Friday,May 20

Ted Nelson (Criminal Justice teacher-MACC) and I went into the hives today to see if the bees had made any progress. The weather has been rainy in the past few weeks so sunny foraging days have been scarce. All three hives were in about the same condition so I will just describe what we saw once. The first thing I noticed was that the slider bar on the feed scale was still floating! This means that hive number three has not gained or lost a single pound. I was hoping that the bees had increased the weight at least a little.

However, we did find larvae and capped brood in all three hives which means the Carniolan queens are out and laying eggs. We also stumbled across the queen in hive number one, surrounded by a gaggle of workers.

In all three hives, the queen was somewhere near the top. I think with hind site, I should have reversed the order of the bottom two brood supers in order to move the queens into the lower section. Maybe we will do that next week.

So the hives looked healthy. I’ll check in on them next week and hopefully the weather will warm up before the spring nectar flow ends.

Monday, May 9^th

Today we introduced the bees to the hive!  I purchased 3-3 lb. packages of Italian bees with Carniolan queens.  As the queen lays eggs, her offspring will gradually replace the Italian bees.  Three or four weeks from now, the entire hive should consist of offspring of the Carniolan queens.  I also put a feeder on each hive with a 50/50 mix of sugar water, 3 tsp. of fumidil and some “Honey Bee Healthy”.  (Essential oils with trace vitamins for improved bee health) 

Thursday, May 12^th

I removed the feeders from the hives today in preparation for installing the honey supers.  I didn’t want any fumidil or any “Honey Bee Healthy” collected by the bees to be in the honey supers. 

Friday, May 13^th

Today is commencement at the college and I squeezed in a quick bee hive visit before the evening ceremony.  I installed empty honey supers on each hive.  Each super had nine frames and had been used previously, so the foundation was completely covered with drawn comb. (Complete wax cells are formed so the bees can just fill them with honey without having to make as much wax)  Hive #3 (on the scale) complete with empty honey supers weighed in at 121 lbs. 

The Savannah Loop Bee Hives

Prologue

There are a couple of reasons I wanted to move my bees to the MCC campus:

Number one, it looks like the farm land across the street from my residence is being prepared for potatoes. Lots of agriculture is hard on bees but potato farming is especially hard because of the amount of insecticide that is used to combat the potato bugs. And if you couple this with the fact that potatoes have a flower that attracts the bees this is an especially bad combination.

Number 2, I like teaching and I thought this would be a great opportunity to allow people to view the hives from a safe distance and keep up with their progress throughout the summer on the blog.

Thursday May 5

Today I brought out the eight foot pallet and two of the three hives that had died over the winter. I set up the hive stands, the bottom boards, two deep brood supers per hive, an inner cover and an outer cover.  

Friday May 6

Today I set up the third hive exactly like the first two except I set this one up on a reconditioned antique feed scale so that I can track the honey flow this summer.  By periodically weighing the hive, and tracking it's weight, we can determine when the flow of nectar peaks and ebbs.  I will also weigh the hive at the end of the season to see how may pounds of honey the bees have produced.