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Please read and decide for yourself. Full story is right here.
I checked on the super over the weekend- not much build-out going on up there yet. I have the queen excluder on there and we’ll see how that goes over the next few weeks. I had about a dozen or so bees in the super when I opened it up, so at least some are investigating. I suppose this means they don’t feel the need to go up there yet. I’m glad I have it on there though – alleviates the possibility of the bees feeling cramped down below. Population is definitely up into the summer sizes – the queen has done her job well. Full hive breakdown inspection on the schedule for this weekend – so we’ll see how they are doing in the hive bodies. -Will
Aside from its deliciousness, honey has been long used for its antiseptic properties as well as a preservative. It was also used by the Egyptians as part of their funerary rites. In the following passage, Abd-Allatif-al-Baghdadi – a medieval explorer of the tombs of Egypt- relates a discovery:
Source - The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, By Budge E a Wallis, E. A. Wallis Budge
Hey all! FOTB Greg and I did a quick inspection of the hive and add the second hive body. Things are looking pretty good! The movie is a bit shorter than usual as our storage space was a bit tight. Enjoy! Things are looking pretty good in there – they have build out on the frames ‘downstairs’ and I’ll be checking the top box in a few weeks to see how things are going. How are your hives doing? Drop me a line and share the news. Regards, Will
Hi all! I have to thank all of you that wrote in, posted or left feedback. You all were great- with insights and solidarity. I’ve recommitted myself to getting ‘back on the saddle’ and am back to stay. Since I’ve written last, I installed a new package of bees after doing a full clean out of the hive. It was a very rainy week when the package arrived, so (much to Mrs. Beekeeper’s skeptical eyes) I kept the package in the basement for three days. I mixed up a 50/50 mix of sugar water and sprayed them down morning and evening to keep them fed until the weather broke long enough to install. Unfortunately FOTB Greg was unavailable to film the install but we did take a good bit of pics- those will follow soon. (I promised documentation of the post mortem on the hive and Mrs Beekeeper and I did document frame by frame the breakdown of the hive.. I will post them at some later date. ) For now, the excitement is the new hive! I went back out two days later to ensure the queen was released from her lil cage and she was- even spotted her walking around on the frame. I put the top feeder on and all is going well so far. Will post pics soon! Back for good, Will
I’m sorry that this post, and any activity really, has been a long time coming. Out here in the Philly suburbs, we had a long and late winter. As I posted before, I saw activity after the next to the last storm of the winter. I am very sorry to inform everyone.. However, the hive did not survive the last storm of the winter. I can tell you, I was unprepared for how this would affect me.. It’s difficult to state how emotionally attached one gets to the family of bees you are raising. Once I discovered that the hive had collapsed, it was like I was kicked in the stomach. Since I discovered this, I have been going through a bit of a ‘dark night of the beekeeper’s soul’. Should I continue? Can I add value to people by offering advice while I lost my own hive? I believe I can add value by sharing my mistakes but will people still listen? On the positive side, I am committed to installing a new package in May. I think I have come to the conclusion to ask all of you. Should I In any case, I will photo document the State of the hive as I go through the boxes and inspect the frames. Please drop me a line. Regards, Will Hi folks! I took a walk out to the hive after we had (more) snow out here on the East coast. The landing board had a nice layer of snow on there and I was pleasantly surprised that the bees had shoveled their walk!
Bee good! Will
Mrs Beekeeper sent over this link to share with all of you. Looks very disturbing. Best reasons yet for buying your honey locally from a local beekeeper! Read this story that discusses the dark side of where the honey on most shelves comes from. Warm regards, Will
First, I want to thank Dave – a reader here at suburbanbeekeeper.com – for pointing this out. He posted a comment on the original article recommending that we all read two additional sources regarding this recent story – that of the potential ‘one-two punch’ of fungal and viral sources of CCD. I’ve read the sources he posted and want to highlight his information with this post. I believe his point (and that of the article on cnn.com) is valid. There seems to be enough of a potential conflict of interest to cast doubt on the single source cause of CCD and, as I’ve written here in the past, removing pesticides as a potential contributing factor may be premature. If a scientist is funded by Bayer, the lightning rod attracting copious attention with their pesticide products that have been linked with negatively impacting hive populations in the past, then may not the scientist be motivated to find a cause rooted in a non-pesticide source? Here’s Dave’s post (thanks again Dave) and I urge you all to read both articles and make up your own minds. Please also read these two articles in sequence:
Regards, Will |
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There is strong evidence that neonicotinoids – a class of pesticide first used in agriculture in the mid 1990s at exactly the time when mass bee disappearances started occurring – are involved in the deaths. The evidence against these chemicals is strong enough that they have been banned or suspended in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia
The semi-truck was hauling the bees from California to North Dakota when the driver veered off the shoulder, tipping more than 400 hive boxes and honey.
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