Grandfatherly Prerogative

From Steve:

Okay, this is outside the main business of the blog, but I can't help posting three photos of my grandson Wilder at the hives in late June.

Four Stories and Counting

Update from Steve:

Last Monday morning, I rendezvoused with Arvin in Gilbert to pick up two loaner supers.  He wasn't surprised to hear how well our bees are doing, since "everything's blooming."  He repeated how impressed he is with the health of our hives and said, perhaps jokingly, we might end up with four supers on each hive by the end of the season, although he thinks three more likely.  He said all this blooming might just come to an abrupt halt without more rain.

Late that afternoon, warm, blue skies, Chris, Geetha, Melissa and I added the supers to our hives. The hives looked great, with Blue's first super nearly full, too.  We each held a frame full of honey, amazed as always at the heft of the thing.  The hive itself much weigh over a hundred pounds.  We sampled Green's very light, golden honey.  Delicious--although Geetha said it lacked the "citrus" edge of honey she had sampled from Blue.

Monday night a whopper of a storm hit--at least where I live.  My heavy, full garbage can up at the top of our road blew over, which made me nervous about those new, towering supers that had yet to be glued down.  So I drove out Tuesday morning to make sure all was well with the ladies.  Yup, nothing had budged.

With a fair bit of luck, we might just end up with an extra two for four supers full of honey for ourselves at the end of the season.  Maybe we could sell it to raise some dough for the next hive bodies.

Super Supers

I, Steve, took Clare out to the hives for her first visit.  And what a visit.  The super in Blue had six or seven frames drawn out.  And Green's super was full.  Also, we saw drones flying in and out of Green.  I'm a little nervous Green might be poised to swarm, so I intend to get another super on each hive pronto.

Varroa mites = negative!

This last Friday, Steve drove Chris, David, Geetha, and me (Claire) to the hives to meet Arvin, who led us through our first check for varroa mites. (Given that - spoiler alert, if you didn't read the post title! - we didn't find any, it may also have been our last check before winter).

There are different methods, but Arvin's choice procedure involves rolling bees in powdered sugar, which I like to imagine they maybe enjoy, or at least tolerate. We checked combs for queen activity, evened out aberrant sections of comb-pulling (some with honey, some with larvae - some with both!), then filled a mason jar with bees - about 1/3 full - and a tablespoon of powdered sugar. The lid has a metal grid on it but the bees were small enough to get out, so we worked quickly, rolling the bees around (looked like we were coating them in flour) and then shaking out the jar over a laminated, gridded white sheet of paper.