Well it has been a very long time since I posted on the blog. It has been a very busy summer for me as well. I watched my wife graduate too. She is now an RN and loving it. I am very proud of her.
But anyway back to beekeeping. I last left off just after I had established my second colony. I still have both hives and both seem to be doing ok. However, this has not been a good year for me honey wise. I wasn't able to get any surplus honey off either hive. As Dean Stiglitz stated in his book, "Don't risk long term success for short term gains." Only my bee tree hive had actually stored honey, as of a couple weeks ago they only had about 3-4 frames of capped honey. So now I am feeding sugar syrup heavily. I had hoped not to do this but if am to keep either of the two hives through winter it looks like I will have to.
Looking back, I should have feed both of the hives a lot more when I started them. Since they both were foundationless they needed the sugar syrup in order to make the comb. I could have helped out more, and should have, looking back over the year. This was my first year and I have made some mistakes but have learned from them as well. Hopefully things will go a little smoother next year.
My package hive has started to kick out her drones. Which I thought was a little late in the year to be doing, but they teach me different each time I get in the hive.
Till next time, thanks for reading
