Nick's Nectar

Our overwintered hive died. We have added two new packages of bees. One package swarmed immediately but we were able to catch it. We also caught a swarm in our backyard. And we lost quite a bit of equipment because of wax moths over the winter. With all that behind us, the year is shaping up much better.

We did a quick hive check to see if the bees made it through the bitter cold

Recap of season 3 (2022) and the plans for season 4 (2023)

In this video, we're processing the harvest from this year's season (2022). It was a great harvest with the Russian bees really working hard and delivering honey in only 2 1/2 months!

This year we had such a great harvest. We bottled 60 lbs of honey into 70 BEARS

Quick video on harvesting the honey showing both capped and uncapped honey.

Wax moths are the worst! Left this brood box out after the hive died out. Was hoping the box would attract a swarm. Took a chance. Didn't pay off this time.

The Russians Have Arrived. The Russian bees arrived and I got a ping on my forearm - one ping only

We won't have time to check this hive again later this week so we're cracking it open now. Later this week, we'll have two new hives...

Our first hive to ever make it through winter almost died out. About 1/2 the bees were dead in the bottom of the hive.

How do we prepare for new adding hives to the apiary? And how do we expand our over wintered hives?

A recap of the past two years and a start of 2022. We end the video with the first hive check of the year. And our queen is doing great! Plenty of larvae in various stages of growth. The bee yard and the equipment is cleaned and ready to go. We're looking forward to the end of March - when we get two packages of Russian bees!

We caught a swarm in our own backyard! We quickly get them settled into a 10 frame hive, prepare a space in the bee yard and get them moved.

We check in on our hives. The two Italian hives are doing well. The Carniolans are doing great! The brood pattern is awesome. These hives should be exploding in a few weeks. Hive Heidi is requeening. And finally, we've added a new nuc and are back up to six hives!

This week we caught a swarm! Thanks to a girl named Heidi, we'll have a new hive and it will forever be called - Hive Heidi!

First hive check of the Carniolans...it didn't go well. I couldn't find the queens. There weren't any eggs.... Doomed experiment with the Carniolans?

We're trying something new this year. We've added Carniolans to the mix. We already have the two new Italian hives.The Carniolans can be a little more aggressive defending the hives and typically go into winter with a stronger/larger hive.

A quick video about our first hive check this year. We looked for the queens - or at least the evidence that the queen is laying. We found larva in both hives. We did see that both hives had quite a bit of nectar. We're going to quit feeding both of them. On one hive, I placed an old super from last year that has honey. I had to first clean off the wax moth damage and freeze the frames. On the second hive, there was quite a bit of nectar as well. For that one, I took an old brood box from last year and placed it on the hive. Kind of a free stylin' way to start the year. But if you never experiment and stick to a rigid process, you'll never learn anything new.

Getting our 2021 season started with installing two packages of italian bees. After waiting for three days, we finally let the queens out since the bees hadn't released the queen on their own.

We get our first harvest! It's expected that on the first year, you don't harvest any honey. We did! Ok so it's not a lot. We managed five jars of honey. Looking forward to our harvest next year and more importantly, focusing on getting the bees through the winter.

This video came out a bit later than it was recorded. I was working between these hives and also doing our first extraction. The three new hives are doing great. We're waiting for the new queen on one of our first hives. There are plenty of queen cells and hopefully, we'll have a laying queen soon. One of the cells was opened and the rest were still closed. Perhaps I should have been a little more daring and used the additional cells to create a split. The honey is taking forever to be capped. I'm getting a refractometer this week and I'll be checking the water content throughout the hives. If it's low enough, I'm going to pull the supers. I'm needing to get in there and treat the hives for mites and also check for small hive beetles soon.....

We checked all six hives for honey. While it's our first year and don't expect any, we did get four frames that we were able to harvest. We got to use a few new tools - a refractometer and honey bandit. We also checked in on one of the hives for a new queen. We didn't find one but we did see about five of the queen cells were opened.

Hastily made bee vac. I made it with the materials I had on hand and the bees paid the price. I've since improved (hopefully) the area around the suction and it should subject the bees to such high force and also abrasive materials.

A quick video with some highlights of our first year as beekeepers. Out of our original 6 hives, only one hive made it through the winter. We have a quick look back, some prep work for our next season. We'll get the first of our packages in March and then two more in April. Be on the lookout for a new video in mid March. It's going to be great season!

This is a quick video showing how we use oxalic acid to treat for mites. We're going to do 3 treatments - one treatment each week for three weeks. This is the second treatment.