Fuzzybutt Bees

First hive inspection of 2020! Our queens have already started laying and the Ashleys are bringing in lots of pollen. We’ll need to feed them some sugar syrup soon to make sure they have plenty of food stores until more plants start bloom.

Good morning, bees!

What a difference a month makes!! Both of our queens have happily settled in and are laying tons of eggs! Queen Rosalinda’s hive is bringing in tons of honey and Persephone’s ladies have loads of pollen and nectar.

Early May saw lots of activity in front of both of our hives, but both of our queens were slow to begin laying much. Queen Rosalind’s hive was filling up with bee bread and nectar, though!

Queen Persephone, our orange queen, swarmed back in early April. Luckily, Cale saw our ladies hanging out on the fence and we were able to get the swarm into a box. We worked some bee magic to get rid of our laying worker from the white hive, and then combined the white hive with our swarm. All that means Queen Persephone’s adventure got her a new home three feet south.

Our white hive is bringing in honey but is queenless and has a laying worker, meaning a worker bee has taken over laying duties and laying a ton of underutilized eggs which turn into male drones (yikes). We moved over two frames of brood from Persephone’s hive with queen cells. With any luck, they’ll hatch a queen and she’ll have a successful mating flight soon!

Finally getting around to bottling honey!

This was a big week for our hives! We spent Saturday pulling honey, shaking each frame free of bees before taking them inside to be spun in our extractor. Despite having only one hive, we managed to pull between 5 and 6 gallons again this year. Nefertiti’s hive was very productive! We also did some basic hive maintenance and tested for varroa. Lastly, we said goodbye to Queen Ophelia and Queen Nefertiti. We installed new queens Thursday morning. Please welcome Queen Persephone and Queenie!!

Happy Father’s Day from our hives to yours!! Fun fact: male bees are called drones. Basically, their only purpose in the hive is to fertilize the Queen. If they’re successful in that endeavor, they’ll die during the mating flight. The other males will live fat and happy through the summer eating the honey that the ladies bring in, but come fall the ladies will kick them out to starve to death or freeze rather than waste resources through winter! We did a full inspection of both hives today because someone in our Bee association suspects they may have a case of European foulbrood. Our ladies look healthy and happy though! Ophelia had a beautiful brood pattern and we saw tons of eggs. Nefertiti’s pattern is occasionally a little spotty, but overall very nice. We’ll need to keep a close eye on her hive because we found some small signs we may have a laying worker. The Ashley’s are bringing in tons of honey in a beautiful array of colors hand over fist!

Quick inspection over Memorial Day weekend. Queen Ophelia has ramped up her laying and the Ashley’s are bringing in tons of nectar and pollen, so they were ready to get another super! That’s a good sign because this hive will have to grow a ton in order to put away the stores necessary to make it through winter. Queen Nefertiti looks to have slowed her laying a little, but her ladies are still bringing in honey at a breakneck pace. We had to add another super to their hive, making that the tallest hive we’ve ever had. If the summer heat doesn’t scorch all the flowering plants to death, we should have a really nice honey harvest from them this year.

Got in Ophelia’s hive this morning to see how they’re doing. The hive is tiny but has stopped taking sugar syrup, so it seems like they’re bringing in all the nectar they need. Ophelia has started ramping up her laying as well. We’re hoping to see this hive really grow quickly now!

Thanks to Buck’s Bees we’re back up to two hives. He captured this lovely little swarm while out at White Rock Lake one night and was nice enough to send it over to our bee yard. Please welcome Queen Ophelia! We settled the hive in a deep that still had some honey and pollen from last year. We’ll continue to feed them until they get to be well established.

Quick inspection today! What looks like a spotty brood pattern is actually our poor ladies being honeybound! They’ve already brought in so much honey this season that they’re out of space to lay eggs. Luckily, we had a super with some comb already to go, so we tossed that on to give them space. They should be right as rain soon! We also spotted some empty queen cells during this inspection. We’ll have to keep a close eye on the hive to make sure our ladies don’t swarm or replace the queen!

Quick hive inspection today! Queen Nefertiti has begun laying and the Ashley’s are bringing in a ton of pollen! With the ladies officially building up for Spring, we’ll start supplementing their pollen intake and feeding them sugar water. We also cleaned up the dead hive and scraped clean a bunch of frames that had wax over two years old.

First hive inspection of the new year. Unfortunately, it looks like Malia’s hive went queenless during winter. They have plenty of food stores, but not the number of bees that they need to bring them into spring. Nefertiti’s hive is looking pretty strong right now. We flipped some food stores from Malia’s hive to them to get the ladies through the next few weeks of cold weather. If they don’t eat it down now, they will blow through it once things warm up and Nefertiti starts laying. With Malia’s hive dying out, we’ll start the season with only one hive. Nefertiti’s hive built up really quickly last spring, so we may be able to split the hive if that happens again. That would have the two-fold benefit of preventing a swarm and getting us back to two hives for honey season!

We put the emptied frames back on the hive for the ladies to clean up. When we went to remove them Queen Malia’s hive had capped four frames of honey in as many days, and Queen Nefertiti’s hive had capped one frame. If they keep it up, we’ll have to pull honey again this fall to get the hives down to a good size for winter!

Celebrating International Mead Day at Meridian Hive Meadery!