New Bee Yard is Open

I kicked off my new bee yard at Black Bear Composting in Crimora last week. The yard is positioned in a large field ringed by black cherry, black locust, and fall bloomers like wingstem. The field is also loaded with asters, clover, and other small flowers in addition to grass that gets mowed a couple times a year for hay. I'm very curious to see what the spring bloom is like out here.

The hives are two of five that I am fostering for Jodi Kitchens, a friend who developed an allergy and had to stop tending her bees several month ago. Next year, I'll use the yard to handle the overflow from my home apiary, which has room for 10 hives. I should have space in the new apiary for 6 to 8 hives.

Because they had been untouched for so long, they were a bit spicy when opened for inspections. The bigger of the two has is very strong, which means it is also packed with honey -- not always a good thing. I pulled some honey to give to Jodi and left the bees some empty frames to build out and fill when the fall bloom begins in earnest.

I also found the queen of the smaller hive! It's always exciting to find a queen. She was too quick for me to catch and mark, but I'll try again on Sunday when I revisit the yard to test for mites and make some other fixes (like giving the small hive (J5)) an inner cover. The small hive was expanded from three five-frame nuc's, so they're enjoying the opportunity to spread out a bit. I did shrink them down to two boxes just to keep them from having more space than they can defend from invaders.

I also witnessed something I've never seen before -- a nurse bee feeding a new bee as they struggled to emerge from her cell following pupation. I love to see new bees emerge and have seen many do so, but this was a first. Pretty cool.