Bob's Bees and Honey

01/23/2025

The Winter cycle of my honeybees. It's not the glorious life they probably envisioned, being born in mid to late fall their main task is keeping the hive warm throughout the winter and getting the queen into the Spring alive. Many will not get to pollinate a single flower. These bees that you see dead in the snow took advantage of the brief sunlight today to fly out and die in the snow, that way less of a mess inside the hive, they will always think "Hive first". Dead bees in the snow is actually a good sign, the hives are strong enough to cast out the old. By the end of Feb, the queens will start rearing brood to start the cycle all over again, and some of the old bees may get a chance to get out and fly amongst the early spring flowers!

01/09/2025

01/04/2025

I'm in my shop on this snowy day looking at an old Bee magazine taking a break from making bee boxes and realizing time flies! The elm trees in the picture I'm sure are no more, the prices of a 3 lb swarm of bees delivered to your post office has multiplied times seven. That pic of Farrah Facetted kind of saddens me. I'm just going to enjoy this snowfall

12/28/2024

Lot of white on this guy!

11/19/2024

The last day for the cart will be Wednesday. I'll have honey for sale all through the winter at the house . Thanks again to all my customers, you guys are great!

11/15/2024

I'm wrapping the hives for winter and usually by this time of the year the girls are all clustered inside keeping warm and I can go about my business , but a sunny day, like today, even with the temps in the mid 40's they can get active. Don't ask me where they're finding pollen on Nov 15th, but they are 😆

10/30/2024

This knapweed has endured several frosts and this moth and my bees are thankful for it

10/26/2024

The weather's cleared and the cart is out. I'm done extracting, had my best year ever. Plenty of honey to go around. Thankyou to all my customers who take the time to stop by ( and leave comments...I appreciate them!)

10/24/2024

I'm putting the hot knife to work today, I'm starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel 😆

10/23/2024

So all these honey boxes that I extracted honey from, will be put away later today and stored along with another large stack in my other beeyard. These boxes are the key to bringing in a good honey harvest. All the frames are drawn out and ready to be filled with nectar next spring so the girls don't have to spend time drawing out wax, they go right to work filling the cells.

10/21/2024

As I extract honey I try to separate the different kinds that the girls produce during the year, it can be a little time consuming trying to determine just what I have in certain boxes and then separating as I go. Sometimes I just say the heck with it and mix them up and it comes out tasting great. The light lemony looking honey is what I extracted last night. I'll have it out on the cart this week that way you can try it. Have a great week!

10/20/2024

Bee box Jenga 😆

10/20/2024

Even after four successive frosts there are still plants out there that have survived. I watched a lot of pollen coming into this hive this morning

10/19/2024

Now this is how you spend a Saturday morning 😁

10/18/2024

We've got a good weather window, so the cart will be out everyday. Later on today I'll be adding the Fall honey (golden rod/aster to the cart). I have a pretty good amount of Japanese knotweed left. lm giving my girls some cleanup duty as you can see, thankfully it was cold this am so I could put out the boxes of extracted frames and cappings without being chased 😆. By 11:00 am they'll be a million bees here. Have a great day!

10/12/2024

I removed over 40 boxes of honey from this beeyard in the past week and that's not counting the honey they produced since the spring, now to get them ready for the winter!. It's my prettiest Beeyard always wildlife around.

10/07/2024

The Japanese knotweed honey is flowing 😁