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