It's not unheard of, but this is the first time I've done it. Talking to the old farmers this is the way much of the 70's were. If you don't know what I am talking about, around here we have been getting a huge amount of rain. Right now Salmon Arm feels more like Tofino than the Shuswap! Yesterday I was out mixing syrup with my Wetskins hat on, today I will be doing the same.

Overall the bees look good, but they are light, very light. I am concerned and feeding 6 of my 12 yards. Beyond the bees themselves running short of feed I don't want them to curtail their egg laying. The 3rd week of June they must grow to be big enough for a honey crop. Away I go..

We hosted John Gates Queen Rearing Course on the weekend and it was once again a big success. I think everybody left a better beekeeper. The neatest thing I have found about John is his ability to communicate with people at every level of experience and his experience himself is no limited to academia but he has ran almost 500 colonies and sold 10 of thousands of queens. That field experience on top of publishing papers and working for years as a bee inspector and apicultural extension specialist, oh did I mention that he is also a really nice fellow.

Thanks to John and all those involved on the weekend.

Boy what a blur. Well my 2012 nuc season is done. I was able to sell 160 this year. That is up from last years 140 and 110 from the year before that. Overall it went quite smooth, the weather has been quite wet but I don't mind. It it better to be soaking the ground now as opposed to everything being kinder dry going into summer.

So now I need to start going around and seeing how many colonies I have and checking queens making sure my cells took. I am way behind in office work and the yard is not as tidy as I'd like and there is only 1 week to have 90 colonies ready for canola pollination. So there is not much time to rest.