I did go to the apiaries to pull honey with my young beekeeper. I was expecting about 30-40 supers of honey and only collected five. I have two more that I can pull when I take an empty super to replace the full ones. This one hive is very strong. I split it one time and it swarmed three times after that.

Just when you think that you are making headway, Mother Nature throws you a curve. I do know that in order to have a good?! crop of honey, you have to make a simple schedule and visit the apiaries on a semi-regular basis. That way you can see if the colonies need help or not. That has been my downfall this year. The excuses kept coming up and I just didn’t make the choice to ignore them and go to the bee yards anyway.

I now have to start making plans for the summer. That is the time to start getting the colonies ready for Winter. In order for the bees to have a chance to get through the winter months, I will have to requeen with fall queens if I can find them or at least raise queens myself so the colonies will have young queens to lay eggs so that enough bees will hatch before the cold gets here. The young queens will not shut down their egg laying as soon as the older queens will. That means stronger colonies to go into the winter. The fall queens will also start laying eggs earlier in January and February. By March, the bees will be so strong that it will be necessary to put two or three supers on at the same time for the Spring honey flow just to help prevent swarming.

Maybe this is good for me, to kick start me into making good plans and executing them in a timely manner. But in the meantime, I need to get some honey ready to take to a customer and to my dad’s 90th birthday party Friday in Mississippi. Then the following week, I will bottle some quarts to take to Texas for my siblings.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Monday!