“Oh Bother”

It’s almost embarrassing as a beekeeper to acknowledge that you are out of honey. Last August, as part of our first season of bees, we successfully extracted honey from two supers (one super from each hive). This equates to about 40 pounds of honey that was poured into countless jars. We were able to give honey to many…and honestly, one of my favorite parts of beekeeping is sharing the honey. But now…here we are at almost May, and I’ve poured the last of it out of our last large jar. 

Sad day. I think we have enough left to sustain our household until the next honey harvest but goodness we are close to being dry. It’s a bad feeling, especially when you only have two hives and things can be so temperamental. I sure hope we’ll be able to successfully harvest more honey later this summer. The feeling today had me thinking of Winnie the Pooh…

“Oh bother”. Yep, I feel your pain and concern here Pooh. As the spring pushes on and summer rolls in the bees will continue their work. We’ve been sharing seed packets and hoping homes will plant a few flowers here and there to help out the bees. 

Flowers will also attract birds, dragonflies and butterflies to your yard. It’s really enjoyable to see these visitors throughout the summer. I’d encourage you to do some planting not just for the bees but for yourself as well! 

The countdown continues on hive #1…it’ll be about another week before we can get into the new nuc box to see if the new queen was accepted and is successfully laying. It will be a happy day to move her and her workers back into the larger brood boxes. From there it will feel more like hive #1 will be back on track. And as long as we can keep hive #2 happy (with enough space and no swarm cells) and healthy it should have a second successful harvest this year. Meaning we will have even more honey to share! Because as Pooh knows, it’s a bad feeling when you’re down to your last jar! 

For now, plant some seeds and root for the bees! We certainly appreciate your support! 

Worker Bee 2021