Instead of telling you what I have done or what I am planning on doing, I have decided to give you some things of what not to expect!

If you want to have bees for honey or pollination or just to watch, don’t expect them to do all the work by themselves. For one thing, the bees will not stay in the hive and keep grinding out the honey. If you leave them alone and not visit the hive, the supers will not place themselves on the hive at the appropriate time. If the super is full of honey, the bees will not build more comb on the outside of the boxes. The bees will not shut down and wait for you or someone else to come along and give them more space, they will just leave and find a suitable place for themselves.

If you want more bees and you do not visit the hive to make sure they have more brood space, then the bees will not make more space on the bottom of the bottom board so the queen can lay more eggs. They will just leave and find a suitable place for themselves.

If you want the Varroa mites to kill you colony, then you must stay away and not do a thing. You cannot think the colony to do what you have come to expect of it by staying on your couch and watching TV.

If you don’t want to learn about bees or you don’t want to know what the bees need, then by all means put the American Bee Journal and the Bee Culture magazines down and don’t read any more, and you might as well not read my blog any more either. This will insure that you will lose you bees in a short time span.

Author’s note: In this time and era, you must help the bees do what they do best. You really have to help them. The way the world is setup where all the different countries have seaports, airports, etc., the pests and viruses have been spread to all the different countries, with just a very few exceptions. All the enemies of the honey bees have been brought to where the bees are and they have to have some help from you, the beekeeper, in order to survive. Ask around and see if there are any wild bees left.

Have a wonderful day Monday as that is the Day of Independence for the United State of America!