Pollen?

You're probably wondering about the title so I'll start from the BEEginning.
I was down-stairs on the computer and Mom yelled down saying my bees were bringing in pollen! I didn't believe her so I went out to the bee hives to see for myself. Sure enough! They were bringing in light yellow/cream colored pollen! It's still a mystery where they're getting it from though I'm suspicious they might be gathering it from the hay bales that dad is feeding the calves. Yesterday I took some pictures of them so I guess I'll post them.

The top entrance.


Happy bee(or it looks like it).




The entrance was pretty busy.


More bees.



Danny

Bee Check

This morning Mom and I went out to feed the bees. We took four Mega-bee patties with us because we wanted to start feeding the bees some pollen substitute so the queen would start rearing brood. We started with the hive on the east, Hive 4. Their cluster of bees was small and they still had some candy left around the edges of the cluster so we pushed the candy closer to the center of the hive where they could get to it better and added half a Mega-bee patty to the bottom box.

After that we moved onto Hive 3(The one right beside it). Hive 3 is the one that made most of the honey last year. As soon as we cracked the lid we saw that bees were EVERYWHERE in the top hive body. VERY strong hive. It had eaten all of its candy so we added some more and added a Mega-Bee patty on the bottom brood box. When we lifted the top hive body off(It was very heavy so Mom had to lift it) there were lots of bees in the bottom too!

Hive 2 was probably the weakest of all of them, its cluster only covering around three frames and it hadn't eaten much of its candy so like H4(Hive four) we just pushed the chunks of candy closer to the middle and added half a mega-bee patty.

We then moved onto H1; it was just as strong as H3, maybe more! When I popped the lid up the bees were on all ten frames, TONS of them! It was awesome! I smoked them down and Mom added some candy since they had eaten all but a few chunks of it. Then we added a Mega-Bee patty to the bottom hive body. Like H3 there were bees in the bottom hive body as well. After doing that we closed it up. Overall I really liked what I saw in the hives, I would have preferred if H4 and H2 were stronger but I'm still happy that they all survived the hardest of the winter. Hopefully I can take some pictures of them next time.

Danny

Bee Candy

After dinner today we made some candy for my bees. I'm hoping to put it on them tomorrow along with some pollen patties.

A prepared mold. We use tinfoil to line the inside of the pan.


Heat the water until it starts boiling before pouring in the sugar.


One cup of water to every five cups of sugar. Or one pint of water for five pounds of sugar.


After adding the sugar stir continuously until it starts really bubbling/boiling. Heat to 234 degrees before pouring into molds.


After pouring into molds wait until the candy has cooled. If done properly it will harden and be ready to put into your bee hive.



Danny

Active Bee Hives

Yesterday it got up to 59 F and the bees were REALLY active. I took some pictures of them. I went a little overboard taking pictures so I'm just going to show a few of the pictures I took. Currently I'm working on making a nuc box out of a pallet. So far it's coming along quite well, I'll try to post some pictures of it sometime. Here are the pictures I took yesterday.

The bee hives.


Another picture.


Bees flying.


Bees coming in to the entrance.




The four bee hives.


Bee in flight. Not very clear but it's pretty hard to take a picture of a bee flying.


Take a guess.


Another bee fly picture.


More bees.


Danny

Stats

Yesterday I was looking at my blog stats and thought that it would be interesting to share with my viewers where my audience was coming from. So here's what I've gotten for the past seven days. I find it interesting that I've gotten more view from Russia than Canada since Canada is the nearest country to us.

United States: 34

Russia : 7

Slovenia: 3

Germany: 2

Canada : 1

United Kingdom: 1

Ukraine : 1

Danny

Warm day

Today it got to about 36 degrees so D.J. and I went for a walk. After we got home I went out and checked on the bee hives. They were pretty active so I took some pictures.

Sam and a few heifers.


A few heifers around the water tank. The whitish one is mine.


Sam and the heifers again.


Sam and the steers.


CHARGE!! They were actually chasing Sam.


Another charging picture.


The bees. No kidding right?


Another picture.


Our cat, Curious, found the bees very interesting.


He ended up getting stung later on.







Danny

Weather

The weather has been cold and windy lately. I'm hoping it will warm up soon so the bees can break cluster.






Danny