New Beginnings: 2014

With a solid year behind us, and some "honey money" to fund new projects, we started the year by planting some of our bees' favorite flowers.  At work, I promoted bee-friendly plants, like Agastache.  At home, I planted an entire bed full of lavender and added a lavender plant under each tree in the orchard.
 

Bees love Agastache.
 

Of all the plants I see at work, lavender seems to bee a favorite.

We started 2 new colonies of bees with our "honey money".  We ordered the bees through our local beekeepers association.  Unfortunately, the price of packaged bees doubled since last time.  I prepped the old brood boxes (a deeper box where bees raise their babies and store food) for their new residents and bought a few supers (shallower boxes where bees store extra honey), in anticipation of a bountiful year.
 

Building and prepping the bee boxes is part of the fun.

I set up the new boxes, picked up the bees, dropped them in, and voila!  All done -- NOT!!
 
Starting a new colony, or in our case, two colonies, is a lot of work.  A new colony must build the comb from scratch while raising enough babies to keep their colony going and storing enough food to survive the coming winter.  This requires a lot of resources, so we try to provide as much as we can to give our bees the best chance of success.  

People looked at me funny as I strolled the grocery store with nothing but bottled water and bags of sugar in my cart.
I turned the sugar into syrup and filled each feeder inside the hives every couple of days.  I got stung twice in the first week.  (Now I wear Gore-Tex pants over my jeans!)

One hive exploded with growth, quickly building comb and filling it with eggs and honey.  The other hive filled with honey, but lagged far behind in eggs.  The bees began building queen cells, meaning the worker bees planned to replace their queen by raising a new one from an egg.  They do this when the queen is not performing her duties (laying lots of eggs).  When you think about it, it's kind of like impeachment.  

A beekeeper friend came out to give me a second opinion and confirmed my fear that the queen needed to be replaced.  Shipping is a big part of the expense when buying a queen, so I ordered 2, with the intention of splitting our biggest hive into 2.  In the meantime, I transplanted a frame of brood from the strong hive into the weak hive, otherwise many of the workers would have died from old age by the time the new queen's first batch of eggs had hatched.

It took a few tries, but I eventually got the queen replaced in the weak hive, and I split our big hive into two.  In the process, I harvested a couple gallons of honey.  This time I borrowed our club's centrifugal extractor, but it was still lots of work.  

This season hasn't been easy, but I've learned a lot, and I look forward to learning more! 
So far, everyone seems happy!
   

  
Would you like to purchase some of our sweet, delicious honey?

 

Our honey is unheated and natural -- just like the bees made it.  The best part is, our honey is not for profit.  Every cent of your Bee Curious Honey purchase helps honey bees by funding additional bee conservation projects, such as expanding our bee garden, and purchasing additional bee boxes, colonies and equipment. 

 

Please contact Jenée or Eric for prices.