Archives

West Nile Virus – Aerial Spraying

As if insult was not bad enough when they started spraying for West Nile Virus infected mosquitoes. Now Dallas County plans to move forward with aerial spraying of Dallas. That’s definitely adding injury to insult! (Yes – I know it’s backwards – but it’s how it is)

WNV is reported to give the same symptoms […]

Score at an estate sale

Shannon and I visited a Tyler area estate sale last weekend. I’d gone through the house – as well as the tool shed, and didn’t really see anything that caught my eye.. until we were leaving – I glanced down at a brown box.. that simply said “bee box” on it.

Of course, my interest […]

Hives bumped up / LocalHarvest

It was time to bump up 2 of my 5-frame nuc hives to 10-frame boxes. I waited until the rain had subsided to a slow drizzle, and fired up the smoker.. and moved 2 nucs to 10-frame deep hives with screened bottom boards.

I believe that this will give the bees something to do besides […]

Hot in Texas

One of my 7 hives is bearding outside the 5-frame nuc. Temperatures here in North Texas are in the mid-to high 90’s right now (1st week of June 2012). I do believe that it’s time to move these ladies to a 10-frame box along with a screened bottom board. That should do wonders for helping […]

Swarm Capture

I received a message from a friend today about a swarm that had taken up a temporary home in a tree in her back yard. I loaded up the extension ladder, and high-tailed it to her home before it got too late in the evening, and evaluated what we had going on… It looked to […]

Trap-Out Re-Start

Today I checked up on a trap-out that was started about 2 weeks ago. Unfortunately, the 1-way screen was blocked with masses of dead bees – and the survivors chewed through the other blocked entrances/exits to get out. I can’t say that I blame them for their industrious nature!

I made the appropriate repairs to […]

Spring Splits made

Yesterday I picked up 4 new queens with which I have made 4 new hives from my original hive that was 3-deeps of brood/stores + 2 supers on top. This should make the original hive much more manageable – and provide the nucleus frames and some genetics for many hives to come in the future.

[…]

Tree Trapout – the queen emerges

The trapout that started on March 29 can officially be called a success! I received a call yesterday from the homeowner – letting me know that the queen has emerged, and was sitting on the screened-over entrance with maybe 100-200 bees. That was exactly what I was hoping to hear, since the standard procedure for […]

Honeybee Trapout

Here’s a video that I took while performing the trap-out on Monday’s arrived swarm of honeybees to a neighborhood in Richardson, Texas.

 

After the bees exit the window-screen mesh cone, they are unable to find their way back in. Their choice is to (a) use the 5-frame nuc box with a frame of […]

Swarm Call

Today is marked as the first swarm call for the Spring 2012 season.

When I received the call, a few bees (scouts) were coming in and out of the tree. By the time I got there, the bees were coming in – and it was looking like a tornado of honeybees. I quickly placed my […]