2021 Bee Update

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Swarming Honeybees
June 1, 2021

The winter of 2020/2021 was rather difficult for everyone in the area. Due to early winter weather, pretty much everyone lost their hives. Both our hives died, although it's worth noting that most honeybees only live 5-6 weeks, while the queen bee can survive 2-5 years typically. It's just that even the queen and all the bee-replenishing appartaus also passed away suddenly, likely due to the weather. Shortly after receiving our 2 bee nucs to replace the previous year's hives, one hive actually split swarmed...

We called some bee friends who had lost 18 hives to come and retrieve our swarm, as it was easily accessible and we did not need a third hive of bees. They were able to shake most of the swarm from the forsythia into a temporary hive to transport back to their farm. Nothing wasted!

Swarming Honeybees
June 1, 2021

This year, J decided he only wanted one hive, so that he could repaint the yellow hiveboxes. So, he bought one box of bees. And then, on a warm day in April, we saw that our yellow hive was alive and well! It looks like the purple hive didn't make it. So, I suppose we'll have two hives this year, and no repainting!

One Hive survived!
April 11, 2022

On my dog walks in the forest behind the house lately, I've noticed there isn't a whole lot for the active bees to gather nectar and pollen from. Hopefully they've got enough honey in their stores!

Wildflowers in the forest Snowdrops in the forest
Daffodils in the forest Wildflowers in the forest
April 18, 2022

1 comments:

rainmelon said...

Tough couple of years for the bees ...