07-17-2013 Honey!

Honey has, for thousands of years, sealed the close relationship between humans (and some other critters) and bees.

I like to check my bees about every two weeks unless I see something odd going on. I prefer to not disturb them too much!

I went in this morning to see how they were doing, how advanced the honey production was and make sure they had enough living space.

While all three hives are located near one another and have access to the exact same plants, their honey production was as different as different can be.

--#1: the new bees from this spring that were without a queen for a while had the smallest amount of honey but a healthy bee population.

--#2: for those who might remember I had a very aggressive hive last year, I did move that "mean" queen with a small population of worker bees into a new hive: my #2. I figured that reducing the size of the "gang" should have a positive impact; it's harder to impose yourself on the whole hood when small. It worked, not only are they now behaving in a civilized fashion, they also produced twice as much honey as the next hive.

--#3: the old "mean" hive with a new Italian queen. They are doing well and producing well.

Some of you might remember that my reason to keep bees is not to exploit them but to have them pollinate fruit and veggies in my and my neighbors' gardens as well as offering a (very) small shelter (maybe) from all those ugly colony collapses. So I just took one frame from the most productive hive to try it and left the rest to them.
We're only in July; August never is a good month for bees to find food: no pollen, little nectar! I want to make sure they'll have enough to survive winter (I know, it's funny talking about winter when the temps are in the mid 90s but gardeners always keep a foot in the future.)