🐝💗Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!💗🐝

[drstratton]

After catching our swarm we needed to get some new deeps and supers. My husband decided to build some instead of buying. So we went to town and stopped by Lowe's. They had the below stack of cull lumber listed at $68. We could see that it had cedar and also redwood lumber in it. I went inside to buy it and it wound up costing us a little over $37. They reduced it to 90% off. Best lumber deal we've ever gotten. Such a wonderful gift. God is so good.

We had enough cedar to build 5 deeps, 3 supers and a screened bottom board. You can see the 1st deep and bottom board he built last week on our swarm hive. I will be coating them all in wax.

Bees are so resourceful. When we moved the swarm into the new deep, just 2 days after catching it, we could see that they had already built out enough new comb and the queen was already laying eggs...truly amazing.
New deep & screened bottom board with a top feeder in place.

 

[drstratton]

June 11th
Our bees continue to amaze me. The 2 nucleus hives we installed in April continue to have compact brood patterns, they have also almost filled out two supers of honey. The package we installed on 5.7.25 also has a beautiful pattern. The swarm we caught on 6.2.25 already has capped brood, lots of eggs & larvae. Just amazing.
All of these girls have had to work hard to draw out comb as this is our first season. If those queens had fully drawn comb to start with, I have no doubt the brood would be edge to edge.
Hopefully we can help them to produce strong winter bees. I will be sad if we lose the calm productive queens that we have been blessed with.
From our package hive!

 

[drstratton]

June 13th

The girls are loving our Mimosa tree

 

[drstratton]

June 19th
2 weeks ago we decided that we wanted a frame of honey that we could also harvest with the comb. So we put a frame in one of our supers without foundation. Last week nothing had been done with it. This week they are drawing it out beautifully.

A beautiful capped frame of honey.

Fast forward to today..
Sadly, they decided to raise drones in this instead of honey. So, I removed it and we started over. I saw nectar in it 2 days ago, so we'll see what it looks like on our next inspection.

 

[drstratton]

Bees and blooms!

The flowers we planted next to the Apiary are so beautiful now and the bees love them.

On a Shasta Daisy

Italian Bee and an American Sand wasp on a Showy Milkweed.
I read that Honeybees will forego other nectar sources when Showy Milkweed is in bloom and the honey is supposed to be really good. They were definitely all over it.

Some better shots of the sand wasp. Such a beautiful pollinator and useful in the fact that they catch flies for their young, but they utilize nectar for themselves.

This is a where's Waldo picture...lol
Flying towards my False Spirea, from the right. The bees love this plant.

Bumblebee and Honeybees on this Dahlia make for a beautiful picture!

A little blonde! This is a cordovan Italian Bee. I think she came from my swarm hive. So pretty!

 

[drstratton]

I sit by my hives most mornings, enjoying a cup of tea. I was so mesmerized watching them fly in and then jet out of the hives. I decided to take a slow motion video. So fun! This was 2 weeks ago.

 

[drstratton]

July 12th, 2025
We've already had many days of triple digits, with more to come. We're getting to old to be standing out in the sun in 100+ degree weather as we inspect our bees. So we put up a temporary cover until we have the time and energy to build an arbor over the top of our Apiary. My husband wants grapes, I want to plant a start we took from the Wisteria that my mom gave to me. We also added a fan, set to come on when the temp hits 78°. It has really helped the bees and us to be more comfortable. They are not bearding as much as they were.

 

[drstratton]

My fun little bee watering station (it's set on a timer and gets filled with water 3x's a day) and a larger trough. Bees can use a gallon of water on hot days.

 

[drstratton]

This post finally brings us to our first extraction.

July 11th, 2025
Yesterday we extracted our first honey. We were able to pull 13 fully capped frames. We will hopefully pull the rest in two weeks. Then we will do our 2nd mite treatment after removing all of our honey supers. We will have another nectar flow this fall. It will come from buckwheat. It makes a very dark and strong flavored honey. Not my favorite, but it's supposed to be one of the healthiest honey's.

Dale decided to remove the cappings with a heat gun. The top layer of honey was barely warm. It worked perfectly.

In our extractor!

Finally the reward of beautiful, golden and delicious honey!

We got around 3 gallons of honey or about 42 lbs. Such an amazing journey, bees are truly awe inspiring. Totally worth all of the work we put into it.

This is from the first 8 frames. 26lbs of pure honey with no sugar syrup.

 

[drstratton]

July 13th, 2025

It was around 100° yesterday, so the bees were bearding on their front porch. It's supposed to hit 105° today and I have no doubt it's going to get there. I'm so glad we gave them shade and air movement, or it would be even worse for them.