Bald is Bee-u-tiful!

All for a good cause.  Nice job Zach.

St. Baldrick's Foundation

All Systems Go!

 Happy Birthday to my Big Sister, Anne...she's a Queen and Bee-u-tiful inside and out!  

Here's how a Queen joins an existing hive...she travels with a few attendants and a sugar plug.  We picked her up last Friday thinking the hive that swarmed twice was still queenless but to our surprise we found the queen on Easter Sunday and she's productive.  So off this queen went to another beekeeper in the Raleigh area on Earth Day!  I hope she's a good girl and lays lots of eggs for her new owner.  

Here's the Queen in hive #3...we'll just call her Bee Bee!  

New frame with fresh capped brood.  Looking good! 

Spring has sprung!  

Two Swarms in Two Weeks...

Two early swarms in two weeks = 2 hives but only one queen... so I  decided to take brood from the front box (the one with the queen) and place it in the back box (the hive that swarmed not once but twice). Anyhow, with no queens in the area for sale, we are attempting to force the queenless hive to make a queen with the fresh brood.  It takes 14 days for a queen to incubate. Now we wait!