Beekeeping

Which one of these am I seeing????

I hope my brood are centered. LOL

Brood Comb – Photos | Talking With Bees

randydance062449 called today out of the blue and asked if I was interested in a book on beekeeping. Of course I was! Only 35 pages left but time to go to bed.:(

Thanks Randy

No reading this evening, checking this out.

Extension: Bee College - Honey Bee Research & Extension Lab (HBREL) - University of Florida Entomology & Nematology Department

There is a lot involved in this bee business. I would have never thought there were so many issues.

Hmmm, now I have to schedule a razor meet in October so I can get some of that honey ! I will make the pancakes! :)

I have to come over and check out your hives sometime. It looks interesting and is not a long drive for me.

Howard Clark makes mead. Talk with him in May at his razor meet.

No only 3 miles! I will be picking Howard's brain on that myself cause I have honey to experiment with too. Oh and he makes some real fine beer I hear. Tc

Question for all of you who keep bees. At what point in the spring/summer is honey available? I need to contact my local guy on getting a supply but I doubt that there is any honey to be had in April.

My mother used to keep bees and from what I remember she never harvested until about late summer. Honey needs some time to mature from what I recall. i'm sure there are advanced techniques to speed this up but I'm just going by what she did with 4 hives in the back yard. Kind of a pain in the butt raising bees there are so many things you have to do to keep the colony thriving protection from racoons, bears not to mention the insipid Veroa Mite which destroyed all of her colony's. Swarming is another headache. I recall she had to retrieve a swarm from the neighbors house. But she loved it and it kept her busy as a bee.

My bees will have been in 2 weeks tomorrow. I checked them again today.

I know more of what to look for now and they have capped brood and others that are smaller yet. I did not see the queens or look close for them but by the brood they are there and accepted.

They ate a little more of the feed this week but it has been colder and they have not been getting out of the hive as much. I filled the feeder pails but did not add anymore pollen patties because they had plenty left yet.

The clusters are about 5 frames wide.

I remembered the camera but got my hands all full of syrup and would rather face the wrath of Hirlau than the wrath of my wife if I got her good camera all sticky! I did get a couple of fun pictures on the way there though. I got stopped by the draw bridge at the mouth of the St Croix river where it meets the Mississippi. It doesn't raise very often. What I thought was interesting is that they had to raise the bridge so another bridge could go underneath... Also in one of the pictures is the train bridge next to the roadway. They are building a new bridge at Stillwater and making sections at a remote site.

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I loved walking around Stillwater. Scored a great G. Rogers there.

There was an Amish stand at the Annandale flea market. They always had great honey. It was a bit dark but the flavor was fantastic. Also, it did not give me heartburn like the stuff in the grocery.