Well been way too busy with that work thing to my liking!
1st thing I wanna say is to check all parts of the forum cause I like to post in general beekeeping because everyone actually reads it and replies here but lately it's been getting Moderated to it's "Proper Section" lol go figure! Then no one replies to it!
Started off this spring with 1 Hive that Survived. Got 2 Packages from northern Cali, caught a local swarm, bought a local overwintered nuc that had swarm cells so 2 frames with swarm cells went in one hive, 3 frames and the Queen went in another. That's my 6 full hives!
My 6 Hives
The Lyle Swarm
Tried my double nuc cloake board method and it didn't seem to go very well. So I added another frame of eggs and bees to both halves and now that Double Nuc has Queens and going Strong. 2 Days later I made 2 more double Nucs by taking 3 frames, one of eggs/young larva, one of capped brood and one of Honey/Pollen in each nuc. That's my other 2 Double nucs so that 6 Nucs...
2 Double Nucs Ready
a Double Nuc in the Yard
Grand Total 6 Full hives and 6 Nucs! Next I tried my hand at Making Hive Boxes! Made this Double Nuc!
I harvested honey from 4 of my hives last weekend. 260 lbs from them 4 hives!
The Honey Harvest from the Hives...
8 Mediums full of honey!
One of the "Textbook" frames of Honey!
Extracting...
Finally... Some of the 2014 Honey!
Oh and between Work and all this Beekeeping I still found time to plant my Food Plot for the Bees/Deer...Clover and Buckwheat! Here's the Buck Wheat Blooming right now!
So... what's left for this year?
All 6 hives hopefully are filling a Super with Buckwheat Honey and I need to add a super to each this weekend.
Also this weekend I am going too try and Populate the Double nuc I made myself and hope there's enough time to get the 2 Queens Mated... then pull the Supers 1st Week of September, Check Stores and Feed if stores are not enough. Don't treat with Chemicals and all my Hives are Healthy and Strong so no need to Treat and I wouldn't anyway. If they don't make it without treating I don't want them!
Whew that was a long post! Hope everyone is Healthy, Happy and have Bellies full of Honey!