Bees Tomorrow

I ordered some bees last winter and I will pick them up Saturday morning. I need to get there early, because I would not like it if the world ended with me on the highway and 40,000 nervous bees sitting in the back of the truck.

I will install the bees around noon on Saturday. I have lots of work to do in the bee yard.

The two new hives need to have a deep supers put on them and feeders. They need to fill the base hive and super with honey in order to make it through the winter. I might not get honey from them until Autumn.

The other hives all need honey supers so that they can make honey. It will take a few weeks to fill the honey supers so I can harvest about 30 pounds, if I like, some time in June. After that the bees don’t make much honey until the fall flowers start to bloom. July and August are hot and there aren’t many blooming flowers then. I will feed them like crazy to see if they make honey, but that kind of honey is very light and does not have the sharp flowery flavor of honey made with flower nectar.

I will be taking all the hives apart to see how they are doing. I don’t like messing with the hives because I don’t like being stung. The bees don’t really like it if I mess with them too much. I have to check the hives for disease and pests, though. I only do this a couple of times a year.

I will also take off a honey super from Connie that I left there over winter. It must be full of honey. Combining that with the full honey super that I took off of Ethel, I think I will have about 30 pounds of honey, and, if the weather is nice, I will extract it on Sunday afternoon. I can then put up the Honey For Sale sign and Erica will make a few hundred cash in a few hours.