Category: Bees
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Whidbey Queens Emerged
A few pictures of the queens from batch QR6. These emerged on 5/10 and most will be placed into mating nucs today and tomorrow. These are granddaughters for Northwest Queens H55. I hope they turn out to be as good as their mother and grandmother.
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A Few Good Queens
Snapped a few pictures of some newly emerged virgin queens. Most of these have been distributed to others or to some of my hives. I have two remaining as I type this. These are from the daughter of Mark’s H55 (Northwest Queens near Arlington, WA). I’m hoping that some VSH traits pass down a couple…
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Grafting Larva To Rear Queens
How do you rear queens? When a queen lays and egg, about 4 days it hatches in and is now a larva. We take a few of these larva and move them into what is called “queen cups”. Then we take this and place it into a bee hive that has no queen. The bees…
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Introducing Virgin Queens
Introducing virgin queen is a really simple process. In agriculture, things sometimes don’t go as planned but if you follow these instructions, your chances for success increase greatly. And it is really easy. 1. Make sure you’re queenless. It’s as simple as that. Make sure there is no queen in your hive, split, or nuc.…
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Introducing Queen Cells
Introducing a queen cell is a really simple process. Even easier than introducing mated or virgin queens. These instructions apply to all queen cells – those 48 hours old or capped. Of course, in agriculture things sometimes don’t go as planned but if you follow these instructions, your chances for success increase greatly. 1. Make…
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First 2016 Swarm Call
I just arrived at my first bee yard when I received a swarm call today. It was Lisa Phillips of Round Tuit Farms asking if I wanted to handle a swarm. You betcha! I finished up what I was doing (those nucs are looking really nice!) and went over to check out the swarm. It…
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Bees, chickens, and counting eggs.
In order to be more self-sufficient, I’m trying to raise my own local queens. Yesterday I grafted (moved (super tiny) larvae from just hatched eggs from the comb into “queen cups”). Today, I checked my grafts. 9 out of 11 took …but like chickens and eggs, no counting until these queen cells hatch .. and…
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The Bees Are Back In Town!
Installed 10 new starter bee hives yesterday. 5 of them mine. The picture show us installing bees in a hive for a fellow island beekeeper. It was a great bee day, looking through combs, bees flying everywhere and getting into hives. Only got stung three times …one sting caused me to drop a frame (oops!!)…
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2015/2016 Winter
This winter was a difficult winter for the bees. I lost a lot of my hives. November cold. December was wet. The same with January and not a lot of dry days so far in February either. I lost some hives to queen failure, some to Varroa mites, some to Nosema, and for a couple,…
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Thank you!
2015 has been an exciting year in beekeeping. I started the 2014-2015 winter with ten hives, over wintering seven hives, losing three. Easter brought me my first swarm call of the year. One day, I had 4 hive inspecitions, queen cell removal and installation, and 3 swarm calls. That was a busy day! The blackberry…