package installation

This is the least disruptive way to install a package of bees, but having now done things this way and the "shake" method, we opt for the "shake" since you don't need to get back into the hive until you check on the queen a few days later. This hive used plastic wax coated foundation. Not our choice.

New friends

Met Henry and Peggy Burggraph of Majestic Hills Lavender Farm today at the Thyme in the Garden Festival in Morristown, TN today. Wonderful couple that have undergone some major challenges to get their farm up and running. Things seem to be looking up for them and they hope to open up their farm this year. We wish them the best and look forward to working with them in the coming years.

New bees

finally got the queen installed and brought them to the house until we move. as you can see they're doing well. Will check on  the queen probably saturday to make sure she got out of her cage okay.
we will also be checking the other hives to make sure the queens are released from their cages.

Later:
We were able to check all 4 hives ( not the split) and all the queens were out. We found that 3 of the frames in one of the Washburn hives were not stapled on the top and were falling apart when we picked them up! The bees were drawing raw  foundation on those frames. It will be like a top bar hive! Also on the other hive they were coming in through the inspection board slot in the rear. Had to tape that one up. the Washburn hives had not taken much of the sugar syrup so we did not put any more. We did find both queens.

The Tazewell apiary: the new bees are russians. Queens were found. Bees were very busy drawing foundation. Very impressed with the progress.

We inspected the main hive since Sterling did not see the queen when he did the split. Finally found her. Saw quite alot of drone brood, not many eggs, but larve and capped brood.

the challenge with the frames and some of the foundation not wanting to stay in the frames because we did not use pins a lot of lessons learned today a lot of progress made we're  pleased

Bees

We got 4 new bee packages yesterday and got them installed. Two by the dump method and two by the box method.
We planned to do the split today, but it is way too cold! Hopeful we can do it before we loose the queen. Doubtful at this point.
Going to pull the boxes out of the two hives really  quick.
attached are some pics at Kelly's

blueberry flowers

this is this plant second year doing pretty cool it's actually got blossoms on it really awesome

honey bee swarm from wild bees

springtime means swarms.
we were setting up for tomorrow's delivery of bees in our apiary when a friend said there is a swarm that was starting to form. these are some of the pictures we took of that. it was real high up at least 60 feet so there is no way we can catch it but I am looking to see if I can notice were they go so maybe then we can get them. sterling ran home real quick to get the swarm catcher. it's very woody here so I don't know if I'm wasting my time. No worries mate!

Working with the bees day

Last week we went to the hive to see how the girls were doing. We wanted to see if the top honey super that had helped them get through the winter was harvestable.
We found that they were consuming quite a lot of the honey that had been capped in that super just the week prior. There were ALOT of bees! We decided that we needed to go deeper to try and find the queen.
Well, we found her! she was clear up through two deep brood boxes and into the new shallow honey super that we had put on with the prior inspection! This means that we should have done a third reversal when we were in last time. Queens only go out and up to lay brood.
Of course the deep that was right below this shallow was chuck full of bees and the one below that was empty of brood.
We put the shallow (with the queen) on the bottom, then the empty deep, then the full deep then an empty honey super, then left the full honey super that they were consuming on top. They now have plenty of room to grow.
I must say, this is one heck of a hard working queen we have been blessed with!
We would like to split this hive, but are having a hard time finding a queen for it. As it is, we are going to be short a queen from what we had intended to have that we ordered a few days later than the rest.

It was so much fun seeing the queen skirt around to the dark side of the frame. You would think she was a cockroach as light shy as she is!

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Sweet dreams......

Trying to be patient.

We are going on three weeks into the process of buying the farm. Our mortgage agent thought they would call for the appraisal Monday. No word so far, of course it is only tuesday.
we are supposed to pick up our bees on saturday but the weather looks like it's going to be wet.
we wanted to split our current hive but it looks like were having trouble getting a queen so it may not happen definitely won't happen right away:<
wish us luck this saturday!

Working with the bees today

it's good to finally get our blog up and runing. I've been spending most of the day working with our honey bees and making sugar syrup. This is all new to me blogging. I think it is important to let others know about the new farm my love and I are about to get going in two months. So stay tuned as as we begin our journey.

New technologies make me nervous

Linking blogs to other blogs to facebook to...... Kinda is  scary to us.
Our daughter Crystal is trying to help us in this area from California.
Should be a learning experience. It will definatly test her patience!