Belated Happy New Year!

It's been a cold winter so far this year and it looks like the cold weather will be around for awhile.  The 10 day forecast doesn't show anything above freezing.  There isn't much one can do with the bees besides repairing old equipment and preparing new for the upcoming year.  And of course worry how the bees are doing in this weather.  In some respects this is the hardest part of the year with little you can do but worry and prepare for the best.  It won't be long though until things warm up a bit and we can get out to do weight checks and do some emergency feeding though..

One of my goals for this year is to be a bit more organized and keep this website more up to date.  Bees, the day job, business, the untimely passing of my father and life in general were more than overwhelming last year and things like updating the website and adding the new products we now carry were pushed to the back.

So, on that note we're happy to introduce new products to our online store by request, 8 frame equipment and assembled beehive kits among other new products.   We also welcome Mike and Marc as new part time employees to help us keep up with our orders in the wood shop.

Also as a side note, UPS shipping calculations appear to be fixed now and shouldn't be grossly over estimating the shipping cost, especially on larger orders.  While we always corrected the shipping after an order was placed, it was sometimes shockingly high.  UPS rates have gone up again this year by more than 4.9%, but if you get a shipping estimate that does seem too high I'd be happy to check into it.

With the unseasonably warm weather in the 70's the bees are building up quickly and flowers are well ahead of schedule.  Based on pictures from last year (Specifically the picture from the blog post Buzzing Trees with it's picture of a pear tree taken last year) the blooms are about 2 weeks 3 days ahead of last year.  This all means it's time to begin grafting, just in time to be perfectly on schedule for this years queens  (the first graft was actually this past Sunday). 

I've talked to a number of beekeepers over the past weeks and the results of the winter are quite mixed. Some did quite well and have mostly strong hives and few losses.  Others did poorly with 50-75% losses.  Unlike past bad years where almost everyone did poorly, there doesn't seem to be a pattern by area, size of the beekeeper or experience.   Fortunately most of our bee yards fall into the mostly strong with few losses category.  I chalk it up to good stock and the extra effort in winter preparations we made last year.  Still, if our winter had been a few weeks longer some hives may have run out of stores and would likely have starved out without assistance as some of the strong hives were getting light.

A good start to the season so far but we aren't out of the woods yet.  The last time I recall such a great start to April ended with snow the last week of April.  So keep your fingers crossed.

The package bees arrived this past Friday and most beekeepers who had ordered a packaged picked them up on Saturday with the remainder picked up on Sunday.  I must say I was impressed with the quality of the packages so far.  The bees were in very good shape with fewer dead bees than I’ve ever seen in packages, plus the packages weighed a full 2.5-2.6 pounds of bees in the couple I checked.  Very good for 2lb packages.  I only got a few for myself as I really have enough bees.  It’s too soon to see if the queens are as good, but it’s a very promising start.