Category: apiculture

Unfortunately, the bees yet again did not make it through the Winter. we have yet to carry a hive through one… With this in mind, we have decided that we will not do bees until we have a way to shield them better from the cold. We combined the green house and the well recently, the vision is to create a small oasis for all things which do not desire freezing. A heated green house / well house / bee shed maybe? We’re not sure what this looks like yet but I’m done killing bees. In the meantime we don’t want to let all this honey go to waste.

I just can’t make sense of our bees this year. They were never raging but always strong, sometimes happy rarely mad. In spite of their effervescence the whole Summer, they never brought quite enough to stock up the whole hive. I’d sit and watch the entrance, seeing them go back and forth, but rarely with pollen attached to their legs. The whole time I’d wonder what they were up to outside if not gathering pollen.

So I just don’t know what to make of them, they have some decent honey and I hope they’ll surprise me once more by making it through the Winter. I have to say that since we started producing maple syrup, I see the work to sweetness ratio a whole lot differently for bees.

Cleaning shit up

Capped honey

Robin stayed with me behind while Nicole did all the work 😀 His first time so close.

We tried to extract 3 frames and we moved them close to the house for processing the next day. Unfortunately, the bees found them soon the next morning and a huge mess ensued with confused bees and humans. We just gave them back, for now…