This was a great year! We had a mild winter with very few winter losses, with strong health bees. Bee inspector was as impressed as I was going through so many great looking colonies. They required very little feeding, weather cooperated all year with enough rain to keep everything rolling without too much bad weather. Queen rearing was great with plenty of brood, nurse bees, and drones. Got bunches of honey, usually don’t mess with honey but had so much it was a great bonus. Bees had plenty of fall pollen and nectar to pretty much set themselves up for the long winter. Wishing everyone else had the same experience. Looking forward to next season.
Make sure you check your bee’s stores. It’s been a crazy winter with temperatures all over. I have been adding additional winter feed to all my singles. They have already gone through most of their stores, and I always feed a lot in the fall.
We have got the bees fed, treated for mites, and ready for winter. After all the rain we had last year, we made sure to feed well this year. Never fed pollen substitutes much before in the fall. But after last year we did lots of pollen feeding this year, which has made a big difference in buildup and numbers going into winter. After an effective mite treatment in August (Apivar) we followed up in late October and in early November with a couple of OA sublimation treatments, when mostly brood less, to clean up before winter season. Bees are looking better than ever this year, we have more colonies than ever, and am looking to continue expanding next year. After another great season we want to thank our great customers and looking to meeting new customers next year. Our nucs and queens are available to reserve on our website for spring of 2023. As of now we are not raising our prices this year.
The weather is getting better. We had snow last week and its looking like 80°F next week. Been doing some feeding and adding extra boxes. Dandelions are almost blooming. We have started to graft and raise queens. Drones are just starting to get ready. Bees are looking great. We should be on schedule to start filling our nucs and packages later this month. I will send out email’s mid-week for Saturday morning pick-ups and fill orders through June. Thank you for your orders and hoping beekeeping is going great.
This is how I prepare my single colonies for winter. I just finished OA sublimation, the mouse guard is on the entrance, shim is added with a sugar mixture(emergency feed and maybe moisture control?), Super DFM probiotic, then insulated box cover. As you see most still also have pollen substitutes also. I have been using this procedure for years on over 100 colonies a year with great results. We also use it for 5 frame doubles and 8 frame singles.
It’s been a busy year, we had great nuc and 3lb package sales this year. Thank You! to all our new and past customers. This is the most important time of the year to get the bees ready for winter. Control mites, making sure they have enough stores, and the equipment is in good shape for the long cold season. We have finally had a little break to do some blogging and get the website set up for next year. We have our nucs and 3lb packages open to reserve for the spring of 2022. We are hoping to get a barn built this fall for storage and a wood shop, we have been renting storage units to store our unused equipment, frames, and nuc boxes. Hoping to eventually have custom boxes and equipment available for sale. Would like to increase our queen production this year to be able to again offer queens for local pick up and by USPS. Also will be adding some breeder queen to mix with our local hardy stock and increase their VSH behaviors. So looks like nothing much is going to slow down, we hope to see you all next year.
We are getting the bees ready for winter. It’s been a long busy season and it’s time for a little rest soon. The bees are getting fed 2-1 syrup and pollen patties to keep them stimulated to raise brood and store enough nectar to get them through winter. I like to do as much as possible to keep their numbers up and keep strong numbers going into winter. Most of my colonies were started in August and September from July nucs and merging queen castles. We are also treating mites with oxalic acid sublimation. We will follow up with another round of sublimation in about a month. In August we treated with Apivar. All year we have been using Super DFM from Strong Microbials and think this is a great product, especially for getting the bees stomach ready for winter.
Our website is open for taking deposits on 5 Frame Nucs and Package Bees for Spring of 2021.
Enjoy the pictures of what we have been doing and current bee yard work.
We want to let our customers know everything is on schedule for our bee sales this year. We start planning our season as soon as the last season ends. So we are stocked with all needed supplies and bee feed to get everything taken care of on our apiary. The bees are looking great this year with only 6% winter losses. This year half of our colonies wintered in single deep and 5/5 brood boxes so that’s really exciting. We are looking forward to a great season, we have some nucs left if anybody still wants to get your orders in. Now if we can just get rid of this crazy virus! Thank you for your time and take care.
Strong 8 Frames! Half of our colonies are single 10 frame or 5/5 and most look like this.
The winter has been mild with temperatures all over the place. We have only had around 4′ of snow and at this point has all melted with little to no snow banks, kind of a strange winter. I’m guessing that later this month and February we will end up with colder and snowier conditions. We have been monitoring the bees and they are looking great with almost zero losses so far this year. They have gone through their sugar boards on the top but are still in the lower boxes on the 5/5 setups. I will be replenishing their sugar board supplies this week to make sure they have enough food to get through the next couple months. We are preparing for next year getting our nuc boxes and frames built. As you know beekeeping is a lot of work, especially when you have lots of colonies. Our nuc and package sales are going good this year so get your orders in for early pick up. Happy Beekeeping and think spring!
We have had another great year thanks to our great customers. After a slow, rainy, and cold start things got right for a great bee build up toward the end of May. We grafted 1000 queens this year, with around 750 good mated queens. We adjusted the way we sustain our cell builders along with new introduction techniques that has immensely improved our queen rearing operation. Finally have had a little break to catch up on some other work, beekeeping keeps us busy most of the summer working everyday possible, feeding, splitting, and queen rearing. Our queens did great this year!
We got some new breeder queens from New River Honey Bees from the imported Slovenian Carniolan stock. Having around 100+ daughters from them in the bee yards will be a good wintering test. We will be getting more VSH breeder queens for spring 2020 to keep that dominant trait in our stock. I have added another bee yard that was cut into the hill, with the soil banked around it, for wind protection from our wild winter weather. It’s time to do mite counts and treatments. We are combining our mating nucs into full colonies to fill our new yard and make increases. Again I want to thank all our great customers. Next year we are not going to raise any prices. Our nucs will be going on sale in October.
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