how are the bees?

Tom inspecting one of the nuc frames (yellow coreopsis blooming in the field)

A lot of people ask us, “How are the bees?” I suppose the answer depends on the time of year. Coming off a spring that was wet and cold, the bees looked pretty dismal going into May and June. This spring for us saw a loss of about 40%. The norm has historically been around 15%. 

Because there are so many losses, larger beekeepers are now realizing that in order to have enough bees to provide the honey demand, they have to build up colonies. That usually means splitting the healthy hives, and re-queening them as well as putting new queens in many of the other hives. This ensures a healthy and vibrant queen who gets down to business laying brood and building up the colony. 

Last week Tom started a number of nucs (pronounced “Nukes”) and set up an electric fence to keep bears at bay. We’re pretty lucky here as far as bears go, but I did wake up not too long ago to see a huge male bear out in our wildflower field. When I said that I saw a bear, Tom nearly levitated out of bed holding visions of the bear tearing apart the beeyard. It sniffed the oak tree and lumbered away over the fence row.

Now at the end of June, the bees are filling up the hives to overflow. Beekeeping is so weather dependent. If we have a week of overcast weather, the bees tend to stay inside the hive, and the population will get larger very fast until they start to swarm. Then we may lose half the hive if they fly off. Sometimes you get lucky and just happen to be in the yard when they start to swarm and we (Tom) may be able to catch them. It’s loud, full of energy and quite exciting, but very frustrating to watch 25,000 bees fly away.