July 23, 2009 A Bee Update

Hello family and friends;

Just a little update on farm life.  It's blistering hot outside so I am sitting here watching my cute brown teenage goats on their uprooted tree, butting heads and acting silly.  Our own little head-butting foster boy is peacefully sleeping on the sofa and my thoughts won't be interrupted.

Our bees have performed magnificently this summer.  From one hive we now have three with two harvests of honey so far.  25 pounds of light, flowery Spring honey the first time and close to 40 pounds of rich, darker summer honey a week ago.  My bee mentor has come by almost weekly to check on them and give me lessons.  It was a good thing he was here this week.

It turns out my queens were either getting lost, getting sick or dying.  The first hive had lots of honey but no eggs or larva.  Not good, as bees only live three weeks in the summer and wouldn't be replaced.  The second hive had lots of eggs and larva as well as developing queen cocoon things.  There was also a young queen that hadn't been killed off yet (the usual fate of an excess queen).  We put that young queen into hive three (with a protective cage around her until the worker bees accepted her) and the developing queen cocoons into hive one.  the next day the young queen had disappeared and the old queen stopped laying and had to be destroyed.  My mentor brought some more queen cocoons from his hives and we hope they will all be okay.  He put the cocoon up to his ear and said the queen would come out in one day.  Sure enough, when I put it to my ear, I could hear the chewing noises of the baby queen eating her way out.  You can hear
those things
when there's no traffic.

Last night Ray reported in alarm that there were hundreds of bees outside one hive covering the walls and going under the hive.  We thought they were getting ready to swarm.   I called my bee teacher.  Turns out, even bees like to sit outside and enjoy the cool evening breezes when the temperature hits 96 F (36 C).

So, come on by for some tea with honey, toast with honey, honey on a spoon or just for the peace and quiet.

Love to all, Fern and Ray.