Next Class

Our next meeting will be held on May 21st at 6:00 pm at my house. You will receive a letter with more details shortly so be looking for that in the mail.

Pay attention to the laying pattern of your queen this weekend so that you can compare what is going on in your hives with what is going on in my hives. I have several stages of development so we will see a broad range of activity.

It is important to maintain the feed program as we continue through this period of extended rainy period. The locust always seem to bloom during a rainy period; go figure. Whatever method you settle on for a feeding approach should be kept up. Those of you who have installed bees should be seeing frames being built out with wax and you should begin to see eggs layed in the bottom of some of those cells. When looking for eggs notice the pattern of the egg laying. You want to see very few cell skips in the egg laying pattern. If you are seeing random laying ( an egg here and an egg there) attention should be paid to the queen and the laying pattern over the next few weeks.

I am waiting to hear from a speaker before scheduling our next meeting however, it will likely be the week of May 18th at this point. I will keep you posted.

Thanks to Susan it has been brought to my attention that Kelly's is recommending that those of you who purchased the new style brood frames need to either pin the wax or wire the wax. The new frames are those that have the slit in the top and allow for the top loading of the wax. They are recommending that a minimum of two pins be placed in the frame to help hold the wax more level. Contact Kelly's if you are having problems.

Let us know how you are doing with your bees

You'll notice I have continued to update the page by adding some links, some feeds, and some bird deterrents. If you run across good links or have a beekeeping journal you would like to share just place a comment with the link and I will place the link in the link bar. Just sending an email will work as well. I know many of you are getting bees this weekend, it should be a nice weekend for beeing.

Swarm Season is upon us and the opportunity to increase your beeyard is here. Henry and I retrieved a nice swarm from here in town without much problem. It was one of our native swarms that I chased last spring into a locust tree and couldn't get out. Well, the homeowner saw it swarm today and watched where it landed and called the office and in an hour we had it in the box. Keep your eyes out and your ears open for free bees.

This will be a big weekend for some of you as Randy said just breath in a bag and don't be intimidated. I will post the video that was in the class the other night for you to refer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek7dDtZ0lK8

I was in some boxes today and have a few observations to post. Make sure you have ten (10) frames in your deep brood boxes. This is important because you can get a real mess forming with any less than ten frames. They tend to fill every nook and cranny and if you have the right amount of frames they tend to keep a nice neat house. Also the straighter the wax is installed the neater they will build upon it. Remember it is called foundation.

Next Class

Class will be on April 13th at 6:30 pm. I welcome you to use this as a forum to ask one another questions and to post your observations.