September 2020: Fall Bee Check

Catherine's honeybee experiment survived half a season at the farm - yay! The colony she installed in May stayed put in the hive and grew a little (although not a lot). They did not make enough honey stores for her to add a honey super for harvesting, and in this inspection she determined that they probably did not even make enough honey stores to make it through the winter. Boo. We talked to her bee club and determined that in order to give them a chance at overwintering, she needed to move them down to only one brood box so they would clump together more and keep the queen warm, and feed them once or twice so they could make some quick honey stores. She wasn't able to locate the queen on the frames, but all we can do is hope she is still there and makes it through! Basically what we learned this first summer is how much we don't know, but overall the hive is doing ok. Also I learned the bees hate me, I react poorly to stings, bee suits are not fool-proof, and it takes a lot of mental energy for me to stay calm and helpful while bees are divebombing warnings at my suited head that they don't like me by their home. Catherine has none of these problems, thankfully.

The kids and I had just made a quick overnight for a bee check on this trip, but I told them after the hive inspection was done we could go into town for ice cream. We were rewarded by a most amazing sunset beginning to glow on our drive down, so we quickly collected our ice cream and walked to the bridge so we could watch the sunset over the river. It was such a good sunset that even my phone pics are ok.