It's April for crying out loud!!!

It is the end of April, and this morning I looked out my window and what did I see..... SNOW! I can't believe it, we had over 3 inches of Snow. We have snow covered grass and trees and then I remembered that means I have a snow covered bee hive too. being the responsible bee keeper that I am, my bee insights quickly took hold, or the neighbor called and told me that he had moved his hives in their garage and I should do the same thing. Either way I went out, plugged the hive, and put the bees in the garage for today and tonight, since it is going to freeze again tonight.

For all of you who have been so worried, don't. When I was moving them I heard them buzzing away happily so I think all is well.

All I can hope is that May will be a warmer month then April was and that all of this April Snow brings May flowers.

Till Next Time..

The waiting continues

Things are settling down in the bee yard. We are down to just one hive now so that calmed things down by 2/3rds. It is a funny thing but the bees seem to know their area and stay mostly on the gravel area (a 9' radius) or fly out of the area to go to work visiting flowers.

So for the next week the bees are working in their nuc building the hive strength. Because of the cooler spring that we are having they are not as far along as they could be. The nuc is a junior hive with 5 frames in it. The frames are what the bees build their honey comb on, in the permanent hive there will be 10 frame in each box. With the nuc being smaller they can keep it warm easier (they keep it in the low 90s) and also the hive entrance is smaller so they have less to guard to make sure that no intruders come in. Leaving them in the nuc longer lets them build up the hive strength a little more before they are in the real world.

So far this has been a blast and I would recommend bees to anyone that asks.

The Bees have arrived

Yesterday was the first official day of my great bee adventure. The bees came and are now happily in their new home. We picked up 3 nucs (boxes of bees) but only one will be staying( the one onthe stand), the other two are off to Lehi to live.

As I opened the entrance the bees came pouring out. It was very cool and we had a bee fest for a few hours, after that they started getting busy and visiting the flowers.

This morning they were watered (you can see the water bowl in the picture) and fed some sugar syrup and so they should be buzzing about exploring their new area and making me some honey!!

The only thing to do now is keep feeding them and wait.... I hate to wait. Next Saturday May 7th I can put them in their real hive and look at them, until then I will just have to wait patiently, or at least wait.