and foragers. On that a queen excluder and the cloak board. On that the second deep with capped brood (about 4 frames […]


Yet Again, the Observation Hive Swarms!

Yeah, again! After the swarm there are at least 3 virgin queens roaming the colony:     A solid gold one that is pretty much chill.  She moves slowly and has very few bees in her retinue.  The bees seem to pretty much ignore her.           […]

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Q6 was not a success……..

I set up the same nurse hive that was at the farm and was used for Q4 with the cloak board. I had learned at the MSBA meeting this summer to be sure to put only capped brood in the box above the queen excluder and to shake all the […]


My honey was eaten

Well I’m bummed. I decided to pull my supers today. The process went fine. The fume board worked like a charm even though the juice is about three years old. I removed the third super which I put on about a month ago to be sure the hive wouldn’t swarm. […]


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Observation Hive Swarmed Again!

These posts are getting boring!  Particularly as I can’t seem to load the pictures I’d like to! Anyway, it swarmed.  Probably a really nice size swarm based on the density of bees remaining.  I’d guess 5-6 lbs of bees left.  Don’t know where they went.  I’ve walked the neighborhood several […]