All the leaves are brown

 October 24 2021

I don't understand how this could of happened. Last time i looked it was July. Today it is Oct 24

The summer came and went fast. I had hurt my leg and summer left me behind while I struggled to do simple things. Gardening and tending the bees took way longer than normal. But i did manage to look after both and neither were neglected too badly. The greenhouse produced way beyond my hopes and our bees did the same. I am going into winter with 5 instead of 3 hives. So pretty happy about that.

There were boxes of honey sitting in the basement way longer than they should of. Right now its hunting season, so instead of getting things ready for winter, i spend my days cooking and doing dishes. Thankfully over a period of 3 days i managed to find enough time to get the honey extracted. There was more than i thought so i was pretty pleased.

Looking back over the summer.

This summer was very hot and extremely dry. The threats of forest fires were very real this year. For us, not so much but for others it was devastating. We did however, have several fires in our general area but nothing that threatened us....too much. 

During the extreme heat i worked at keeping the bees comfortable by making sure they had plenty of fresh water and topping their hives with a piece of 2in Styrofoam insulation. Instead of just having one good size water bowl in the bee yard, I set up four and went over twice a day to make sure they were full.  Another thing I did to help keep the internal temperature down in the hives was to add their vented winter attic boxes on top. I left the insulation out of the attic. It was more of a place for some of the hot air to rise and escape out of the hive. It seemed to work. The rest of the time they seemed comfortable. There was only 1 or 2 days that we seen them bearding out front of the their hives.

Not pretty but it helped having the empty boxes on top

With that heat and very dry conditions, it brought little or no nectar coming in. When there is a long period of dry hot weather, plants try to same energy by cutting back on producing nectar.  We sat and watched both our bees and wild bees land on the flowers but moved quickly from bud to bud. So assumed there was little or no nectar for them. During these times honey production can be reduced by as much as 30% of normal. So I was very thankful that they had collected a huge amount of Dandelion nectar in the spring and for cooler temperatures that eventually came.

Well, i think i will leave it there for now. Eventually i will get caught up. Cheers

Hive # 3.5

 I number my hives so it makes it easier to talk about them (mostly to myself) and to keep  records. At first I put numbers on the brood boxes but then I would change out boxes and soon those numbers disappeared. I need to find a way so I can physically number them again incase I lose my mind one day and can't remember which is which. 

Hive 1 is easy, the bees are quite dark, way darker than the others. Hive 2 battles with some chalk brood each spring. Hive 3 is our very fertile queen hive. Its big and bold. But I love our bees, they are always so calm and the only time I get a sting is when I accidently pinch one on the back of my knee or on my finger.  

This spring hive 3 was bursting at the seams so I decided to try my hand at doing a walk away split. Meaning, removing all stages of eggs and larvae and not checking for the queen. (but I decided to look for her and not take her) I set up the new hive with 5 frames. Eggs, nurse bees, larvae, pollen and honey.  I told James it would be hive # 3.5 until it produced a queen and she started laying. Within a short period of time, I found queen cells. A month later...we found lots of eggs. I was leery about the quality of the queen since the bees would make a emergency queen and they aren't necessarily as good as a swarm queen. 

Small green hive is 3.5 when we first did the split

But it seemed 3.5 inherited her Mums fertile genes. In no time it was huge. It made me so happy to see the queen turned out to be a winner. James asked me....so guess that is hive 4 now... but I just couldn't bring myself to change its name. I wanted to remember that this split had come from Hive 3. So now it is lovingly called Hive 3.5.

While checking to see how much honey they had made in Aug, I discovered they had almost filled a full deep super. So I was pretty happy.

Now we wait, and hopefully they make it thru the winter and emerge strong in the spring

#3.5 at the end of summer