| HELLO ALL!
It's been a long, cold winter. Even in March we are getting flurries. The bees are finally venturing forth to look for some pollen. We lost 5 hives over the winter, but |
|
| HELLO ALL!
It's been a long, cold winter. Even in March we are getting flurries. The bees are finally venturing forth to look for some pollen. We lost 5 hives over the winter, but |
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| will be replacing them. We have been
cleaning and scraping hives, repainting then and doing general
maintenance. We have had to start feeding them sugar water to build up
the hives. We usually purchase our queens from a very nice guy in South
Georgia, but he is now shipping his hives to California to pollinate
almond plants, and making a bundle. He makes more money shipping his
hives across the country for 4-6 weeks than he would make selling honey
or queens, go figure. We are getting them from a guy in Ohio with a
small company, he has the best prices.
I tried for years to talk my husband into raising our own queens and we did some test trials last year which worked out great. He is now building nukes (hives not bombs) to raise queens in, he has declared that I will be the "Official Queen Raiser." Now is a good time to start feeding your bees. I don't have the recipe handy but will post soon. The bees will drink a quart jar a day of sugar water. We use top feeders, that way we can fill it up and it last's about 2 days. They need this to out into cells to feed on, feed the young and the queen so that she can start laying eggs. You also need to treat the bees for trachea mites (can you imagine a bug so little, that it gets in a bee's throat?), hive beetles and all sort's of critters.
Well I will sign off now, but I promise to be more regular in updates. If you have any questions just e-mail me at [email protected]
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