Beekeeping
As you can probably guess from the title of this blog, our bees have died. I know they were alive in December because we saw some dead ones outside the entrance of the hive. This may sound contradictory but seeing dead bees is actually a good sign because it means that the bees are keeping the hive clean (and throwing out the dead bees).
Last Saturday, Joshua's 4-H beekeeping group had their first meeting. Our leader, Alison, said she had 12 hives going into winter and that 4 were still alive. Another family had 4 hives and 1 made it through the winter. So, it seems that about 25% of hives were successful in our little group.
The silver lining is that the bees did not get around to eating a lot of the honey so I think we can go in and harvest some out. It looks like we will be starting over and I have already placed an order for new bees that should come in April.
We are not sure why the bees did not make it. I don't think we did anything wrong. It is just how it goes with honeybees. It has been one of the coldest and snowiest winters. That may have had some effect. I just love this picture that Henry took of the beehive with all the snow.
So sorry to hear about the bees not making it over the winter! Maybe it will be easier to move them to your new property? When will you be making the move, any news on that?
ReplyDeleteI just replied to mom's comment on the FB...I talked to executor of the estate on Friday and we are working on finalizing the sale agreement which has price, escrow, and closing date...the estate attorney is drafting it up and then we are going to get it to look at it. So, we don't have a final date yet but we are always getting closer. Neither of us have bought/sold a home privately so we are kind of figuring it out as we go along...usually, I just do whatever the real estate agent says but since this is more like a "For Sale By Owner", it is a bit different...
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