Gee's Bees, LLC

We are big fans of the OTS  (mdasplitter.com)  method of rearing queens and splitting a hive. We typically do it in the Spring to help keep swarming down and in Mid-Summer to help knock the mites back and produce fresh queens for next year's Spring build-up. The reason we like it so much is its ease, lack of specialized equipment, and it doesn't require a ton of bee resources. We are a small operation with goals of maintaining six hives: 4 for honey production and 2 support hives for unforeseen, but inevitable situations. So grafting a slew of cells, starter/finisher hives, and mating nucs are not appealing. Plus the lack of fine motor skills put a serious kabash on transferring larvae to a cup. The head beekeeper is not feeling it either, she wants to make honey not bees, so the process just works well for us. We wrote up an OTS Schedule and a process that's in a Google Doc (Gee's Bees OTS Procedure) , but some highlights: Ease It doesn't get much easier than remo...

  A storm is approaching, making all-weather outlets a twitter.  Winter Storm Izzy  is supposed to drop up to 14" of snow on us Friday Saturday  Sunday. Complete pandemonium with rain, snow, sleet, or ice. Or nothing at all. Media is the media and death and destruction sell newspapers or promote clicks. So if there isn't a problem they will create one. Written through a COVID cough. Regardless, after the tree falling incident , we decided we should strap down the hives. So the can be Weebles  https://youtu.be/qq0OQBdIhsc . Except they may fall down, but hopefully won't split apart. Oh, and another book finished:  The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild by   Thomas D. Seeley Matt Gee 's review Jan 12, 2022   ·    edit it was amazing Read 2 times. Last read September 23, 2021 to January 12, 2022. My Private Notes:   (shown only to you) Great account of bees in the wild and how we can implement practices ...

We bottled up another bucket last might. Fresh out of the warmer - ( 🌡️ Warming Honey) , so it ran pretty quick and clear, Totals were: (36) Plastic 1lb Squeeze Bottles, and about 16lbs for personal use. B put the word out on   Gee's Bees | Facebook . We've already sold a couple. That's good, cause we still need to get rid of a couple of hundred pounds yet.

We were able to mix up some more sugar bricks to put back on the hives that toppled over,  🐝 Storm Damage (geesbeesnc.com) . Ten more pounds of the stuff, just sugar, water, and a splash of Honey Bee Healthy. Next year we may try Kent William's Recipe , pretty much the same with the addition of Citus Acid and Apple Cider Vinegar. Their population look pretty good, so if the queens are still there we should have some viable colonies despite the craziness.

The weather still is weirdly warm, and the bees are busy & loud, In fact, I heard them on them from the screen room this morning ad was able to make out plenty of activity while eating lunch watching from the kitchen window. All this prompted me to take a stroll back there and have a look. They are some busy bees bringing in pollen. I swear they are doing orientation flights... All on January 6th!

We got a pretty warm and sunny afternoon and decided we could poke our heads in Hives 21, 22a, & 22b the ones that received the brunt of the tree falling on them a few days ago,  🐝 Storm Damage (geesbeesnc.com) . They actually looked pretty good, their numbers were higher than what we thought they would be and boy were they angry. The Sting 'O Meter goes to 5 which is no way to start off a New Year. We got the end of the stand propped up on cinder blocks, and all of the hives moved back into position. Hive 21 feels pretty light, so we will get some sugar cakes back on their heads. The weather should be on the warmer side, so we may offer some 2:1 syrup shortly. 

There has been a flurry of posts lately, I guess you can equate that to a flurry of activities. Unfortunately, this one wasn't planned and isn't good. Not a good start to 2022 seems like this is a theme for the last couple of New Year’s. We’ve had a couple of days of crazy weather over the weekend it was 75° with a cold front moving in overnight we had some gusty winds that snapped the top of a tree off, taking out 3 hives. We headed out this morning to get them upright, but the damage may have been already done. The girls still kicking were not happy to see us, and we both were lit up a bit, but we can let that slide… They had a rough night. We’ll have to see if any of them make it. It looks like they've been laying in the rain for a while, so our hopes are not too high. We did beat the snow, a few inches of the stuff, just to add insult to injury. Lesson learned we will be strapping down the hives from now on. Then at least the boxes will stay together if something catast...

You cant have Bottoms with no Tops. I suppose you can but that would be a different  website .  These are pretty straight forward and we had some rails leftover from the Bottom Board Build , so making the cleats was super simple by just opening up the dado a bit to fit the ends of the AdvanTech. We had enough of this leftover to make (4) Lids, and I think we'll buy the other two ( Migratory Top Feeder - Beez Needz ) the AdvanTech is running $85 a sheet now which is still crazy expensive.  We are making progress getting the girls some new Diggs in time for Spring and making the preemptive swarm splits,  The nucleus method - The Apiarist .

Starting the New Year off right, catching up on some half-finished projects namely assembling up (6) 8-Frame, Bottom Boards. The rails have been cut out for about 6-months now, sitting in a pile in the corner of the Bee-Shed collecting dust, so it was high time to get these assembled and ready for the season.  Our design is pretty much shamelessly copied from  Roger's Shop , he had a great video putting these together using cedar fence pickets for the floor and we used furring strips for the rails to help combat the crazy lumber prices of late. We opted for the simple version (without the front face),  Custom Beehive Bottom Boards & Hive Stand - YouTube .  We'll get these dipped after we make some lids and perhaps some Snelgrove Boards . We can also buy some replacement deeps and make it a dipping party as long as we have the  Eco Wood Treatment  mixed up. It felt like it could be the start of the season already. Pushing 75° we actually worked up a bit ...