Gee's Bees, LLC

We headed over to Summerfield to drop off Rachel's bees. Met her husband Richard nice guy, but not sure how into bees he is. That's okay, she has enough enthusiasm for both of them. After some minor fiddling with the cement, block hive stand they were officially placed in their new home. She should be in good shape and has already mixed some syrup to feed them. B should go over there and walk her through her first inspection, but I'm not sure how involved she wants to get with other people's bees, (OPB). Later that afternoon we headed over to Sheetz in Union Cross to drop off a couple of pounds of honey to Ashley. She reached out to us via Gee's Bees | Facebook , we didn't know her so I tagged along for the drop. Turns out she was looking for some local honey and someone recommended us via a FB Mom's Group. Word of mouth is spreading... I guess this is pretty neat. Busy day... We also made a date with Dan to pick up some equipment from him and Josh. We say i...

Rachel stopped by and dropped off her equipment. Turns out to be 10F boxes, waxed dipped stuff, pretty nice. We were able to get an 8F box transferred over and a piece of screen installed. So tomorrow we can just throw one more staple in and run them over.  We also got the ones who needed it another round of 1:1. Namely: Hives 11, 15, 21, & 23. Rachel, we need to feed hers they are looking pretty light, Now the hard part will be distinguishing when to turn them off the welfare and let the flow take over.

Benny's bees swarmed. The good news is he was able to hive them. Then they swarmed again, and he was able to catch another. The texts were flying pretty furiously and here's a record of the back and forth: Monday, Mar 21 · 10:19 AM Benny Smith Good morning Matt and Beth.  I think my hive swarmed yesterday.  I found a swarm in a small tree about 30 ft in front of my hive.  Looked to be all Italians.  I managed to capture it and have it in a 10 frame deep and I got the Queen in a cage rubberbanded on a new foundation in the deep.  When should I release her?  Also, I was going to mark her if now is the time to do it?  This was the swarm. I had to brush them all off onto the ground on a tarp and then find the Queen and cage her and put her in the deep. I closed them up in the deep and moves them to the permanent location this morning, set it up, and gave them some 1:1 SW. These are my 2 hive now.  I set up the new stand and still have the original clo...

Spring is in the air, and it's officially here according to the calendar. B made a post and has even generated some more honey sales. It's going to be close whether we sell all of last year's honey. I think the least count was 30 lbs left. I'm betting we will, and she was hard-fast against that we will, although I'm starting to see some cracks in the stance now. Speaking of Sales... We've sold, We have sold 47 lbs so far this year for a total of $452 or  $9.62/lb. Not too shabby for off-season sales.  It's good having the apiary back and some resemblance of a plan now. I was getting a bit stressed about the state of affairs, but after this weekend feel better about our queen status, the number of hives, and especially the number of bees. I wish we could put supers on now, these hives are packed. 

Exactly what we didn’t want, so much for having a plan and sticking to it, but with B’s “good thinking, stinking” award comes the promise of organization in the GBee Yard. So the plan… In order of operations. Hive 21 (Production) Inspect, leave with 6 Frames of brood. (Donating extra).  Find queen remark and clip wing.  Bottom Box: Stores and empty comb, Queen excluder, Top Box: Store and brood. Hive 11 (Production) Inspect.  Find queen remark and clip wing.  Put extra brood from 21 in a second box. Bottom Box: Stores and empty comb, Queen Excluder, Top Box: Store and brood. Hive 25 (Production) Continue to move down into position.  Making queen (4/2). Hive 15 (Production) Move the top box (making queen from 25) to the pallet on its own (4/3).  Combine with Hive 13 choosing the best queen cell between the two.  Set extra brood aside if any, to work as resource hives if nucs not taken. Hive 13 & 23 (Resource/Nucs) Sell, If not, place in 8F boxes. Re...

B and her students finished decorating the Bee Door, and their efforts were good enough to come away with 3rd place. Congrats and well done, still can't get over the hyper-realistic bee the 6th grader drew. She is and is going to continue to be amazing! https://photos.app.goo.gl/fwbH5PVSiG2vkreKA

The bees were grumpy and we did a couple of splits and hopefully can change queens on a few hives. They need some better straight for a better temperament. We made it through 3 of the 4 Hives. We did 25 first as we knew it would be the biggest, and sure enough, she was full of swarm cells. So we found her (no small feat) and got her set aside on the first stand with a couple of frames of brood to get a fresh start. We were able to harvest a couple of frames of cells, so Hive 25 and Hive 15 have them. Hopefully, they are successful, and her genetics will start populating. So, we got 3 of them split and we just did a precursory top box tip-up to check for queen cells. We'll finish them up on Saturday when we have a bit more time. Stand 1 Stand 2 11 13 14 15 21 24 25 Queen from 25 (Originally 23) with a few frames of brood and some shook in nurse bees. Q: Spotted Brood: New 3F's Stores: Light-Feed Temp: A Calm: A Split moving queen to 14. Left in "walk away split fashion...

Down to (4) hives gave Hive 11 and Hive 22 (Nuc) to Dan Joyner. We came home to close up a couple of hives, Dan Joyner (danjoyner@windstream.net, 336-971-5938) drove down from King to pick them up. He's a nice guy and got some help from his son Daniel. They were pretty ornery, especially Hive 21, we (B) had trouble getting the entrance reducer off, so they were not happy with the intrusion or the cold weather. We sampled a couple of honey bears and agreed to pick up the equipment at the Dair-o in King in a couple of weeks. About two hours later got a text from a lady she promised bees to back in December. Go figure. Now it will be a scramble to fill that order, I think we will end up splitting Hives 11 and 21. We will make it work, but some lessons learned. Write everything down and don't lose your mind about having too many bees. We’ll know more this coming Tuesday when the weather will hopefully cooperate and we can do a proper inspection. Judging from last time these gals sh...

We have an order coming from Betterbee that should get us pretty much set for the Ross Rounds comb production this year: Qty Description Unit Price Price 1 Ross Round Rings 64PK $20.35 $20.35 1 JZ’s BZ’s Grafting Needle $5.45 $5.45 10 70 mm White Metal Cap w/ Liner $0.28 $2.80 If you have questions regarding your order, please contact our customer service team at support@betterbee.com or 1-800-632-3379. Subtotal $28.60 Tax $2.80 Shipping $12.91 Total $44.31 And I picked up an order from American Bee Supply that should put us in good shape for the general equipment we needed to start the season off right: Product Quantity Price Frames with Plastic Foundation - Assembled - Deep 10 $33.50 Ritecell Waxed Plastic Foundation Depth Size: Deep Foundation Packaging Size: Individual Sheet Foundation Color: Black 10 $14.50 Queen Excluder - 8 Frame - Beehive Components 2 $15.60 Triangle Bee Escape Board - 8 Frame - Honey Bee Equipment 2 $29.90 Subtotal: $93.50 Shipping: Local pickup Tax: $6.55...