Close up look at Bees

What are the major problems facing bees?  Chemicals?  Loss of habitat?  or is it Varroa?  Take a look at this Ted Talk with some amazing video of bees growing in the hive.

Welcome to April and warmer weather in the forecast.  The shiitake mushroom logs here are newly inoculated and will be ready for the next stage of the process in 6 months.  The logs from last year have already produced this year, which was a surprise.  We enjoyed mushroom risotto and still had enough to fill up the dehydrator for using later.  Craig is exploring ways to expand the mushroom production on the farm so we may have more information on this soon.

Welcome to Spring 2015.
     Even though it doesn't feel like spring this morning, we have great hopes of a spring-like week leading up to Easter Sunday.  I decided to reactivate the blog to make a place to document all of the bee activity going on around here.  Last weekend, on March 22, we installed 10 new packages into hives down at the farm.  It was a cool morning but warmed up into the upper 50's which made the transition nice.  Our friend Dave helped Craig and I documented the process.  After our bees were installed, we drove back to Cary and installed Dave's 2 new hives.  He's beginning his beekeeping this year so we are hoping for a great season for strong colony growth.

These are the hives installed.  The top super covers the package box and will be removed once all bees move into the lower hive box.  

Taking inventory the week before the install of the new bees.

Here's the sample of the branding iron that we designed for the cutting boards that Craig builds and has for sale.

Here's the new bee yard at the farm.

Bee yard at the farm with queen castle in the foreground.

The truck is full of 12 packages ready for their new homes.

Dave is ready to get to work.  The truck bed is full of sugar water that will be placed in the feeders for the hungry bees.  Once they transfer into the hives, they will have lots of this to sustain them while they build their new colonies.  

One of the packages of bees that we purchased from Big Oak Bee Farm in Raleigh.

The packages came with 30,000 bees or 3 lbs.  They also came with a fertilized queen in a queen cage.  Craig is removing the sugar water feed that is also placed in the boxed package.

Removing the sugar water can.

The next package waiting to move into the hive.

Finishing up and the bees are starting to move out and about.

Dave and Betty's bees waiting on installation.  These will be the first beehives located on the golf course at
MacGregor Downs. 

Getting ready for the installation of Dave's bees.

Dave and Craig getting started.  Betty and I observed.

Dave is getting the queen out of the box and removing the plug so that she can emerge once they workers eat through the sugar plug. By that time, the bees in the colony will have accepted her and they can all live harmoniously. 

Almost finished with these two.