Life has been hectic. I went back to work full time and there have been other family health issues that have tied me up.
I've been struggling with queen rearing this year. It has not been going well and other people in the area say the same. I don't know the root cause. The complete wipe out four years ago from pesticides has caught up with me on genetics. I got some of my stock back at the time but this year I'm having spotty brood issues which I have not had in the past. I'm assuming it's inbreeding and am trying to get some other survivor stock bred in. I got some from Old Sol and some indirectly from Kirk Webster (someone who has his stock) as well as some other sources. It's too late to see how that will pan out this year as the bees seem to have no interest in raising queens. I'm closing out the mating nucs as I go. Down to just 20 or so now from 200.
They made a decent amount of honey but I haven't had time to harvest and now they are on the verge of robbing so I don't dare open them up and start harvesting. But I need to get through them all one last time to check for queenless and remove excluders I was using for queen rearing purposes. Going into winter with excluders on is a death sentence in Nebraska.
I saw this frenzy going on and turned the cover over to block the entrance. They were doing this same thing before I blocked it. They would pile up until they would fall in clumps. I slowed it down to try to see it better.
I consider propolizing a good trait for bees (maybe not for the beekeeper). Here is a mating nuc I found this year. The drilled hole is about 5/8". The reduced hole is about 5/16".
It wasn't working right and then it would and then it wouldn't. This is what I found. It couldn't get out, so I left it and used another smoker. It was finally out after two days.
We needed to feed because of a dearth and we still needed to finish building up the 8 frame nucs for winter. We bought 50 six gallon buckets and bought 3,450 pounds of sugar in 25 lb bags. We worked out the maximum strength we could do with hot water from my tap (140 F) and not have it crystallize out. We put one 25 pound bag in each bucket with a heaping tablespoon of ascorbic acid, then 18 pints of water and stir it with a five gallon paint stirrer. After 10 to 30 minutes we stir it again.
