Keeping Busy and Waiting for Spring

It's that time of year, when all of the beekeepers (and let's be real, everyone else too) are getting antsy for spring. It's been a few months since we had the chance to really look in our hives and we need to know what is going on in there. Yes, there have been a few warmish days when we've had the chance to see the bees flying (or not, as is the case with some of my dead hives - more on that later) but no chance for full inspections.

After 2 years as president of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild, I have stepped aside to let someone else take the reins (Suzanne Matlock is now Pres, along with a great group of other officers). Even though I am no longer president, I have been keeping busy this winter with Guild events. We had our big symposium a few weeks ago and by most accounts, it went really well. And we have our beginners beekeeping course coming up this weekend, which I will be helping to teach.

I have volunteered to videotape the Guild's Natural Beekeeping Symposium events for the past 2 years and I have finally uploaded those videos to YouTube. You can view footage of John Seaborn and Sam Comfort from last year and Michael Bush from this year on my YouTube Channel. Below is the first part of Michael Bush's talk from this year. I'll be back soon with another blog post.

Winter is Here

So it looks like this winter is shaping up to be just like last year, lots of snow.  We've already had 3 little storms, nothing like last year's blizzards but still Philadelphia has already surpassed it's average annual snowfall of 20".

So much has happened since last I wrote, I'm not sure where to start.  I guess the bad news first.  The two hives in the little park where the tree was cut down have already died (these were the awesome bees from Vermont).  I was worried about them being kind of small in population and I guess I was right. There was still honey in the hive so they didn't starve. I am pretty sure some unknown person/people were messing with the hives. There were several times when I went to check on these hives and I could tell that things were not as I left them.  I also got reports from others that they saw people "leaning on the hives" - hard to imagine but stranger things have happened. This situation was not helped by the fact that the chain-link fence surrounding this park was destroyed by the tree removal and this allowed anyone to just walk right up to the hives.

I was pretty bummed by the loss of these bees and by the overall failure of this site but the silver lining to the dead bees is that they made lots of nice, drawn-out honeycomb last year.  This drawn comb is a valuable resource and it will help my new bees to get a quick start on building their new home. I was planning on moving these 2 hives to Woodford Mansion in East Fairmount Park, but since they didn't make it, instead I have ordered 2 new packages of bees from the Seaborns and will install them at Woodford in early April.

My 3 other hives appear to be doing well.  On a recent warmish day in December the bees in my home hive were busy cleaning house.  They were dragging out the dead and relieving themselves in the snow.  When we were out on the roof one little bee landed on Jolie and proceeded to poop right on her shirt! Hopefully these 3 hives survive the winter.

This spring I am hoping to do more bee removals and swarm captures.  This will help me to either grow my apiary or be able to provide other beekeepers with some bees.

As a follow-up to the the Langstroth celebration and Honey Fest, which was a huge success, the Guild is bringing Ross Conrad to speak in Philadelphia in February.  Ross is the author of Natural Beekeeping, which is a book on keeping bees using organic management techniques. Registration has already begun and it looks like it is going to be a great turnout.

There's more to write but I just wanted to get a quick update written.   Stay tuned...