Second honey pull of the year. Modest by any measure, but a distinct flavor of the buckwheat. I plowed under the existing buckwheat field, and should get at least one more round before the first frost.
Anywhere but around her eyes. Its a mixture of beeswax, coconut oil, shae butter, and a little lavender extract. I use it mostly on my hand, feet, and elbows; however it can be used anywhere on the skin. I said avoid the eyes, just because I'm not sure how the lavender extract would react with the eyes. It's essentially a harder version of liquid lotion.TSY, my wife was curious how she should be using the lotion bar.
A few updates for those that may be interested in the bee economics. I spent roughly $160 on 100 lbs of buckwheat seed for the 2 acres, plus another $10 or so in diesel fuel for the tractor.Added second deeps to my hives today, and plan to take the supers tomorrow. Looks like the mild spring helped with the NC flow. I'm anxious to see how my cut comb turned out.
The 2 acres of buckwheat is coming in full, so I'll throw the supers on again and see if I can get some buckwheat honey during the dearth.
[mention]tsywake [/mention] I think I'm going to be in town for uva. If it wields out of love to buy some of your stuff. I'll reach out
It's great to learn from someone with experience and work with the bees. Thanks!So, I took my Costco rewards and used it to buy an Instavap. Oxalic acid treatments are in my future later this year.
I dove into the 2 remaining hives with @WFFaithful this afternoon. The hives are strong with good stores and brood, so we condensed them down to single deeps with a queen excluder between the upper brood box. No swarm cells yet, so my swarm prevention methods seem to have worked. I'll probably add a few foundation supers this weeks between the brood boxes for them to draw out since we're expecting warmer weather. In a couple weeks we'll start the NC spring flow and I can consider splitting.
I also hung my first swarm traps of the year. Hoping to get some more free bees this year.
It is extremely rare for a swarm to happen without a queen. However you can miss capturing her. If the new hive doesn't have a queen, the workers might just go home.Inexplicably, I've been called to the same house twice in four days about swarms. I've picked up 5 swarms, all within a 50ft radius of each other. My hives have grown from 2 to 8 in the past two weeks. At this point, I'm running out of equipment and we're barely into swarm season.
I'll check the swarms in a few days to see how many have queens and if they're mated. What a start to bee season.