Our seasonably mild winter has enlightened us on hive abscondment and unexpected booming expansion. As we near what is lining up to be an early spring, our hives are already preparing for growth. The queens are ramping up their egg laying to build up the colony, more workers equate to more activity and resource gathering. My goal for this blog is an online journal allowing our friends and followers to follow along as we go about the daily activities of managing our apiary. I can guarantee sadness and laughter as we move forward with this endeavor.
To date, we have been monitoring our hives stores, building swarm traps, ordering new bees and equipment, painting new hives, stalking potential hive locations, and attempting to come up with a strategy for the year.
By mid-February, we have had a robbing scenario here on the apiary. That's right, one of our stronger hives was robbing the honey stores from a smaller hive. To remedy this, I minimized the space the attacked bees needed to defend and moved them 3 miles away to the farm of a friend. I specifically chose the picture of the church hive because, ironically it was the church bees that robbed the weaker colony.
Our weakest hive has unexpectedly grown over winter and become our strongest, as they have nearly filled a second brood box since January, and I have already added a honey super for them to fill. I hope to split this hive before they plan to swarm. Our other hives are growing as expected in preparation for the coming pollen and nectar flow.
Continue to check our blog as I keep it updated with our trials and tribulations.
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