Bees are Busy, and so are the Beekeepers

With plenty of bee-related tasks, weekend company, crazy storms (the tornadoes missed us, thankfully), and a full-time job, the bulk of the work has fallen to Mark.  I'll get calls that involve rapid-fire descriptions of whatever he's found in a particular hive or bee yard before he moves onto the next swarm, tear-out (Hi Jason!), or load of laundry.

Nice. ;-)

Mark & Jason Shedd, who needed some bees removed from his attic.

Friday night (5/6) we went to Mrs. Beatty's house to prepare it for moving.  Mark was stunned to find the bees had completely waxed out the entire hive (10 frames) and stored honey -- all without a queen, who was, ostensibly, left behind the tree.  This morning we transferred them to BB2 which continues to have a low population.

This box weighed A LOT.

We added medium supers to the three existing hives at the Barhams' Bee Yard, including BB2, with its new deep from Mrs. Beatty's house.  There was a question if BB3 had a queen captured in the large swarm that was added, and on Friday Mark found evidence that she's there: "she's going like a house afire, there's brood everywhere!" he said.  That's great news.

The big news, however, is that he left home before 6 a.m. on Friday to pick up two queens and 5 nucs from Harry Fulton.  He installed the nucs at Barhams' Bee Yard (see those single deeps on the far end?) and at Harley's. 

For the story of the queens, click here.