beekeeping blog

06.24.26

06.01.26

What a great day!!

It's been a real dry spell with spring honey around here, but one of the yards has finally come through!! Hallelujah!!

Took the youngest out with me. She got to wear my suit, I had to wear my husband's lol, so I was swimming in it. But these bees are so gentle, they barely even minded when we were stealing their excess honey!!

Much to my pleasant surprise, this yard is on track. This is the high producing yard normally, but things have been so broadly difficult, I didn't expect anything for this visit. There were only two of the five colonies that needed supplementary feed!

The two on the left of the tree were the new Nucs from like a month ago. One is growing normally, very stable and strong, but the other got a second deep! They had already swarmed in fact (🤯), and they were so honey bound I took two deep frames of honey AND gave them a second deep! I left plenty of honey behind, so they didn't need feed.

The colony directly to the right of the tree had a completely full super! We just took the whole thing and switched it for an empty one. The deeps were full of other honey, brood, and TONS of bees, so they were fine too. The middle colony on the right was small, but they always have been. They're stable though, so they got feed. And the colony on the end was beginning to fill their super, but almost ALL the frames in their second deep were top to bottom full of honey! We took all but 3/10; we left one frame of capped honey and two frames with some emerging drones on the bottom of full honey frames. Their first deep was full of brood and bees and more honey too, so they were good to go.

So we got a full super and 8/10 deep frames of honey today! I'm so happy and relieved, it was starting to look bleak for the spring honey harvest lol.

05.30.26

With the defunding of the weather services, and the climate changing at breakneck speed, we've had such a tumultuous, stormy, wet spring, that it's been a bumpy ride for all Texas beekeepers.

High winds will killing queens during mating season, and now wind and rain is washing out all the pollen and nectar in honey season. I haven't had a real honey harvest yet at all, and I'm in the majority, sadly. I'm just glad that I keep such a close eye on my yards; I watched their food stores dwindle, and I'm not ready to risk hoping the weather shapes up any time soon. I went out and fed them today.

05.30.26

See the queen in my hand?! She was on the ground in front of the hive entrance. I had just checked this Nuc yesterday and she wasn't there!

Her body wasn't crispy, so she hasn't been there long. And there was still a decent pile of bees on top of her.

All of my nucs got requeened about two weeks ago; I noticed when I came back from vacation that two of them had absconded. I wonder if one tried to take over this healthy Nuc and got killed for it? This Nuc had brand new eggs when I checked yesterday, so hopefully they didn't just randomly decide to kill a perfectly good queen! But at least, I suppose, they have eggs to make a new one...