We just completed our first harvest  of the season on June 27, 2015 and we are off to a good start!  This harvest was well under the numbers we had last year at this time, but we expect the bees will pick up production as the summer heats up.  All of the usual crew came out for harvest this year plus some new guests. Mike and Emalaine stopped by and helped out for a while.  Mike is thinking about getting some hives of his own and has been going...

This is my friend, Mike, inspecting some of our hives in Davisburg, MI on Father’s Day…looks like we are ready to take some honey off!!  Mike is thinking about getting into beekeeping and has joined me on some of my hive yard inspections this year. In the next photo, we are examining drone cells found up in the honey super…these should hatch out and be gone before we extract. We found lots of worker bees, female and drone...

Keith and Laura in Clarkston recently called me to help get their new Warre hives ready for the season.  Having never seen a Warre style hive, I was curious and was glad to help.     Here are some images from my visit: This is an photo of the bees drawing out the top bars with wax comb.  Photo angle is from the bottom.  Bar pacing is similar to a Langstroth hive but but there are no frames or foundation.  It is amazing how fast the...

Mia and I tried the Clarkston Farmers’ Market on Saturday, October 11th.  It was brisk but sunny and sales were good.  Notice Mia’s blanket?  We found that the Clarkston Farmers’ Market is a great place to sell our honey.  It was surprising how well informed the market customers were about honeybees and raw honey.  Our special brand of raw honey was well appreciated and sales reflected it. Please join us again on October 18th,...

Last weekend we visited the Clarkston Farmers’ Market and happily discovered that they need a new honey vendor.  We plan to join the other local farmers on Saturday, October 11th.  It has been years since we did a market because our honey sells out every year without this kind of marketing.  Fortunately, we had a record harvest this year and now we need to add a few more local customers.  The market is winding down for the year but there...

The past couple of weekends we have been really busy harvesting our first crop of honey for 2014.   It seems that every year the timing and color of our crop is different.  The season’s late start due to the long, cold winter combined with a relatively cool and wet summer has given us a bumper honey crop, despite the heavy winter honey bee losses we experienced.  The honey is light colored and sweet. When we harvest, it’s an all...