Draper's Bee Blog

We bottled a tank of Buckwheat honey this morning and the rest of the day I have spent answering phones, sending emails and making…I’m sorry to say…price changes to some of our bee supply items. Price certainly aren’t going down on anything.

We have made a new type of observation hive that is able to be locked up and is more secure than our normal hives, although you would need to be carrying a screwdriver around with you to open our regular ones. But some customers have shown an interest in something that has locks on it, so we made one, you can take a look at it here: http://www.draperbee.com/catalog/page7.htm#lockable

I have been working on pre-counting bee supplies for what we hope, will be a busy spring season. It is so much easier having frames and foundations pre-counted into bundles of 10 when you get a dozen people in the office with orders to fill. I also cleaned up in the warehouse waiting for our driver to return with some 9 5/8 budget hive bodies that we needed.

The bees were out and about for a little bit today but it was getting windy so they went back inside…don’t blame them…even with the warmer temperatures it was really damp and chilly with the wind blowing. They are saying maybe snow overnight…booooooooo!

Another busy week of taking package bee orders. Our first load of bees, that will be here for pickup on April 21st, will be sold out sometime this coming week. Once it is sold out we will still be taking orders for the May 5th pickup date.

All shipped package bee orders taken now will start being shipped in May sometime. I will send emails out to everyone that places an order with their proposed ship date within week or two after receiving your order. I want to remind everyone that ship dates are affected by things that we can not control…mostly the weather conditions but sometimes queen production and even the Post Office can affect when the bees ship. I will post any delays on this page and the package bee page if they occur.

We have been making up some syrup pails just in case we need them this spring. This is a good time of year to make up some syrup to be ready for your package bees. We mix ours with 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. If you don’t have time to make syrup you can always use a light corn syrup directly as feed.

We bottled some Buckwheat honey this morning and we have been busy bottling honey for quite a few days as we are trying to get some honey back in stock before bee season begins.

I think we will be sold out of package bees early this year as ship dates are now into early May and we stop taking orders once ship dates get towards the end of May. If you need your bees shipped you had better order soon!

We have been getting a lot of calls and emails from beekeepers stating that their hives are feeling light (very little honey left). A lot of beekeepers pulled too much honey off the hives in the summer thinking that the bees would store more in the fall time and for the most part it just didn’t happen. We have been recommending that they install a solid sugar block directly on top of the hive body frames. Feeding liquid syrup this time of year doesn’t really work because the bees won’t break cluster to go get the syrup if it’s cold out. The sugar block allows the bees to cluster directly on it just like they do on a frame of honey. Below is a picture of what I’m talking about.

I am back from vacation and have been very busy this week trying to get caught up.

I wanted to post that we will be without power here for a few hours sometime today…the electric company is making some repairs somewhere.

The weather has been pleasantly warm here the last couple of days and the bees have been flying around. I looked at our hives right here next to the business and it appears that they are all still alive. The scary thing is that we saw some fresh brood in one of our observation hives, this doesn’t necessarily mean that any of the other hives have started brooding up but if they have, their need for food is going to increase and that can lead to problems later on. This is a good time to go and check the weight in your hives by simply tipping them from side to side to feel how much honey weight is remaining. If the hive feels light then now is the time to get a sugar block installed. If anyone has any questions about using the sugar blocks feel free to email or call us.

We finally got some snow…there is about 4 inches on the ground out here today.

Yesterday I can my first tour of 2012 and it went well. I have to wonder if our number of school tours will drop with all the financial issues the schools are having. We don’t charge to give a tour but they have to pay to have a bus bring the kids here…guess we will see.

I am taking this next week off to work on remodeling my youngest daughter’s room. Her birthday is today and instead of presents she wanted me to paint her room…but it has turned out to be a much bigger job. I torn out the wall to a walk-in closet, that had mostly old toys and cloths in it, to make her room bigger and I am going to put up new drywall, replace all of the electrical outlets and install a ceiling fan and some new carpet…hope I can get it done in just a week…lol.

It’s a bee-utiful sunny day here! Bill has been sorting honey supers that we pulled off the hives back in the fall. Some are just empty foundation that the bees never filled and some are ones we extracted. They are sorted into 3 different groups; foundation, #2′s that are not perfect combs but are still usable as honey supers and #1′s that are nice evenly drawn combs that we can use in the brood chamber. I have been taking pallet loads up in the field where we store them and stacking them up. We store all of our supers outside on bottom boards with a queen excluder under them to keep the mice out. Last year when I had to do this there was like a foot of snow and it was 4 degrees out. I am loving this weather!

I finally have had time to work on updating our Bee-Cam. I installed a new high resolution camera…it’s not streaming but it’s better than what I was using before. Click Here to view it.

Some new evidence on what may be causing or at least contributing to CCD (colony collapse disorder) – Click Here.

It has been an odd year as far as the weather goes - today it is warm and raining here in northern Pennsylvania. And the weather is mostly to blame for the worst honey production in United States history. Because of the very poor production honey prices are going up and we are having to follow suit, not only because of the increased honey prices, but also because the cost of the containers we pack honey in have been increasing all year long. We hope these will be the only increases in 2012.

I wish you all a Blessed, Fruitful and Sweet as Honey…New Year!!