Spring is finally here and I have had a chance to visit all of my bees. All of them are doing extremely well, which is heartening since I am now 5 years chemical free and this is a tough row to hoe. But a critical one and worth every effort.
This picture is from a hive in Pungo. On the bees on the comb you can see them packing away at least three different pollens. IN the other one if you look closely you can see them bringing it it. Check out the bright red pollen they are pulling in and the yellow/orange in the middle, and then the whitish pollen on the bee at the top.
Some of the hives are actually extremely big and extremely active and extremely defensive--which is the nice beekeeper way of saying extremely mean. But there is sometimes a correlation between mean bees and honey production, the key is to keep a balance since it is no fun to keep mean bees. I'll requeen them and settle them down.
here is how things look in Suffolk at the moment. You'll notice that nice little access the farmer made sure I had over the ditch. Beats the old days, when I had to jump the ditch holding a 40 pound super.
Actually they may have been mean since there was a lot of mouse activity down in Suffolk. One of the hives had three mice living in the bottom super. This isn't unusual, since mice like the warm hives, it is always a struggle to keep them out. As the cluster of bees move up the mice snuggle down in the bottom. They do make a mess and destroy the comb. Sometimes you find a little mouse the bees have managed to kill propolized to the bottom board. These little bastards were surprised when I opened up the hive. Here one is when I turned it upside down:
He went scampering. I found two more as I pulled out the nest. This was actually a small one, just down in the corner. This is brood comb so the bees don't really mind, they'll fix it and move on.
Thankfully the mice never get into the honey supers. Especially since as the bloom gets on the bees are very strong and a mouse would be suicidal to enter a hive. And there are plenty of nice places for mice to live in Suffolk...
This picture is from a hive in Pungo. On the bees on the comb you can see them packing away at least three different pollens. IN the other one if you look closely you can see them bringing it it. Check out the bright red pollen they are pulling in and the yellow/orange in the middle, and then the whitish pollen on the bee at the top.
Some of the hives are actually extremely big and extremely active and extremely defensive--which is the nice beekeeper way of saying extremely mean. But there is sometimes a correlation between mean bees and honey production, the key is to keep a balance since it is no fun to keep mean bees. I'll requeen them and settle them down.
here is how things look in Suffolk at the moment. You'll notice that nice little access the farmer made sure I had over the ditch. Beats the old days, when I had to jump the ditch holding a 40 pound super.
Actually they may have been mean since there was a lot of mouse activity down in Suffolk. One of the hives had three mice living in the bottom super. This isn't unusual, since mice like the warm hives, it is always a struggle to keep them out. As the cluster of bees move up the mice snuggle down in the bottom. They do make a mess and destroy the comb. Sometimes you find a little mouse the bees have managed to kill propolized to the bottom board. These little bastards were surprised when I opened up the hive. Here one is when I turned it upside down:
He went scampering. I found two more as I pulled out the nest. This was actually a small one, just down in the corner. This is brood comb so the bees don't really mind, they'll fix it and move on.
Thankfully the mice never get into the honey supers. Especially since as the bloom gets on the bees are very strong and a mouse would be suicidal to enter a hive. And there are plenty of nice places for mice to live in Suffolk...
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