July 15

Jon and I worked the bees today.

We added medium supers to the Easties & Westies. The Westies continue to be the farthest along and most orderly.

The middle hive will get frames for honey comb in the next week.

Looking good! Getting excited to have a little honey to harvest :)

-HT

June 28

The Middle hive had few eggs and a small swarm on the entrance to the hive, which was easy to brush apart. I think the swarm up front was due to overheating. They have definitely switched their focus towards making honey. Lots of nectar & honey!

The bees have put the nectar and honey in the middle frames, there is also a good amount of activity on the west side, the frames on the east side are quiet.

There were some funny cell shapes, but no queen cell types. Easy to scrape off and have them try again.

The Easties have lots of activity upstairs in the new super. I couldn't find any eggs. There is a lot of nectar, not much honey. They are a little behind the Middle hive and even farther behind the Westies.

Some funny building, so I switched the frame order and cleaned things up a bit.

The Westies have been very very busy. There are tons of bees, I think they could use more room.

Good honey production and their construction is clean and orderly. No eggs upstairs.

Robin helped me today, and David took pictures.

-HT

June 4th

Soo... I inspected the hives a couple days ago. Still lots of earwigs, especially in the West one. But what concerned me more was the number of bees hanging out between the inner and outer lids - suggesting crowding down below - in the middle and east hives. We need to get those extra supers going. In the mean time, I did add screen to the West. In the Middle, I stuck a small super with empty frames, lacking foundation, which will just serve to give them breathing room over the next few days. In the East, I added another purple deep super but was short frames so we'll add more frames next week. In both cases, just trying to get give them some room so they don't think about swarming.

I didn't order any boxes but will pick up some unassembled ones this weekend. We'll probably assemble the boxes because they need to be stained (waterproofing) and allowed to dry. And then perhaps you can help with frame assembly. I can bring them monday, you assemble that day/night and we put in place next tuesday..

-JR

May 14

Bees are eating lots! Onto another batch of sugar water.

David has noticed their presence in the garden, a large increase in the number of bees around, he's happy!

There is an earwig problem. They aren't going all the way into the hive, just in between the inner and outer covers- probably protection from the rain.

We have plans to tape screen over the hole on the inner cover to ensure they don't get into the hive.

David has offered to set traps for them- just rolled up newspaper. They crawl in and we remove.

Official Bee Keepers

April 24, 2010

Jon Ruel, Reza & Mitra, and Hailey T. became official bee keepers on Saturday April 24th.

3 hives were installed in the fruit orchard on the southern end of the Villa property.

Fondly referred to as: "Easties", "Middle" and "Westies"