Beekeeping Tip #401

Entering the 4th year of beekeeping, Bumblin’ Bee highly recommends the following tip from his personal experiences. Hopefully it will be the last tip on this subject.

If you need to split a hive, but also need to mow the yard, be sure to mow the yard first. DO NOT split the hive first, leaving one queenless (with queen cells), and the other (moved to the same yard), disrupted, disoriented, and disgruntled.

If you decide to do the above, when you return to mow, Bumblin’ recommends you wear a veil. No one likes to have a bee die an inch below their eye!

Still Buzzing Around

It was been a while since the last post. We’ve tried to use the Calendar as a journal, but haven’t kept that updated either. No promises either way for the future.

The reason we stacked on so many supers last June was because we were leaving on a 3 week vacation. Around the end of July we pulled all the honey supers and treated for Varroa mites. We then feed until November and left all the double brood box honey for the bees.

The Current Hives menu on the right has been updated to reflect losing Carny at the end of last season. It never fully recovered from two swarms, and Bumblin Bee accidentally ripping open numerous queen cells on the bottom of the top box while separating the two during an inspection.