A nice frame of brood from a Wilbanks Apiaries queen. You go Girl!!

Back again for 2014. 2 new packages of Italians from Wilbanks Apairies in Georgia, and a nuc of Carniolans coming this weekend. Hoping for the best this year.

One of the Carniolan queens absconded and other bees robbed out the syrup. I'm going to move one of the nucs into the 10 frame equipment this weekend. The other queen is building up slowly, as is the italian queen from this year's package. The large Carniolan hive has about 2.5 supers of honey so far.

An experiment with splits. One over-wintered hive and one new package were not building up as well as I thought they should be, so I put the queens in nuc boxes and re-queened the hives with Carniolans. We'll see how this goes ...

Well, it's a rainy June 7. The overwintered Italian hive is not building up well at all. Guess I'll have to requeen it - I have Carniolan queens ordered from Full Bloom Apiaries for the two new Italian packages, as they aren't building well either. I may put the Italian queens into nuc boxes just to see what happens. The Carniolan hive from last year is going great, starting to fill the first super.

February 2013 - a bit of snow !

We didn't have to "find" Nemo - it found us. More snow than we've gotten in a long time. The upper entrances were clear, so a few bees went for a flight but didn't make it back. Rain today, so it will be like cement.

Well, they are wrapped up for the winter. Out flying on good days, and even finding some pollen !