Swarms

Can you believe it? We got our first swarm call March 14th. That is the earliest call we have ever received to come collect a swarm. Here are a few of the swarms we collected last year. We had over 200 calls for swarms in 2005. Wonder what this year has in store?
Sometimes those swarms are way up high and we use a telescoping pole with a bucket on the end to get them.

Honey Honey Honey

Here's a picture of one of our nuc yards. Man we are working working working our bees. May 1st the honey flow starts and we are completing last minute preparations to get the most out of this season. We have been putting supers on our bees on Canola fields already. We also have been making splits, 70 so far and we have re-queened about 25 others. Here is a picture of the queens in the cages they travel in when mailed to us. They come with 50 - 100 individual cages in a larger cardboard box with screen on both ends. We have received 250 Italian queens so far this year some for us and some for other beekeepers. As of this morning I no longer have queen bees in my kitchen buzzing away and waiting to be put in a hive to start laying eggs. One of our Canola farmers has stopped by several times when we were working the bees, just to ask a million questions about the bees and what is going on with them. We also had a farmer call us to move the bees so they could spray his Canola. Our hives are about 100 yards from the edge of his Canola so we told him as long as they spray early morning before the sun is fully up, or later at night at dusk, they would be okay. Well the crop duster actually did what the state of Oklahoma requires. He told the farmer that he would not spray until the bees were moved. The Oklahoma state laws prohibit anyone using certain chemicals from doing so if there are bees in the area that could be killed. Needless to say we went and moved them about a quarter of a mile one evening and then moved them back the next. It is a lot of work but it is good to know that people will follow the rules and not intentionally kill bees with pesticides.
Just the other day we were contacted by a beekeeper friend who was helping a widow of a beekeeper sell their equipment. We bought a lot of boxes, tops, bottoms, sugar, and other stuff from her and hauled it home. The reason I am mentioning it is because we found an easier way to haul and unload large amounts of stuff. I would suggest if you have a lot of equipment to haul, shrink wrap it on pallets. With a forklift or a tractor with forks one person can unload a 25 foot trailer in a much shorter period of time. I agree it takes longer to load and wrap but we believe it is worth it when you get to your destination and can quickly unload.