I took advantage of that "cold" front and inspected my production hives this afternoon. I hate breaking down big hives in the summer heat and typically don't do it. After having the confirmed AFB this spring, I wanted to check and make sure none of the hives that I had at that time were exibiting any symptoms. Thank the Good Lord, they aren't.

We typically enter our summer dearth here no later than the 2nd week in June. This year though, we've had over 20" of rain in the past month and there are still a few things blooming. There's a 30 acre pasture about 1/2 mile up the road that has a large amount of white clover in it. I don't know if it's still producing nectar or pollen this late in the year. I also have 2 acres of buckwheat that is in the peak of it's bloom. The only other thing that is still blooming is Devils Walking Stick and there isn't enough of it to influence the flow or lack of. Counting my nucs, all of which are in 5 over 5 boxes I have 22 hives here. I don't think 2 acres of buckwheat is enough to sustain 22 hives. Out of the 10 hives that I checked, I only found one that's taking a brood break. I guess that could be the 3rd, first since bees here shut down during the dearth, but then we aren't having our normal dearth, so the bees are doing what the bees normally do during a flow.

Surprise number one: Drones and Drone brood in more than one hive. I have enough drones in my hives to raise a round of queens if I wish to. This is the first time I have seen Drones in hives later than late June.

Surprise number two: I added another box to each nuc 2 weeks ago today. Those boxes contained frames with Acorn foundation. No drawn comb. I am not feeding and have not fed since mid March. I added the boxes with the intention of starting to feed, but have not done so yet. MUCH to my surprise the frames have been drawn. Those nucs are packed with bees. I don't know if there's enough flow to cause them to draw comb or if they're so crowded that they are drawing it for more space. I'm going to add boxes to all the 10 frame hives and see if I can get comb drawn with them too. I've yet to ever have too much comb.





The buckwheat I planted the day TS Cindy came ashore is really doing well. It's loaded with bees from just after sun up until about lunch. It's over 3' tall.

Awesome. We bout to lose a hive I believe. Queen laying sporadic badly and not very much when checked three weeks ago. Checked again Thursday and they had some queen cells in it. What's funny is we actually seen the bees killing a queen. I am positive it just hatched. There were stingers all in it. We down sized and gonnafigure out what to do.

Congrats on the drawn comb. I'm hoping they draw out the two deeps I moved up in the stack yesterday. I noticed some drone cells too but was just too stupid to know it is supposed to be too late for them. I had about 10 empty queen cells on the bottom of a frame too but I had capped brood in that hive too.

Do you like the buckwheat better than the Hubam clover? I'm definitely going to try and plant something that will bloom in July next year. How big is your buckwheat field?

Forgot to mention that my neighborhood hive is packing in nectar from something. I put two wet supers on after extraction to let them clean it up and was going to take one off last weekend. Top one had three capped frames but the other frames were empty. The bottom of the two had 10 frames of almost full cells of honey. Didn't get home from the farm in time today to check it. I put a top feeder on the other hive at my house and they are not hitting the syrup very hard so there is something around here for them.

Lookin good

country, I'd replace the queen with a laying queen and not lose that hive. A weak hive this time of year will be overtaken by wax moths and small hive beetles. Comb is too valuable to just let em go. IMO it's too late to let them raise a queen.

Wade let me know if yours draw out the comb. It may be completely normal for you to have drones all summer long. Ours get kicked out normally in June when our dearth starts. The buckwheat field is about 2 acres.

Thanks mandeerpig.

x2

Thanks Geno

I extracted 6 1/2 supers today and got 16 gallons of honey.

Nice haul on the honey. Congrats on getting some biscuit covering. How do you sale your honey?

Word of mouth. Although, I'm not going to sell any of this though. I had to pull all my supers when I treated with antibiotics for the AFB. I didn't extract any honey last year due to the drought and I was out of honey. A beekeeper should never be out of honey so I decided to risk one hive and not treat it with antibiotics. It was real early in the flow and I only had one super on my biggest hives but they were nearly full, so I took them all off, and put them on the one untreated hive. It turned out pretty good, they capped all of it and kept the beetles and wax moths out of it. I had to back my truck up to the hive Sunday afternoon and stand on the tailgate to reach the top super. The top of the hive was 8 feet off the ground.

But as to why I'm not going to sell any of this.... Since I was treating the other hives, I can't be 100% certain that no robbing took place which means that there's a possibility that there may be a trace of antibiotics in it. I don't want to risk it. Fortunately for my family, they're gonna get a lot of honey this year.

Fur, Ive sent you a PM.....HELP!!

I sent you and answer....

I forgot to axe you, do you have a bee suit?

10-4 on the honey. I can sell all of mine at church or work, the little bit I have been fortunate enough to harvest the past couple of years. Hopefully I will start having enough after next year to possibly break even one year.

I was the lucky recipient of several jars of fresh honey from a friend and just WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!! It is delicious!!! I have the utmost respect for our beekeepers!!!

Wade, Good Lord willing, I'm gonna have 15 hives for honey production next year. I've tried to get to that number for a couple of years and I have a good shot at it now, barring some unforeseen event like I had this spring.

Maggie I can tell by your posts and pictures that you'd make a great beekeeper. It takes a lot of work to make the honey.

Fur. We got a queen that needs killing I think. She lays only on two frames and a spot about 6 inches by 6 inches. That's it. We have moved the frames around and still the same. A lot of drone brood. She young and looked in it yesterday. Gonna give her another couple weeks but looks like the bees are making a decision for me with a queen cell it looks. Thoughts.

Replace her with a lying queen. IMO it's too late in the year to be raising queens.

The amount of brood at this time of year doesn't concern me because most bees in my area take a brood break or slow down a bunch during our summer dearth. Laying spotty drone brood in worker cells is a sure fire signal that she's failing. Into experience if you don't replace her now, you'll lose the hive during the winter due to queen failure.