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Category Archives: Farming
Honey!
We harvested our first load of honey today. We took the two-and-a-half frames of fully-capped blackberry honey, scraped them clean, and ran the resulting mix of wax and honey through a strainer. We then ran that through a slightly finer … Continue reading
Bee inspection – First honey harvest!
We had a really busy weekend, and in the middle of it, we saw a swarm of bees leaving the bee yard. We initially supposed that it was Hive North, because the swarm was in that area, but we couldn’t … Continue reading
Bee inspections
I had wanted to inspect the hives earlier in the week, but the schedule conspired against me, and it didn’t happen until the weekend. I inspected Hives North and West by myself on Saturday, and Kristi and I did a … Continue reading
Dinner
We came home from Clearwater last weekend to hear one of the chickens crowing. As I suspected, it was the one we’ve been calling “Dinner” for the past month or so. Hilltop is in unincorporated King County, and there is … Continue reading
Bees – swarm analysis
With Hive North captured and in their new home, they need to be left alone for a week or two to let them get started building out comb and raising brood. However, a full inspection of the other two hives … Continue reading
Hive North, moving on up
I checked Hive North this morning to see how they were liking their new home. The bees were all still a little sleepy, as I checked them before any foragers had started out for the morning, so the hive would … Continue reading
Hive North
We knew that we needed to deal with the swarm today, because there’s only so far a few squirts of sugar water will go. A call went in to Beez Kneez as soon as they opened at 10, and Jim … Continue reading
Swarm! Swarm!
Well, that was interesting. Brett was leading an expedition through the “Jungle” area of the yard, with Mom and Lucy in tow, when he spotted a very strange looking pinecone on one of the evergreen trees.
Bees – Troubleshooting
I wanted to make sure that the re-queening of Hive East went OK. We decided to do a full inspection of Hive East, and a mini-inspection of Hive West. Hive East is still not really drawing out the foundation on … Continue reading
Bees, sitrep
I checked the hives today to see whether the requeening of the eastern hive was complete. This is the first time I’ve had to open the hives by myself. Things went fine. The queen cage was empty, and I didn’t … Continue reading