We will be picking up and bringing back 100 new hives this weekend so that means Mark is busily preparing one of the bee yards to receive the nucleus (nuc) hives. It’ll be like our little nursery while the bees build up a bit to prepare for the season. Keeping them all together makes it more efficient for him to care for them in a timely manner. Today he spent many hours getting 30 boxes fully prepped and placed on the palettes. Only 70 more to go. I told him I thought that was pretty great for a solo job while I go off to work in the IT world. And as we did last year, I will document the journey to get our bees and you will feel like you’re right there in the Tundra with us. All nice and snug. 🙂
So, with us otherwise engaged for the weekend, you know what that means – no Pearl or Quarry markets. Fair warning! Y’all make that honey stretch a bit till we get back the following weekend or if you really need some honey, don’t forget to look on the right side of this blog and check one of our retail outlets. They’ll have some of our sweet honey in stock for you (hopefully).
Something else we love doing that helps further our goal – teaching our Introductory Beekeeping Class. AND we got to teach together for the first time in many months (I guess since we started going to the Saturday Pearl market). I really have missed being here to meet the students and engage with them, many of whom go on to become awesome new beekeepers themselves. We always tell our students, we need help! We can’t replenish the bees around here all by ourselves. It’s wonderful when they get so taken with the bees they decide to take the next step. Speaking of which, we had a couple of students decide to try it out and we put them down for a nuc – yay! Here’s one of my favorite shots from class. I love how studious they look. 🙂 Mark was teaching them how to look for eggs that the queen recently laid – one way to tell if your queen is okay without having to lay your eyes on the queen. Why? Because it takes about three days for the egg to hatch into larva stage so if you see eggs, it’s most likely that your hive is queened properly.
As part of class, Mark and the students also applied a mite treatment. If you aren’t yet treating your hives for mites around these parts, then you should get busy! This time around Mark is trying Apivar and so far, so good. There seems to be no ill-effects on the bees so far and it is clean and easy to apply, unlike other treatments we’ve used in the past. We’ll keep you posted on how things progress. Remember that he uses several different products and doesn’t rely solely on one treatment method. Read up on these matters to keep your bees as healthy as possible.
Okay. I think I shall wrap it up. We sure have lots to do to prepare for our beeventure this weekend. I am the official travel agent for GBR. My dad taught us to route our trip, read maps, plot where pit stops will be (though with multiple drivers we rarely stopped during my youth) and other travel necessities. Mark and I make a great team. He takes care of the bees, vehicle and equipment aspect of trips while I take care of the comforts (packing, snackage, hotels, timing of when to stop and where, family visiting coordination, logistics for staying close to the pickup point for early pick-up and departure, etc.). Which reminds me, I need some good beef jerky for the roadtrip! Wish I had thought to order some sooner from my high school buddy who now runs Uncle Zip’s Beef Jerky. It’s good. Real good.
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
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