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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

Even if you find one post on the subject, I've posted a lot on basic beekeeping skills like installing bees, harvesting honey, inspecting the hive, etc. so be sure to search for more once you've found a topic of interest to you. And watch the useful videos and slide shows on the sidebar. All of them have captions. Please share posts of interest via Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Bees in Red Maples in Atlanta

My friend Steve Esau who has bees in Atlanta has a video of the bees in the now-blooming red maples.  He showed it to me.  People are always saying the red maple blooms in early January here (even when we have cold winters which we didn't so far this year) but I've not seen the bees in the trees.

Steve is very kind to share his video with me and now with you, so with gratitude to Steve, here is a video of bees flying in the red maple bloom!


I can see that one of my three backyard hives that went into winter is dead.  The two that are left is a large strong hive and a tiny hive made as a split.  The split hive is in two medium boxes.  It's the one that I had to give resources to twice to make a queen.  Their final queen came from eggs from the strong hive right beside it.  I did not expect them to make it through the winter.

The strong hive that is still going well originally came from Jerry Wallace (I think he gets his bees from Bob Binnie), but by accident I think they requeened with eggs from a Jennifer Berry queen when I moved a frame of eggs from the MABA club observation hive to give the observation hive some growing space.  So that probably means that the small survivor hive also has Jennifer Berry stock - boy, she makes great queens.

I said that because of the four of my hives at my old house, three are Jennifer Berry queens or their daughters.  The fourth came from Don Kuchenmeister (Fat Beeman).

We are having a warm weekend so I'll see if I can determine what went wrong with the hive that died (a Fat Beeman hive) and share it with you.  Also I think one of my two hives at the Morningside community garden is also dead, so I'll check both of them today, if I can.

I've tried going into this winter only to feed honey to hives (I used no sugar syrup and no bee tea this year) and I'm thinking I'll follow the principles of the WNC honeybee research center headed by Carl Chesick.  They determine that hives which live through the winter untreated and on their own are survivor hives with resistance to whatever the varroa mite may have given to their bees and they split those hives to perpetuate the strong bees.

That's my plan.  Any hive that makes it through to March, I will split at the end of March and then be supporting strong hives.

Progress Notes on New Year's Resolutions:  I've moved the Links above the Certifications on the side bar and have been through everything on the "links" list.  I've eliminated several links that were not existing sites any more; added George Imrie's Pink Pages (thanks to Penny for the suggestion); and made more specific some of the links.  If anyone else has suggestions, send them to me.

Next I plan to go through the list of blogs and favorite web sites to see how active they are and if they need to stay or go.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting the video of bees in the blooming trees. It's a great pick-me-up here in the middle of snow season where I'm at.

    Show Me The Honey Blog

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