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[addy1]

They take a lot of time, we have been fighting swarming, missing queens, supersede cells. Been in the hives almost every other day. My weeds are feet tall. Luckily the pond just runs itself.

To stop a swarm you need to go in, wipe out all swarm cells, add empty foundation, cut frames, then go back in 5 days or so remove any more that they make, usually the 3rd trip they assume they have swarmed. Then you go to the next hive and they start the swarm procedure................geez! We had honey supers on all of ours, a few still started the swarm procedures, but we did stop them.
We add cut foundtiaon, empty foundation, remove excess nectar, pollen frames, open the brood nest, anything we can think of that will keep them home.

If you see only 3 maybe 4 queen cells that is a supersede, 10 is for sure swarm cells. So far we have stopped three swarms, raised three queens from the swarm cells. But I keep waiting for a day I don't need to do bees. Maybe tomorrow...............

When they are pouring out of the hive they are swarming............it is a sight to see. Poof half your hive is gone.

Then you hope the new queen emerges, gets mated makes it back to the hive without being eaten, ow you will be queenless.

I am sure you can find a beekeep that will take over your hives. We have two out yards, More of a pita then having them in the back yard, but we needed to lower the concentration of bees here, and they begged for us to put some there. We give them honey off and on. They love it!

So far with our cool wet spring they are not doing a good job in bringing nectar. We are going to be low on honey stores this year.

 

[addy1]

and maybe some honey

Cheaper and easier to buy it at a farmers market!

 

[TAHOE]

I knew they were swarming, it was like pouring out a bucket of bees they way they were coming out of the hive, plus I could hear them from 50 feet away up in the trees. I never saw a the cluster, but it was would've been too high anyway. I was so busy over the winter with work and fixing up out rental for people to move in, I didn't get a swarm box made. I managed them last year, was able to cut out the queen cells early, too late now after swarm, sure don't want to cut out my possible future queen.

 

[addy1]

Go in and remove all except 2 or 3 of the cells. Leave the biggest ones. Once a queen emerges she expends a lot of energy killing the excess queen cells. You want her to have a lot of energy to fly and mate and make it back.

if you have a nuc box or even a brood box, take a few frames of nurse bees and a bit of brood, put a few of the queen cells in the box with them and you might grow a nice spare queen. Easiest to do if they are on more than one frame. They are hard to cut off and save, unless you are using pure wax frames. That small box of bees, feed 1/1 sugar water to help them out, they will have few foragers.
Fill the rest of the box with drawn comb or even empty foundation.
We have managed to do it a few times this year.

 

[addy1]

First honey of the season! Beautiful light amber in color, fantastic flavor!

Of course the bees were not happy dear hubby had around 50 stings from one hive, most in his gloves............one big testy hive, I got hit x 3.
The other hives ignored us.

 

[mrsclem]

Looks delicious! So light golden.

 

[addy1]

It is so darn good, we have customers that buy it all winter, can't eat store bought honey anymore. We have a lot of black locust trees, tulip popular, they line the roads here. Our main nectar flow.

 

[Tula]

Ohhhh, @addy1 ...liquid gold! It looks so beautiful and I'm sure it's delicious. I have to go out of town for a bit, but sure hope I can buy more honey from you later this summer.

I planted all the plants I bought from you last summer in my deck pond....just a plastic half barrel from Costco. I kept a small cheap pump running in it and it grew glories and lush. I did absolutely nothing to it over the winter and kept the pump running. I'm amazed to see plants coming back....alas no parrots feather

 

[j.w]

Ouch and the honey looks so pretty!

 

[addy1]

Ohhhh, @addy1 ...liquid gold! It looks so beautiful and I'm sure it's delicious. I have to go out of town for a bit, but sure hope I can buy more honey from you later this summer.

I planted all the plants I bought from you last summer in my deck pond....just a plastic half barrel from Costco. I kept a small cheap pump running in it and it grew glories and lush. I did absolutely nothing to it over the winter and kept the pump running. I'm amazed to see plants coming back....alas no parrots feather

Anytime you want honey just let me know. I can send you a bit of the parrots feather with it, that managed to survive being frozen in the hot tub pond. It came back gang busters. You can see it in this picture, also another small, freeze solid, fishless pond a bunch is coming back beautifully. So maybe it is a tougher plant.

 

[addy1]

The first honey of the season is heavy with the black locust nectar. Makes it lighter and sweeter. We try to pull those frames as soon as they are capped and keep separate from the later honey, which is just a touch darker but very close in sweetness and flavor.

 

[Tula]

Your PF looks great ! I wonder if I should have unplugged the small pump, I kept it circulating over the winter. I'm headed out of town
tomorrow and when I get back I'll fiddle with the deck pond and hit you up for some honey and PF

 

[addy1]

This is what it looks like in the small pond that does freeze.

 

[TAHOE]

The first honey of the season is heavy with the black locust nectar. Makes it lighter and sweeter. We try to pull those frames as soon as they are capped and keep separate from the later honey, which is just a touch darker but very close in sweetness and flavor.

I prefer the dark fall honey, has a little more bite. I doubt I will get any honey again this year, my hive swarmed and I didn't get my honey super on before the locust and we have had rain every 2 days washing off pollen.

 

[addy1]

We harvest nothing in the fall. Our nectar flow is too poor. We start feeding in July and don't stop feeding until March.

We do get goldenrod nectar, the hives vary between dirty sock smell or butterscotch when they start bringing it in.