New Arrivals

Well June has gotten started and the weather for my bee's has not been real cooperative.  We've had 80+ days, just to have them followed by 20 degree days for May.  With this crazy up and down in temperature I ended up losing the Peach hive, from what I could tell they broke cluster and during one of the freak chills they clustered in two small separate balls and then went downhill from there.

Cherry Blossom is still kicking but, we've have so many days of rain I started to worry they may fall too far behind.  This past weekend I was able to get in and take a look at the bee's.  I couldn't do a full inspection as it wasn't as warm as I would like.  They seem to be doing ok but they're refusing to move up or down in the hive.  This was the only hive to use deeps and I'd like to get them to move to mediums because the deeps are just a pain.  This highlights one of the things I've hated about the deeps while using them for the brood chamber might be great, I can't easily interchange the frame to open the brood chamber.  I had thought they would fill the deep and then the queen would move up or down and start laying then I could use a queen excluder to keep her out of the deep, but so far I haven't been that lucky.

The other downside to our terrific midwest weather, its delayed the arrival of my new bee's.  Here it is the June 10th and my nuc's haven't arrived.  I can't fault the vendor because they're working with livestock and unless the weather cooperates there's nothing they can do.  I could have picked up some packages but I missed that window because I was dealing with the arrival of my new chicks.  So now I'll wait for my nuc's they'll be behind but at least they'll be semi local bee's.

These little guys arrived 2 weeks earlier than expected and their chicken coop remodel wasn't done so they ended up spending two weeks in the horse trailer.  It took a bit longer to get the chicken coop back to a stage we could let the chicks in but we've finally got them in.
Now we just have a few walls to finish up and the ceiling and the chicks will be all set.

The last couple weeks of June I'm hoping things calm down a bit, and I can get my new bee's.  I also need to get a couple batches of wine and beer in the fermenters because July is just around the corner and I'd like to have some home brew ready for the summer bash.