4/18

The bees are doing awesome! I will confess to one swarm this season. Some of the bees around Fletcher park decided they'd gotten to big for the house and about half of them moved on. If you've found a swarm around 5 points or Cameron village with a marked green queen, let me know. I'd like to think they've found a safe home.

This picture is one of my yards at the farm in FV.

I've already made a trip to Georgia. I was delayed one week in getting the bees and that turned out to be an industry-wide delay. Bad winter in Georgia. The trip was just as long as ever and the pick up seemed to be a success. No calls about absconding and I've only had to replace one queen.

I have had many calls about replacing queens for folks whose supplier acquired their bees and queens from separate locations. This is a practice that will not be duplicated at Mr. Buzz. The only time such as practice would make sense was if someone had a line on superior queens to re queen packages with. When I worked in Hawaii, we had requests for queens to re queen packages with.

I checked on the packages today. All queens are out and laying up a storm. One trick I did this year was to shake the packages on drawn comb. The difference has been amazing. The bees just started storing nectar immediately and as soon as the queen got out, she had nice shiny comb to fill up. I installed all my packages into nucs and are getting ready to add another nuc body. The bees have really laid off the feed. I've had quart jar feeders on for the last 3 days and they aren't empty! The flow is on! Tulip Poplar is starting to blow up around the tops in my part of south Raleigh.

My chickens are also doing well. I've got 13 laying hens around 35 6-week old chicks. I'm bring in between 5-6.5 dozen eggs a week!!!

Plenty is growing in garden. I've got around 50 blueberry bushes and am planning on expanding my nursery out on the farm into an organic operation. Between the eggs and the blueberries and bee plants, I should have a nice assortment for folks to choose from.