Harvest Season

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer. The bees are looking for ever last drop of nectar they can find. This is a fun time of year. Harvest season is upon us. This year was the first year we had larger colonies to produce honey with.

We had the three larger colonies. The calm gentle hive that only would be protective when brushing bees. The spits two hives we made from one. These three hives along with some help from  6 other smaller hives produced 460lbs of honey this year. Don't worry there is plenty of honey still in the hives for the bees. We purchased a two frame extractor this summer. Just so we could extract and put the frames right back on the hives. We pulled the same frames 2 times with honey stores. By doing this we gave the bees less work to do and more resources to fill nectar in the comb. It was a vary busy summer. It seam that ever other night we had things to do in the bee yard.

We are looking at creating systems so we are not in the bee yard so much. Will see as we grow the apiary the hive count with increase and it takes time to build bees. I feel that our honey sales will put us on track to increase by 20% next year. This will bee good as we already have the equipment for the increase in bees.

Making Progress

Our little hobby has turned into a big hobby. When we purchased our first hive we never had plans to grow into a hobby beekeeping operation. We planned only to have a hive for our personal honey needs. After our first year with a hive we noticed that a hives population grows over the summer. We started looking for ways to help our single hive survive winter. We notice that summer that our bees were having some issues. We notice something called deformed wing viruses. This viruses is carried by the varroa  mite.  We need to help our bees with this issue. We attended a beekeeper convention and learned all about this parasite. It was late in the season but we treated our hive for these pest. The hive was alive on March 5th. by March 15th the  hive was dead.

We have made plans to start a small apiary outside of town. We found a small plot of land we could set bees on. We purchased 10 packages from MannLake. The race was on to build 11 hives. This year I chose to build the hive boxes myself. I even built the frames. We started 11 hives May 6th of 2017. We did an experiment with splitting a package in 1/2 and adding a queen to the 1 lb of bees. We worked the hives though the summer and even put on a small honey crop. I started to raise queens. Queen rearing is a very rewarding process. We started 5 more hives with queens we raised. Steph's bees  produced around 15 gallons of honey! We started to offer honey by word of mouth advertising. We sold out of honey. We shifted our efforts to overwintering of the bees. We wrapped our hives and feed the hives to weight of 150lbs. or better. the hives over winter in the bee pasture. As of February  the hives were still alive. The spring was late this year and the bees struggled to make it out of March alive.

We had 2 hives survive. We performed inspections on our hives that did not survive we found that the bees were being chased around and eaten by Shrews. We had mouse guards installed. The guards were to large for shrews.(lesson learned)  We ordered queens to make new hives as early as possible. May 3 we received 10 queens from OH bees in California. We shook bees from the surviving hives and made 8 new hives. Steph re-queened one of the hives because it was very aggressive. We also split this hive into two hives. Today is July 2, 2018. Queen rearing was done this summer as well. We have 13 mated queens in Nucleus hives. Our three larger hives are producing Honey. The comb is almost capped. We will have honey in the next week. Steph did save some honey to enter in the fair. She won first in two categories of honey. 

We have been active with a local association for beekeepers. Red River Valley Beekeepers.

This is a small group of beekeepers that work to help each other out and train new beeks.

The honey bee is such a fascinating creature. Our knowledge of bees is growing. We thank God for all we have. We are honored to work with his creation.

My son, eat honey, for it is good, Yes, the honey from the comb is sweet to your taste; Know that wisdom is thus for your soul; If you find it, then there will be a future, And your hope will not be cut off. Proverbs 24:13,14

So You Want to be a Beekeeper

So You Want to be a Beekeeper

Who would have thought that 2 years ago we would become beekeepers? How one finds beekeeping is a story that every beekeeper has. Our story starts like most with a husband in the grocery store. 4 years ago I was in the grocery store on the phone with my wife Steph. "Stop in the organic section and grab a quart of honey. It needs to be the good kind. One with wax parts floating on the top." Steph says to me on the phone. I work my way to the section thinking to myself this should be easy to find. I get to the location and to my surprise I find the honey. The price was the surprise $18.00 for a quart this can't be right. Back on the phone and confirming that this was the honey I put it in the basket hesitantly.

The following year we were not seeing bees in the garden. Steph says " I am thinking of getting bees." In the back of my head I was thinking $18 a quart. So I responded with a supporting "Yes I think you should. You have a nurturing knack." So the thought was put into both our heads bees!!!! We know nothing other than the boxes are white. Where do you get bees? What do we need? Can we keep them in the back yard? Are we allergic to bee stings? What will the people think?

Steph knew some hobby beekeepers. One was putting on a introduction to beekeeping at the local library. We went and listen intensely. The talk was only 2 hours but we gleaned enough to get us started. Steph asked me if I could build the hive. I thought sure how hard could it be. I started looking into hive boxes. We were going to use a  Langstroth hive. I found it was just a small amount more to just buy the box retail vs building one from the lumber yard. This was for one hive. So we got a hive kit from Mann Lake .  The kit came and a Queen was ordered. We were starting to get excited and worried about our first hive. I put the hive together in the house. Steph painted it. The day came to drive 3 hours to Hackensack Minnesota to get the Queen. Friends give us some frames of brood to start a Nuc. She made it home with bees in the back of the van with out any issues. The hive was started and fed. We're beeks honey. Yes we are!   We started with just one hive as we did not know any better. Now we would tell any one else starting to get 2 hives. With reasons most new to beekeeping would not make sense.

The new hive nice and clean with 3 frames of brood.