Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Spring is here!


Finally... spring seems to have arrived. We have gone from coats and sweaters to shorts and flipflops at my house (yes mom.... I wear them to work every chance I get).

The trees are budding out and are just on the verge of blooming. Our bees will be thrilled with that. There are daffodils blooming all around and I think my crab apple tree will be opening some blooms by the time I get home this evening.

We started feeding the bees sugar water this past weekend. Each hive consumed 1 quart of sugar water within 2 days. We added more last night (3/30). Hubby tried to put the feeders out at lunch, but the bees were ALIVE with activity and he didn't have time to "suit up" so we just waited until slightly before dark and changed the feeders out.

Today its suppose to be in the 80's. It is SO HARD to stay at work when we are having such glorious weather!

Two new swarms of bees are ordered. They will arrive April 17. My brother and his wife are also getting started in this beekeeping adventure and they have two swarms arriving on the same day. Its SO EXCITING.

I never posted the picture of the honey we actually harvested last year. We had hoped to get more, but we had so much rain that the bees had a hard time getting any pollen because the rain would wash it away before they had a chance to collect very much.

Our hives are established now and should be stronger in number and since they have built out their frames with wax, the work will be all about making honey this summer intead of all of that housework.

This is a picture of the honey from last year's harvest (from only one hive).