Bees. Beez. Bezz. Bzzz.

I started keeping notes on the hives back in October, when it was clear this was necessary to keep track of each hive and to remind me of what I was doing as we headed toward winter and started to wind things down. This has been a great help, given that winter does not appear to be in an hurry to arrive, and allows me to keep track of which hives I’ve swapped top and bottom boxes, which hives I’ve found the queens and larvae (or both), how many bees I’m observing in each hive, and all the other million little things that go along with keeping bees versus having bees.

Yesterday, after finding an abandoned queen, I took the small swarm I caught and combined it with the box where the queen remained, newspaper between the boxes so the new bees could get used to the new queen’s pheromones. Today’s visit to the beeyard including checking that combined hive, and there was no queen (at least I couldn’t find her) and very few bees . I’ve been nursing this small group of bees along for months, trying to get them to produce their own queen, and they simply haven’t gotten it down. I left the setup out there for now, but I’m probably going to have to write this one down as a loss.

The other hives I checked today, and where I swapped boxes, seem to be doing well: found the queens in a couple, found some larvae, found a good base population of bees, and found lots and lots of honey. So much honey that I’ll probably need to take some off so the girls don’t get any bright ideas about possibly swarming out because the amount of empty comb real estate is running out quickly. As with everything else in life, every day is a learning experience, and some days raise more questions than answers – right now, those mostly revolve around the weather and the extraordinarily high temperatures we’ve been having, since that means the girls remain active, foraging, drawing comb, and finding nectar and pollen to store.

Tomorrow, I’ll go back out to the hives and check a few more and get another great workout from moving heavy things, until all have been inspected as this month winds down. Who knows what 2016 will bring? Other than the need to determine the timing for making splits to form new hives when the existing hives start ramping up after winter, that is. If winter ever arrives.

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