so far so good. the hive was split about a week and a half ago, and as far as we can tell things are going well. there is plenty of action in each hive, several queen cups (little peanut-shaped cups extending out from the frames, in which they tend and raise new queens- when one hatches, she will either take some bees with her as a 'mini-swarm', or she will go on a little search and destroy mission to get rid of any other developing/hatching queens and then stick around after going on a few mating flights- we are hoping for the latter, obviously, and will be giving them a bit more space in there very soon to try and make things lean in that direction) in the new one, and loads of pollen coming in.
the other day Mike told me he wanted to post an ad on craigslist looking for swarms to catch. perhaps this bee operation will just continue to grow. though I imagine we're getting quite near capacity in our little 1/3 acre backyard. actually, the entire lot is 1/3 acre, so, considering the front yard, house, driveway, and outbuildings...... yep, probably about at capacity.
oooh - very exciting! is it difficult to keep bees? how long have you been doing it?
ReplyDeleteover this way, i am the busy bee - freelance work coming in (they seem to all come in at the same time!!!), so having to juggle and prioritize quite a bit. falling a bit behind on my fave blogs and blogging, but looking forward to catching up :)
not difficult really~ but touch and go at times and I suppose it helps to try to be willing to release any and all expectations over it because really, you have no control over the bees. (everything in life is like that, I guess- so maybe it's a good lesson to learn) We've been at it three years now. the first year we lost our hive (think they were weak and robbed by other bees), last year we started with two and lost one when they lost their queen (don't know what happened) and raised a new one too late in the year to get their numbers up enough to make it through the winter. so, we just split the remaining hive and are back to two. my biggest advice to anyone starting with bees would absolutely be to start with two hives, it helps to be able to draw from one if something goes awry with the other.
Deletesounds busy, but good busy! what kind of freelance work do you do?
cheers!