Arbor Montessori School Visit

About a week ago, our bees had a visit from some students from Arbor.  They had just finished up a unit on bees and wanted to see the inside of our hives.  They got suited up and right to work. 



At the end of the visit, we gave Arbor a frame of brood for their observation hive the school has in the library.  Right when we pulled the frame we noticed a queen cell.  Then one of the students noticed a high pitched buzzing sound.  The queen was about to emerge!  The students put the frame in to the observation hive and were able to watch their new queen be born (which is very rare)!  It was an amazing experience.









More Photographs from Arbor Visit

Mill Springs Bees Photographs

Newbees!

Well, its our 3rd season and we are getting bigger once again.  All 4 hives from last season survived the winter and are looking good.  We have also added 3 more hives to the apiary for Jessica, which is super exciting! 

Newbees



Survivors

Bee Club will be starting up after spring break.

Mill Springs Bees Pictures

Preparing For Winter

Winter time is close and the bees are beginning to prepare to winter over (for our second winter).

New brood (or baby bees) are hatching!  Which is an amazing site to see!  Little heads chewing their way out!



We have lost a hive this season.  It looks like Colony Collapse Disorder.  The hive appeared strong, and then all of a sudden the entire hive had disappeared.  Very sad.  However, we transferred the captured swarm from the spring to the CCD hive (that was in the  nuc before).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are looking forward to the spring.  As of now, we hope to have all 4 hives winter over successfully.

We are also looking foward to the release of the documentry More Than Honey.

http://www.ciber.science.uwa.edu.au/blog/

 

Summer Honey!

A couple of weeks ago, some Mark Trail Summer Camp campers and I worked with Mr. D and his family on our second honey extraction.  We were able to extract almost 5 gallons of honey (which works out to almost 60 bottles).

The honey is delicious!







We will be selling our honey for $8 a bottle. All the money goes back into the Bee Stangs experience for our bees, hives, students and members of the community.

If you would like to purchase honey please send me an email.

More Honey Havest Photographs

More Mill Springs Bees Photographs

First Honey Extraction

Our first round of honey! A couple of days ago we were able to extract a small amount of honey from the hive that survived the winter. It is delicious!

Such a neat process.

More photos below.

Honey Flow Photos

Bee Stangs (Mill Springs) Photos

Back in Bees Nest

After a short winter hiatus the Mill Springs bee keepers are back in bees nest. Over the winter, with the help of a winter learning construction seminar, we moved and expanded the Mill Springs Apiary. The new apairy is in the new garden down on the field.



In the new space we have added 3 new hives and a nuc(like a back up hive)! We now have 4 total hives! One from last year and 3 new.

The Novus hive survied the mild winter and is full of bees. It looks to be doing great.



The new bees arrived about a week ago. A few thousand bees arrived in a wire box on the back of a truck. Mr. D and I drove to pick them up. When we arrived, the bee deliverer handed us our bees and checked off our name. We loaded 5 boxes of bees(like the one below)into the back of Mr. D's highlander and drove about an hour to show them their new home.





The bees were very happy to be in their new homes. The process is pretty easy. Open the hive, pull out the queen and put her in the new hive, gentle dump a few thousand bees into the hive and let the growing begin!





The rest of the bee delivery photos, new bee delivery.

The old bee club photos, Mill Springs Bees.

Where is the queen?

We had our 3rd meeting of the Bee Stangs last Thursday. We inspected the hive, cleaned the hive and fed the bees.

We were able to look at almost every frame.

No stings!








New Pictures


Mill Springs Bees