Battling Nature: 2012-2013

2012
The rest of the year
 

This year proved to be a challenging one for our bees.  Inexperience, coupled with an infestation of wax moths, ultimately led to the collapse of our wall cut-out hive.  To make matters worse, we also lost both of the newer hives.  One day they were there, and the next they weren't.  I attribute this to placing the hives in a location which was too shady, but also to my not feeding them enough to give them a fighting chance.  I'd heard that most beekeepers quit beekeeping by the third year, and I'll admit that losing most of our bees was highly discouraging, however, we decided to slow it down and focus on keeping our strong hive, strong.   
 

2013
 

We took a step back and let the bees do their thing, with great success.  Fortunately, we had good rain, and a bumper crop of wildflowers, so we ended up harvesting more than 2 gallons of honey from our original, remaining hive.
Thanks to you guys, we were able to save that "honey money" for a not-so-rainy day.
We also added a small orchard of about 20 fruit trees to the farm.  Peaches, pears, and plums -- oh, my!  The bees will love them in the spring!
 

 Oh, the taste of sweet, sweet success!

 It was a beary good season.

The Bee Curious label was created for our 2013 harvest.