I only had a small bit of time in the garden this afternoon ...I was in a rush to add another small honey super to the bee hive. The 300 acres of sunflowers are blooming and the bees are working their bee butts off. I've had so many problems with my bees this season, I want to make sure they have plenty of room when the nectar flows. It looks like I'll get at least a hundred pounds of honey from the hives that survived the herbicide spray, wax moth, unusually cold season and the swarming we've suffered. I've been feeding pollen patties so they've been hatching brood like crazy. Instead of splitting the hives I added a couple large supers on each hive in July and kept the bees fed hoping to strengthen the hives. Today when I checked the 3 large supers on each hive were full of brood, pollen and honey. The squash, melons and squash are also blooming along with the sunflowers...lots and lots of nectar: I'll most likely have to add several more small supers before the season ends. The bees brought into the fields for pollination will be swarming, too...so I've set-up a half dozen nuc hives to see if I can capture any...I love free bees! It's been hot so I've had to make sure all of the bees are watered. The field bees come into my apiary and drink gallons of water. I've added several areas for all the bees to get a drink.
3 comments:
We have bees at our place-a local fella brings his hives for the summer. Our small scummy pond is just loaded with thirsty bees. I resorted to putting small pans of water out for them. I like your idea of putting branches in the bowls-very smart! I always feel bad-it seems so many bees drown in the pond.
The branches help them not drown...always makes me so sad to see the poor things floating in the water.
Gorgeous pictures! I may have to pick your brain in the future... bees are on our list of things to add to the new property. I love honey, but getting in locally is incredibly expensive.
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