It feels like August was just yesterday, with throngs of tourists packing the main arcade at Pike Place and bees getting ready for a long break in available forage. And then it was all of a sudden October and I had only done two rounds, maybe three on a few locations, of 2 to 1 thick sugar syrup feed to fatten up food reserves for all our hives. And now it's mid December, and I've let myself continue to prioritize other tasks, projects, and worries over my baby bees. I think, though, that I tend to be really hard on myself, always driving to do everything to its fullest and to the far reaches of my best try...and I...
What a couple of gorgeous days we've had up here in soggy 'ol western Washington! The rains let up and we marched ourselves and hundreds of lbs of frame honey out through muddy fields and farm pastures to get our ladies fed! We hold back tons of honey during extraction to feed back, if needed, to strong springtime clusters. I'm hesitant to say the word Springtime just yet, as we likely will have a million gallons of steadily-pouring rain yet to deal with, but after the recent cold snaps, I knew whatever bees were still alive would likely need a little treat to boost morale in the hive. It was also a nice day to cart out any unused equipment that...
these are the three sizes and varieties of italian honeybees that make up a hive. There is, and can only be, one queen. There are thousands and thousands of her daughter worker bees, and all year long the queen will lay eggs for more workers. Then there are the drones. The drones are the male honeybee who get to live in the hive for about 7 months out of the year, here in western washington. They are good for one thing, and that is to mate with a virgin queen as she first emerges. The drones can't help defend the hive because they have no stinger, they can't help feed the hive because they don't forage. They just laze around,...
Honey has been coming in from all the apiaries, so much so that I haven't been able to spend as much time on the website as I'd like. Someday soon I'll have really uniform product images and an updated inventory. But between driving north and south, traffic, markets, extracting, bottling, hand writing labels, and many AWESOME house guests, I just haven't gotten to it! We have extracted and sold most of the early springtime wildflower honey from our Seattle urban hives, and now just in the last two days have extracted 300 more lbs of farm fresh Blueberry blossom honey! I'm right handed and use that arm for most of the extracting (hand-crank, folks!) and as of today I'm a...
