When we bought our $125 three-pound box of starter bees with queen this year, we got a bad queen, so we were screwed before we started and didn’t know it.
Within two weeks the worker bees started building supersedure cells to create a new queen, which means they didn’t think our queen was doing a good job. Lady mentioned she was laying in a spotty pattern.
So the workers likely killed the queen. We spent $33 for a new queen not knowing that you have to get rid of the laying worker bee before adding a new queen to the mix, so they killed our new queen as well.
So much for year two. Year one we got 125 pounds of honey and our hive lasted 9 months until they disappeared the first of February. Year two our hive lasted less than two months, though actually never even got started due to the bad queen.
It’s a shame. Last year our spring honey had a slight medicinal undertaste; this year it was light, delicate, super sweet. Got less than 10 pounds of it; we spent maybe $400 for new hardware and bees, so our honey cost us around $40 a pound.
On to year three next April when we buy our third three-pound box of bees . . . that should be our main expense next year since we’ll reuse this year’s wooden hive.
We burned last year’s hive because we believe the bees had nosema, which is bee diarrhea. We also bought hive tools and a honey extractor last year so our total was over $500, but a third of that was a one-time purchase.
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Status Report 225
Eat the cookie
drink the coffee
stare the dark
wait the sun
for light to stride the day
Sun will bring the wind
to move the wild grasses
– Smith, 7.12.2016
