DOW GARDENS' BEE BLOG

Playing Catch Up

June 12, 2017

This morning we fed all hives their third and final round of medicine for American Foul Brood. The bees are doing great! In fact, the two hives with working queens were ready for a second story today. The third hive, the one we requeened last week, is catching up. The queen is definitely out of her cage as we saw…

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bees

Playing Catch Up

June 12, 2017

Playing Catch Up

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bee comb

Expansion

June 9, 2017

Expansion

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bees

A New Queen

June 2, 2017

The overwintered hive didn’t start out strong, but boy that queen is an egg-laying miracle! I still have them in one-story, but they’re almost ready to expanded spaces.

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bees

Installing Nucs

May 30, 2017

Last Thursday started as an early morning, I left the gardens at 5:00 and drove to the beeyard to pick up our 2017 nucs. Yes, this is a little late to be getting bees for installation, so many great flowering nectar plants are done. But we like our supplier, are always happy with the quality, and can acknowledge that this is a slow year and a slow start to bees too is the downside.

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bee with pollen

A Bee-utiful Season

May 18, 2017

It’s starting to look like a bee-utiful season! Unfortunately, the outlook doesn’t seem so good for the Whiting Forest bees as neither of our sister hives showed any activity in early spring. One was still alive, but with a cluster less than the size of a softball I wasn’t very optimistic. I wasn’t very diligent this winter with feeding the bees with the added complication of Whiting Forest being a construction zone, the bees were left to live on their honey stores alone.

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