June 18 - Bee status: All's Well!

Golden Rain Tree is good choice for attracting bees.

We had a revelation last week on what NOT to do with your bees. Putting a bee escape on Queen Bianca's hive before we were ready to harvest honey was REALLY DUMB. We ended up with the full box of capped being invaded by robber bees and ants who uncapped some of the honey and helped themselves. Can't really blame them, but, after wising up and removing the bee escape, the poor bees have lots of work to do to repair the damage. 

We checked them today and they are, in fact, busy refilling empty cells with nectar and recapping the honey. Hard lesson learned for these two beekeepers. We won't make that mistake again.

We only checked the top box in Queen Bianca's hive today because we put on a new box with new foundation last week. We did a more thorough examination in Queen Rachel and Queen Anya's hives. We only went as far as the second box from the bottom in Queen Rachel's hive where we found plenty of frames of capped and uncapped larvae. We didn't see the queen but, once we were sure things were A-okay, we stopped looking and put the hive back together. No sense disturbing the bees more than necessary. They are doing fine.

Queen Anya's hive still has room to work. We added a new box on June 6th, but the queen is so busy laying we need to prepare another super (bee box) so they don't run out of room. Go, bees, go! 

Another good week in the bee yard. 

We stopped down on Water Street because the trees there (Golden Rain Trees) are blooming. There were honeybees all over them. We plan to buy some next Spring and plant them. They are fast growing so we should see results within three years. I was reading comments on one nursery website and a customer said his tree grew six feet in one season. Wow! Sounds like it takes three years until they bloom. I think we'll plant a few in the Fall.