Beltane Waxing Garlic Moon Oh, boy. I’ve not gone a day without a post in a long time. Yesterday went by so fast. Worked on Latin for a bit, but a brightening day pulled me outside. I plucked tulip detritus out of a bed where some tomato plants needed to go. These were full grown […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bee Diary: April 17, 2011
Spring Full Bee Hiving Moon First full outdoor morning. Took off all the hive boxes, cleaned every frame and the hive boxes, prepared hive boxes for the packages due next weekend. The divide from last year’s parent colony had a lot of remaining honey, so I put four frames from it in each of two […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bee Diary: Supplemental
Summer Waning Strawberry Moon Got this note back from the Beekeeper’s president: “Also, add supers ASAP. Many hives are plugged with honey in the top box and have swarmed or starting to swarm (They think they have run out of run and most have.) There is a major nectar flow going on right now so […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bee Diary: June 16, 2010
Beltane Waxing Strawberry Moon My inexperience is showing. At the Hobby Beekeeper’s meeting they suggested we look at each frame. I did that. With three colonies that’s a lot of frames. In the package colony it seemed to me that there were not as many bees as there should be right now, though I stopped […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bee Diary: June 7, 2010
Beltane Waning Planting Moon Hive inspections today. Looking to see how the bees are using the other two honey supers I put on last week, now a total of four. They have two almost full, but they have not begun to draw out much comb on the two with bare foundation. At least not yet. […]
Read the rest of this entry »Tincture of Time
Beltane Waning Planting Moon Bee work inside. Kate finished several honey supers and three hive boxes plus frames before she left. I didn’t know how many I would need in her absence. All but one of the honey supers now have foundations. I ran out of foundations and will have to order more. All the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Bee Diary: May 9, 2010
Beltane Waning Flower Moon A new feature on ancientrails, the ancient trail of bee-keeping. This diary will serve as my record of work with my colonies and a way to review the year’s learnings and prepare for next year. From left to right is colony 1, the parent colony of bees started with a package […]
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