Catch-up: Bees

[cantigajoy]

Bee Harvest: We harvested last weekend. We used a new beekeeping method this year. We started in the spring with our two hives from last year. We split them and added two new queens to the mix, bringing us to a total of four hives this summer. (Technically, two "horizontally split" hives with four queens, but I think that's just to make it sound

Comments

[rhiannonredwulf]

POUNDS of honey. I have huge amounts of respect for your bee-keeping. That's a fabulous heritage of mead you'll have coming.

So is the new method in response to the honeybee die-backs? It does take some getting used to. But wow, how period of you guys. That's actually the medieval method of bee-keeping. You kill the older hives when you harvest, and only winter over the newer hives. I always assumed it was callousness on the part of the beekeepers, but perhaps it also had a purpose behind it.

[cantigajoy]

It is sort of medieval, isn't it? Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't thought of it like that. There's a great deal of pushback in the beekeeping community. It sure does go against common sense. Why would we kill off a perfectly good colony? But it's working well for the Minnesota bee lab (one of the best in the country), and that's encouraging.

[turnberryknkn]

Pounds of honey! Wow. :-)