Spring

With spring comes more hours of daylight, spring breaks, warmer temps, gardening, and bees! It looks like spring officially starts on Monday, March 20th.  Thank goodness, I think we’re all ready to put winter behind us. The cold temperatures can be tough on us AND honey. I’ve noticed some of my stored honey starting to crystalize. Crystalized honey is thick and hard to pour but it’s completely safe to consume. A simple fix is to place the bottle in a bowl of warm water. It takes patience if it’s a large jar and is mostly crystalized but smaller bottles will return to the liquid state within a few minutes. Here’s a quick link with a general summary about crystallization if you’re interested: 

Honey Crystallization: Why Does it Happen and How to Use It Anyway?

Ultimately, if you notice your honey starting to crystalize, don’t throw it out…just warm it slowly until it returns to a liquid.

This winter was pretty easy on us as beekeepers…remember, we lost both of our hives last fall. We were without hives to overwinter. To say we have missed the bees would be a complete understatement. We can’t wait to get started again this spring with bees back in our yard. We have two nucs on order and will also be looking to catch a swarm. I didn’t anticipate trying to catch swarms this early in our beekeeping journey but the price of bees is a couple hundred dollars…a swarm trap cost me $40.00. As the swarm season rolls in, the little beekeeper and I will be placing and keeping our eye on our swarm trap. Stay tuned for details on how that goes. 

As long as we are talking “spring” let’s talk about our spring break out to Arches National Park. If you’ve never been, it’s worth a trip. We spent a few days hiking and taking in the surrounding sites.

As we were driving in the area, I noticed their highway signs looked to have a beehive on them. I found this particularly exciting!

 I also noticed stuffed bees in the visitors centers. At that point I was certain there had to be a connection.

Curiosity had me ask and I learned that Utah is “the beehive state”. The state flag even has a beehive on it. Who knew?

The honeybee is also the state’s official insect. While Utah ranks 24^th in US honey production I didn’t see any bee boxes on our trip. I’m not sure if the bees would thrive in the Moab area or not…it was hard to imagine what the bees would work. There’s just a lot of rock everywhere. Nonetheless, Utah moved up on my list of favorite states for two reasons on this trip…arches and bees! 

We’ll keep you posted on our plans to expand this spring. We had hoped to double our hives this year thinking additional hives would provide more opportunities and resources to grow. There’s also the fear that losses could be greater as well. The little beekeeper is determined to manage one hive all by himself. I think he is feeling a little left out/hands off when it comes to the bees so I agreed that he could 100% have his own hive. I think he has forgotten how many times he opted out of hive checks because it was hot or he had other things he needed/wanted to do. Either way, I’m all for him having the ownership and responsibility…it’s one of the best ways to learn in my opinion. I really hope his hive will do well. Maybe it will even be a swarm we catch this spring…how cool would that be?!?!?!? 

Try to enjoy your last few days of winter – we are beyond ready for spring to settle in and stay! 

-Worker Bee 2021