#2026bees

In early March I hit the ground sick and was set back a week in my hive check schedule. I'm more hands on with my bees than the average sideline beekeeper, but I'm okay with that; I feel like that's part of what kept my apiary at 0% loss this winter, while my peers experienced on average 60% or more.

I was seeing signs of early/false spring, which meant brood growth and swarming, so I stacked my colonies with new deeps and supers in February. I felt crazy for doing so, but we only had one last random freeze, that lasted about twelve hours, and I was able to insulate my hives regardless, so they were fine.

When I finally felt well enough to leave the house, I dragged myself from yard to yard, trying to catch up with where the bees were at. My Apiary had already gone through their swarms 💀 I missed them entirely somehow. Thankfully, my colonies were so large and strong, the remains from the swarms were still well populated, fed, and with plenty of brood. Each swarmed colony was way too successful at raising queen cells, too, lol, they all had multiple frames with multiple cells per frame. They were ready!!

Seriously, multiple frames like this per colony:

Since the queen cells were capped, I knew they had already swarmed and were queenless, which messed with my plans. But as they say, bees don't read the beekeeping books, so I had to get flexible fast. Thankfully, because they were so determined to raise armies of queens lol, I was still able to use some of the cells in splits and Nucs, without ruining their chances of requeening.

Some of them were already fully emerged, too, so I tried not to mess with those colonies too much, so as not to accidentally kill or injure the virgin queen. They're much smaller before mating, and harder to spot. They move faster and are more nervous. I wanted to give these colonies their best opportunities to restart, so I fed them and let them be.

I started building my Nuc yard and split colony S1 into S1 and S3. They were extremely aggressive, but now after the split, they're calm again. Sometimes the bees need to be humbled lol.

I've just been maintaining my yard, watching the queen cells and counting days. It'll be a couple weeks from cell formation to mating flights, so I'm expecting to see eggs laid again next week or so. 🤞

They only just began their nectar flow this week, which is a huge relief for my wallet.

My other yards were pretty stable. MF yard had no loss, was growing, and wasn't swarmy until this past week (03/25/26). I was there early enough to pull the queen cells and add supers.

R Yard actually got two Nucs installed. One was a cobbled Nuc from frames with queens cells plus bees and brood up the wazoo from other colonies. I expect that one will be able to mate out there, but I'll need to keep an eye on it. The other had a verified mated and laying queen already (!!), so I am not worried about them. They'll be needing honey supers soon, they're a very productive yard. I also got the third hive stand out there to give them more room and less competition, which is a relief. I feel like they were bullying each other.

M yard was looking small but still chugging along. Their third colony, technically a winter loss that I've been trying to rekindle, freaking refuses to raise a queen, which makes me think the original handful of leftover bees were all completely robbers or drone layers. It's been long enough that those bees should have died, so I essentially built them a Nuc, too. The two strong colonies are doing well, and ants are taking over the empty hive body of the other loss, so I am constantly treating for ants and trying to keep it clean.

B yards are always a struggle. My friend and mentor, who gave me this client, told me in the beginning it was a difficult yard, naturally swarmy and unstable. It's proven her right tenfold. They had the most winter loss, thankfully mostly absconds and not dead outs, and their colonies struggle to produce bees and honey comparatively. I think it's their environment. But I'm working on their Nucs and keeping their current colonies stable. Some of them in the large side of the yard are actually doing so well they got supers. And one in the small yard swarmed, but the swarm just crossed the yard and landed in one of the dead outs in the large yard! Lol. So that was easy. Had to give the original colony some egg frames though, looked like they didn't raise a queen in time before they decided to swarm.

Here's a shitty photo of their queen hiding on the hive body wall. I was inspecting the empty box and cleaning it, when I noticed a small group of brand new eggs in a frame, and started searching frantically lol.

She's definitely older, and quite healthy, so I'm glad she stayed in the yard!!

My opps client lol, WA yard, had contacted me again after at least half a year. I never know who's hands they invite into their Apiary anymore, but I went out to see how they were fairing for her. Thankfully they were thriving for the most part. The split I initiated last year survived, but they had outgrown their single deep, of course, and swarmed before I got there. Their new queen had emerged, too, but I felt certain by the state of the colony she was lost in high winds on a mating flight and they were about to die out. Because the other colonies were so strong, I was able to give them frames of bees, brood, and eggs, to try again. They're doing well so far.

She wants more splits this year, which will make workdowns and honey harvesting easier for me, as her colonies are already pretty stacked, so I'm ready for it.