New Queen Arrived

Today, my new queen arrived from Alabama (Rossman Apiarys). I placed her in the nuc hive accordingly and moved the hive about 5 miles away to another location. The nuc has 3 frames with lots of honey and I placed a honey feeder in the place of the 4th frame. I filled the frame feeder with about 1 pint of honey for the bees to enjoy while all of the change is going on. Hopefully they will prosper. I used the stand that I built in the demonstration video in the blog below.

Fall Harvest

Today I extracted the honey from my 4 hives today. Actually only 3 of the hives had enough to extract but I ended up with 3.5 gallons. I made sure to leave the hives with plenty of honey for the winter as well. We are having a major blooming of flowers here in La and the bees are working like crazy. I think they still have time to replenish what I took. The honey was somewhat darker than the spring honey and I thought it would not be as sweet, but I was wrong, this darker honey is actually smoother tasting and sweeter for some reason. So far this is the best honey I have ever tasted from my hives. I also took 2 frames of brood/honey/and bees from my best hive and added it to my new nuc hive, the queen will arrive this week and I will introduce her to her new nuc. I hope I am able to keep it through the winter. I have plenty of honey to feed the nuc. This weekend I mounted my John Deere and plowed several acres of my tree farm land and I planted a white clover for the bees next spring. I do not know much about the clover but it is suppose to have a large white flowering head. The type of clover is called Ladino.

Hive Recovery

I gave my father in law a hive earlier this year and it did not prosper. In fact, it lost the majority of the bees. He is not a bee keeper but he wanted a hive for his garden. I inspected the hive the other day and there was only about 2-300 bees in the hive but the queen was still present. No eggs, no brood. I took the frames that had the bees and queen and placed them in a nuc hive. I ordered a new queen and she is to arrive next week. I also added a couple of frames from my good hives to the nuc hive to strenghten the numbers. I am hoping that with the addition of a new queen (after I kill the old queen) will at least allow the hive to survive until next spring. I plan to feed the hive often through out the winter and hopefully will have a nice healthy start on a new hive for next year. We have wildflowers in full bloom this time of year especially the golden rod.

How I build my hive stands

Hive stands are often overlooked to new beekeepers. I feel as though a simple and effective hive stand is of utmost importance especially here in the south where crawling insects can totally destroy a hive. I have included a video on how I build my simple but strong hive stands. I hope this helps.

Photo's of the garden

Ahh, Louisiana Jalapeno

Tomatos

Tommytoes

These are great with a salad.
We eat these bell peppers on home made pizza and home made spaghetti omong other food.

They are as good as they look.

O yea, the watermellon is nearly ready to harvest. See the earlier post to see how much it has grown.

Golden Rod Now Blooming

I just noticed that the golden rod wild flowers are now blooming around here. I just checked my hive this weekend and they have not grown very much. Hot, dry, not much to feed on. Hopefully they will now grow with the fall flowers beginning to bloom. I planted 2 rows of english peas last week and they are up and looking good. I also planted 9 broccoli plants but 2 were cut down by cut worms. Still harvesting bell peppers, cucumbers, squash, and jalapeno peppers.