Passed the bad weather

With temps getting down to below zero it was good to see the one remaining hive with bee's in it.

Disillusioned

Well its been i while since i last posted, to be honest we ended up having a really crap year. We got 24lbs of honey of 8 hives and then lost all but 1 of those hives, right now we will probably loose the remaining hive because of the below freezeing temperatures and 2 inches of snow.

Just before the bad weather i placed a pollen patter and placed a top hive feeder on full of sugar water so who knows maybe they will survive.

Not sure where to go with this right now or what to change n order to get a successful year. I was placed with the queens i received it made a big difference to the hives i had that had gone hot so will probably do that again.

Anyway spring is coming and who knows what may happen or become of it

Re-Queen Success !

Photos Courtesy of Latrell Oner

The only good thing to come out of this season has been the re-queening, honey levels have been very disappointing. we seemed to do OK and then all of a sudden nothing. It was rather pleasing going into the two hives i had re-queened and finding the new queen. Thanks to my wife latrell we have some photos 

New Bee Video

Made me laugh

New Resource

I found this link that might be of use for British Bee Keepers

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/beekeeping/

New Queen

Well my new queens arrived today via UPS. I know i should have taken pictures but i was in a hurry because the weather for cast is not good. Both had about 6 attendance and where marked with a blue dot.

I had split the hive i want them to go into on Sunday so i carefully went though both hives to see if i could located the queen. On Sunday i found about 10 queen cells fully occupied and ready to go. If this hive had not been so mean i would have just put three frames in a nuc. however i just split it in two. We double checked and then checked again and i could not locate the queen.

So i have placard them both in each hive, i have not uncorked them going to leave them in there till next Sunday and see what happens then uncork them. This game is about getting acceptance. We have been called out a number of times to different swarms all over the neighbourhood. i got another swarm last week that appears to be doing well.

New Queens

I finally bit the bullet and have decided to re-Queen my problem hive. As an experiment i have ordered a Carniolan Queen that has been mated with an Italian drone. The idea is the build up will be big and less swarming tendencies. They should be good honey producers. I've ordered them from Koehnen & Sons . the shipping date is for May 10Th. I'll post pictures and a video of how it goes.

I am still getting a few calls for swarm catching which is always a good thing...