It was fun, it was great and yes we learned tons and tons of stuff at the Heartland Apicultural Society Meeting.
(H.A.S.) Jim and I met my Uncle Ted and Aunt Mar there and really enjoyed the entire adventure. It was great to see some of the people I got to meet last year and make new friends at the same time.
The best part was that Jim and I didn't go to the same sessions so we actually got twice as much information as I did when I went by myself last year. Jim really got a chance to see first hand some of the stuff I've been trying to explain to him. All right I admit that I'm a bit on the attention deficit side and I have a hard time focusing on just one thing at a time, but how in the world could you when there are so many different topics to choose from.
Classes were arranged in different levels of beekeeping and the offerings were so varied that it was really hard to choose. Jim went to a whole lot of classes out in the Bee Yard so he could see things himself the right way. (At least that's what he told me. . . I wonder if he meant that my way was wrong?) Anyway he picked up some things that I didn't have any idea about and when we got home he put his newfound wisdom to work right away.
Every time I turned around I got the chance to talk to someone new and learn something new. I have to tell you I've never been in a situation like this where people went out of their way to make sure that all the new beekeepers had answers to all the questions they had. It's not like the kind of place where you go somewhere and nobody shares any of their "secrets" with you. Heck no, I learned the ins and out of the bee hive and I also learned how to make creamed honey, oops I mean whipped honey, candles & lotions as well as learn how to make the most out of the products from the bee yard.
There are people there that have no hives and just are interested about beekeeping and people there who have thousands of hives and a lot somewhere in between, but the best thing is that it was a really great learning experience for both Jim and I.
Well I told you Jim went to work in the bee yard when we got home. . . .Saturday morning while I was at the market he went out in the yard and took a good look around. He found that we had wax moths in some equipment that was just sitting out in the yard, and he thought we had lost a queen in one of our hives. When I got home we both suited up and sure enough we had wax worms. . . Ulk. . . usually it's not a problem with bees if it's a strong colony but the one colony that Jim couldn't find a queen in was really small and while I did find a queen it had a pretty severe case of wax worm. Since we were going to tear the hive apart and move things around I took the opportunity to look for varoa mites on the drone larvae. Yep it was there too. No wonder the hive was so weak. So Jim had already come up with a game plan and we put it into effect. We brought out a nuke and while we were checking out the other hives we took a full frame of honey and pollen as well as a frame of brood from one of the stronger hives and tucked it inside the nuke. When we got to the hive that was in trouble I located the queen and Jim carefully picked her up and put her in the box. We then brushed as many of her own bees from the hive in the box and closed things up. Oh and we put two frames of drawn comb in as well. But because we couldn't get all the bees out of the hive we left the hive out there close to the new nuke thinking that they'd all head into the new digs and get settled in. After talking to Uncle Ted we probably shouldn't have done that. Seems that it could cause some serious robbing.
Anyway, today I went out to check on things to see how things were going and I took some photos.
Enjoy!
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