The Memorial Day honey sold out in 8 days. It was only 41 bottles, but it went quickly. I will try again by the end of the month. I might have honey on July 4th weekend.

I harvested honey from one of the hives. This hive made it through the winter, but is very aggressive. I was stung through the glove once, which is good outcome, considering how many times I’ve been stung. They were very angry about me stealing their hoard.

I wound up taking ten full frames that were mostly full. Some were packed on both sides. I left the partially filled frames for them and, hopefully, I can rob her again over the July 4th weekend.

The other hives are too young to have honey, yet. Their second deeps are not really full yet, so I can’t put on the honey supers. I have a super with the empty frames that I will put on a good hive next weekend.

Erica bottled 41 bears. The honey is a light amber color. A little darker than last year’s Spring honey. It has that Spring flowery delicate flavor. I am making Erica put two aside for my oatmeal in the morning. 20 bears are pre-ordered. As soon as I can get the labels printed up, I will put out the sign and announce on Facebook. This batch will be gone in a week.

I opened up all 8 of my hives. They are doing great.

The packages have all been installed about a month. They are packed with bees. In all cases they had 5 or more frames dense with bees and 7 or 8 full drawn frames. The nectar is flowing well here and none of the bees have been emptying the top feeders very fast, so I am satisfied that they are happy.

I pulled a couple of center frames on the packages and I saw eggs and brood. I put a second deep on all the package hives, except one. I don’t have enough deep boxes so I am making a temporary one out of plywood. I was tired last night and measured something wrong, so the first try did not fit the frames. For some reason I have about 15 unused deep frames and 20 unused mediums. I also have a bunch of deep wood frames that the mice got into and I need to replace the foundation. I have a pile of disassembled frames and some foundation, but the foundation was exposed to the heat. I may order some plastic foundation for the frames that need it.

I opened two hives that wintered and the split. I opened just the top and checked some frames. The top boxes each had 7 or 8 frames full of honey. I put a queen excluder on two of them and a medium super. I’ll have honey by Memorial day. The other hive had a medium super that I left on all winter. It was chock full of honey. I put another medium super on top of that.

I will pull the honey supers off on Memorial Day and spin the Honey. That should be about 100 pounds if things go well. I will check the new packages then and see if they need supers.

I will make the plywood deep this week and put it on the last hive. If it works I will make half a dozen medium honey supers. Plywood boxes with furring strip braces on the outside cost about $1.50 each as apposes to $20-$25 plus shipping for the nice boxes. I may buy a couple of deep boxes, but I can’t see buying medium supers. They aren’t going to be on over the winter and if they don’t hold much weight if I put them on top. If they only last a year or two they are well worth the effort to nail a few of them together – the bees don’t care.

I went out and opened all 9 hives this morning. The packages look good. Lots to bees and some new comb. I saw brood in all of them. That’s 5 new hives that are working. The queen boxes were empty and they looked like they had no trouble getting out.

One split seemed to be working well. The queen was released, and it was very active with lots of bees. I closed it up without checking for brood. Since there is nothing I can do if there is none, only time will tell.

The other split failed. The queen was dead in her cage and it looks like the bees went back to their original hive. This hive had not been taking syrup so I had already guessed it had gone bad.

The seven good hives have taken 10 gallons of syrup in these last 5 days and are ready for more. I have an extra top feeder now and I can put it on one of the splits. I suspect the racoons get any syrup left in the front feeders over night, because I find them scattered in the morning. You have to fill front feeders before noon.

I am worried about the bees. It is a bad day: sunny but very windy. The bees want to fly, but it they do they will blow away and probably die. The bees are all installed, but I am not sure they will all take. A good number of packages die due to a bad queen, or dissatisfaction with the hive.

I tried to use as much drawn comb as I could in the new hives, hoping the bees will see it as home. I had not frames of honey, though, like last year. A frame or two of honey will convince any queen that the new hive is a good place to live.

Right now the bees are gathering around the front and there is a lot of cleaning going on. I hope that they like their new homes and stay.

Here is a slide show of what the hives looked like this morning.

At about 1:15 AM Easter morning, Adam Fuller arrived with a truck load of bees from Georgia. I got 5 packages:

Billions and Billions of Bees.

Here are my 5 packages coming off the truck with a bunch of Beekeepers hanging around to pick up their bees.

I am done with the Spring installation. All the local Beekeepers met at the Mall at 1AM. Adam came with his truck. I bought two queens and five packages.

Yesterday I split my two hives. I could not find the queens, so I am guessing that she is with the brood that I found, so this morning I put the queens in the two boxes that I assume are the queenless hives. I hope I was right.

The 5 packages went smoothly and took about an hour this morning. I was not stung, although some riders manages to follow me into the house when I was done. I hope the bees are happy.

I have some pictures of the bee truck and maybe tonight I’ll post them.

I have heard from the guy who is trucking up the bees from Georgia. He arrives at the West Nyack Palisades Mall around midnight tonight. He will have 5 packages and 3 queens for me.

I will leave them in the truck overnight and at dawn I will install the packages.

Tonight I will split my two hives and in the morning give the two new hives a queen each.

The last queen will be installed with bees from each of the packages. I will dump the bees into the hives when I do the install, but leave a few in each box so the leftovers will serve to make an extra hive. This is an experiment and I am not sure it will work. Installing packages is iffy enough.

I got this list from a post on Bee-L, the beekeeping discussion group.

Beekeeping by Rotation System
Disease Prevention
Selection Vitality
Selection Yield
Waggle Dance
Skep Beekeeping #1 Spring Work
Skep Beekeeping #2 Preparation for Swarming
Skep Beekeeping #3 Swarming
Skep Beekeeping #4 Cast Swarming
Skep Beekeeping #5 Summer Work
Skep Beekeeping #6 Autumn Work

This is a very early spring and temperatures here should be in the 60s for the next 10 days, at least. The highs will be in the mid 70s some days.

Yesterday, it hit 69 here and the bees are active. They are bringing back yellow and red pollen, which is from the early tree blooms in the neighborhood. I fed them and they gobbled the syrup. I will be putting on top feeders soon.

Connie, my Russian hive, is quite active. I thought that she might have died, but Russians can survive with very small populations and build up fast.

The only thing is that hives seem a little “hot” and the bees are bumping me as I walk by. There is lots of noise by the entrance, which may mean they are robbing each other. I hope the feeding helps. I will feed again tonight when I get home. With daylight savings time this weekend, it was dark and I was too groggy to feed them before work this morning.