Categories
Videos

Apricot Blossoms

Utah is trying its darnedest to settle into spring. The apricot tree has mostly blossomed, oblivious to tonight’s below-freezing forecast. While the popcorn’s popping I did a photo shoot with some of my bees –

Categories
Videos

Bee tongues

I’m happy to see that my backyard bees don’t care about COVID-19. Here are some clips of tiny tongues slurping up sugar syrup and rainwater.

Categories
Videos

First beehive inspection of 2020

It’s warming up a bit and I needed to swap out hive boxes so I did a little beekeeping today and made a video –

Categories
Uncategorized

Honey Harvest

I caught three swarms earlier this year and I’m pretty sure at least two of them were from my own colony. They were doing much better in the spring than I realized and had seriously outgrown the hive. I kept one for myself, gave one to a neighbor, and combined the third back into the original colony because it ended up queen-less.

My two hives produced 24 medium frames of honey, which I harvested last week into about 6 gallons or 72 lbs.

Here’s a quick summary of the process:

And here’s the video of the first swarm earlier this year –

Categories
Family

Caught a swarm!

I caught my first bee swarm in my own backyard! My wife noticed them in the apple tree and called me out. My 11-year-old and I had a blast figuring out how to do it and we successfully sighted the queen at the end of it all. I knew that old nuc box would come in handy one day. I’m now the proud owner of two colonies.

Father and Son beekeepers after the swarm capture