I had a bee inspection the 1st week in November and we gathered some samples from each apiary to send to the bee lab.

I received a phone call from my state bee inspector yesterday saying that I did not have American Foul Brood or Africanized Honey Bees. I was very pleased with that report, however, the next sentence was a puzzler. He said that the bee lab needs samples of bees from each of my hives in two apiaries. The reason—my bees are too big. They have not seen bees that are over sized like mine apparently are.

The weather was rainy today and he doesn’t work on Sunday, so maybe Monday or Tuesday, if the weather is kind of warm and sunny, we will go and get the samples. I don’t know just how big my bees are, but from the way he talked, my bees are larger than European Honey Bees and smaller than Bumble bees. I haven’t done anything different than I have done in the past.

I’ll let you know when I get the results back.