The bee keeper diaries

[Iowanian]

Spring update time.

Everything that survived the slaughter of summer '22, is still alive heading into March. There is hope.

I'm doing some things differently this year and I'm regrouping.
This year, I'm again running 2 bee yards, and I'm going to do a 3rd that I use as a quarantine yard. Anytime I catch a swarm or obtain wild bees, they go to the quarantine yard, get mite treatments and after they stay healthy for 3-4 weeks, I'll move them to a main yard.

I've pre-ordered some nucs of bees from 3 different people. I have ordered a new variety of queen, the Cordovan Italian. I'm going to use half of those to replace queens in hives that were mean last year or didn't produce. The other half I'm going to use for splits. I've got queens coming from 2 other producers as well, and they're more of a "mutt" that has been developed by some people in the state.

My plan is to split everything I buy evenly. If I buy 4 from producer A, I'm going to run 2 in 10 frame boxes at home, and 2 in 9 frame boxes in the 2nd yard. I'm going to try to do a better job of tracking temperament, production etc and use this as a learning and growing year with the goal to get my hive numbers back up where I need them, and produce a lot more honey. I'm pretty good at selling it, now I've got to back it up with production and try to make enough money back to be worth the hours and stings.

Hopefully this year the juice is worth the squeeze.

If there is still interest, I'll keep posting and making a few videos again this year.