The weather has been pretty marginal for bees this past week. Generally, bees need weather above 55 degrees Fahrenheit to mobilize their workforce, though many colonies will venture out at temperatures down into the high 40s. Our girls seem to be willing to fly when temperatures are in the low 50s down to the upper… Read more

After more than 6 months of planning and work, the bees are finally here. We traveled to Lakeside. Virginia, a suburb of Richmond in Henrico County to pick up the bees this morning! They made the car ride back in good order, though one of the two colonies was still a bit “Fiesty” when they… Read more

The Virginia Department of Agriculture, in Conjunction with BeeCheck.org maintains an voluntary inventory of managed apiaries in the Commonwealth. the url is https://va.beecheck.org/map The site is intended to be a tool for both citizen and commercial pesticide applicators to learn of the presence of bees nearby intended application sites so that they can prevent drift… Read more

This past weekend, we took the hives out of storage, sorted all our equipment and assembled the equipment necessary to transfer or 5 frame nucs we will receive into the 10 frame equipment they will spend the summer in. The hives will start off with a 10 frame deep (9-1/8 inch) brood boxes with two… Read more

It has been a lot of work, but we are now all set for the bees. We have heard from Ron Stillwell some good news! The bees are healthy and because of the warm weather will be ready to transfer to our apiary a week ahead of schedule on March 4. We are waiting for… Read more

Over the past two weeks we have gotten alot of the things together we will need to look after our bees. In addition to tools and equipment we already had, we have two new bee suits, sugar and pollen patties to feed the bees until the nectar flow starts later this spring. We will be… Read more