Catching up....

Things in my life have moved into whirl wind status. No reason to put you to sleep with the details, but suffice to say, May is a busy month when you sell ice cream for a living. Now on to more exciting things.....


NO QUEENS FOR YOU!

The bees have not had it easy this spring. After learning that both hives were queenless, I went into overdrive trying to rectify the problem. I added frames of eggs from a friends hive to no avail and had just started calling around looking for queens. Nothing, nada, ziltch, zippo....no one had queens to sell for the next month, time for a new plan. Called another beek buddy and he gave me a few frames that were loaded with queen cells, about ten in all. I split the frames into the two queenless hives and mid-month, if I don't see and eggs, I'm going to take up worm farming.

NEW FRIENDS

I took my guitar to be fixed and met Bruce. I didn't know this guy and I wanted to make sure he knew how to fix up my six string so I struck up a conversation about guitars in general. When he laid into a perfect intro of Hotel California on a twelve string classical, I knew Bruce and I would get along just fine. Anyway, somehow the topic of bees came up (imagine that) and he asked me if I could get rid of some bees behind the store. The next day I had my first swarm of bees and added to my beeyard by placing the new girls in a nice new home.

Yesterday, I received a call from Mike who said he was too busy working to go on a swarm call and wanted to know if I wanted them. Three hours later, I had my fourth hive of bees and I'm running out of equipment. The picture above shows the swarm (actually two) just before I removed them for the guy who lived there. I was happy to see another group arrive and he was happy to see them go.

Here's what I should have probably mentioned earlier; since I was worried about my two hives surviving since they didn't have queens, about two weeks ago, I decided to order new bees. Yep, the girls will be here on Monday and all of the sudden..... I have gone from two hives to five hives. My family is on the grow.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who voted for my idea over on the Cambrian House site. My idea won and now moves to the second round of voting in August. In the meantime, there have been several people who have shown an interest in the hive management software program and I've organized a location for all of us to work on the project. I'll keep you posted on that front.

Be good to each other, at least until I get back.

Ken