Liam and I visited the hives today and the field was in full bloom with alfalfa, clover, and other wildflowers. It was beautiful. It was not surprising, then, to find that 4 of our 5 supers are full of capped honey and ready to be harvested! I left a message at Beez Kneez, where we do our honey extractions, to make an appointment for as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will add a couple of hive body boxes to the newer hives that need their third level, and new empty supers to all the hives.

The other big news in Tenacious BeeLand is that we are going to move our hives to a new location, yet to be determined.  The owners of the farm where we currently keep our bees will be hosting a wedding in a couple of weeks, and in preparation will be spraying their property with insecticide to help prevent the guests from being bitten by mosquitoes. Grrrrrrr. It’s a tossup as to whether I’m more livid with the family or heartbroken for all the bumble bees, the cute baby grasshoppers we saw by the dozens this morning, the butterflies, and all the other bugs that are good and helpful and beautiful. All to combat a few mosquitoes. Because of the spraying, we need to move all our hives or we will lose our bees. We are currently looking for a new permanent home for them, as I really don’t want to move them back to where they are now. Moving them once will be a big enough pain, and tremendously stressful for the bees; I don’t want to do it twice. We are looking into a few possibilities but haven’t settled on anything yet. We will soon though, since our time is severely limited.

So, to recap: The good news is we’ll have a good-sized honey harvest soon! The bad news is we’ll be moving our hives. Who knows though, maybe wherever we end up taking them will be an improvement over their current location. A shorter drive would be nice.

I’ll have more updates soon.