First things first: We begin our selling season THIS WEEKEND on Saturday and North Hills Middle School. Our table will be located in the first gym on your right when you walk in, sorta in the middle of the floor. Come with your HONEY MONEY (!) as we have a limited amount of Autumn and Spring honey available.
When we left off, we were preparing for our last rounds of selling events after a record honey harvest.
Those events went well and as the weather cooled, we were back out in the apiary getting the hives set up for winter. At the time, we had 4 honey-producing hives, 1 full size spare and 4 small colonies.
TOO MANY!! We started combining a few and trying to be smart with the resources. I think we ended up crunching down from 9 to 6, mostly by bumping the smaller colonies into larger hives and combining.
We might have laid the groundwork for a fierce battle this week. Consolidating hives and couldn't find a queen or signs of one in one of the hives, even though they were very calm. #queenbee #honeybees pic.twitter.com/oBOXuyAGNR
— DandelionApiary (@DandelionApiary) November 8, 2023
Well... it turned out that at least part of what we did was not, in fact, VERY SMART. A month later we had one main hive dead and (yet unbeknownst to us) its neighbors weren't doing so well either, as you can see from this video:
As "winter" dragged on, with grey skies and muddy ground-- though that's still preferable to shoveling snow and stressful commutes-- I continued to check in on the hives using my borescope camera. My intention was to post more along the way, but as the camera increasingly found ghost hives it just became too discouraging.
We are emerging now with 2 strong full-size honey producing hives, which already have their honey boxes in place, along with a full-size hive that will soon be split or moving into another honey producing arrangement. When swarm season really gets heated up, we should be able to split the other two hives into another honey producing hive and a small backup colony. That's the plan, anyway.
It's too early (by far) to predict what this slower start could mean for our honey production this year, but it's probably safe to assume we'll be under last year's astounding number-- which is fine. You know what they say: Mo' Honey, Mo' Problems. After all, this isn't living wage gig <insert big laugh> and we have day jobs.
First hive checks last week. We're starting season with three full hives. They're all building populations up and finding lots of pollen and nectar so far. #beekeeping #honeybees pic.twitter.com/mqXgqP5VIV
— DandelionApiary (@DandelionApiary) April 3, 2024
All that is to say that if you want your honey... ya gotta come get some this weekend! Pricing is the same from last year, since we secured extra jars at that time and don't expect to need as many this year. Remember to bring back our jars/rings/lids for a discount.
As I close this update out, I was reminded recently that we started this BEEZY sideline hobby/business/hustle 8 years ago. We took delivery of our gear on a snowy day and took advantage of early unseasonably warm days to assemble, glue and paint all our boxes. It had a weird echo of nesting in anticipation of our kids, since we knew the bees were coming, at some time later, and we had to get through this punchlist of building and getting places for them to live ready. We really didn't have any idea what we were getting into, but it's been a fun adventure so far!
Consider joining our email list-- we will not spam you, we promise! What we will do is send out information regarding events we are scheduled to sell at, along with reminders when each season's harvest is ready for sale. For anyone looking for the limited availability stuff (like quart jars or comb honey) or who want to be first in line, this is the list to be on-- email us to get on that list if you aren't already.
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