#suburbanbeekeeping

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!!

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.

We placed the queen cage in the center of the brood box and closed up the hive for four days. When we opened the hive up, the bees were no longer biting aggressively at the mesh, so we released Queen Nefertiti into the hive!

The girls got a little angry today and decided to cluster on my veil as can be seen in one of the last pictures. A few puffs of smoke was all it took to get them to fly off back home. 

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.