I have to admit I haven't had time to blog lately; I've been busy building an ark. Seriously, we have had 19 straight days of rain and the fields are full of water. I don't want to think about what this will do to the lavender crop this year. The only thing we have gotten done is check on our bee hives.
This time of year we check on the condition of the hives and how many bees survived the winter. The hives should have ample supplies of honey stored, a good population of bees, and the queen should have a good brood pattern rather than a spotty one. We knew in the fall that we had one hive that was not healthy and hoped that a supply of sugar would get it through the winter.
Although this picture shows a supply of honey, unfortunately we lost this hive and another one. And we will have to purchase a package of bees and introduce a new queen or purchase a nuc with bees and a queen included to replace the two hives.
Gary and our mentor, Richard Linck looking over the hives
After looking over one hive we could not find a queen so we decided to add a new queen and hope she will be excepted by the bees in the hive.
She is contained in this capsule and placed between a frame until the bees in her hive get her out.
We'll return to the hive after three days to see if the queen has been released.
After the worker bees have chewed the candy from this container the queen is released.
As you can see from this picture the worker bees have been bring back pollen to the nuc box.
Although it is disappointing to have the hive not survive we have learned so much from our little friends.
