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.

Lots of bees, lot's of brood, not a heck of a lot of feed. I am pulling every drop of nectar out of the colonies and putting it all in the nuc's. I need to figure out how to feed nuc's in cardboard nuc boxes?? Maybe I will barrel feed in the yard I am putting the nucs, or make up a bunch of fondant patties?

The parent colonies will be fine without feed as I pull out the queen for the nuc leaving just a queen cell in the parent hive. Because I am stripping the parent hive down to 2-3 frames of brood and bees and no queen they won't need any feed because I have stopped their brood rearing and the dandelions will provide.

It was most fantastic! I hope to be able to put it on again next year. I really enjoyed myself. I got to update our facebook page, we have a bunch of pictures. To all those who came out I want to thank you for your participation and wish you all a great upcoming year.

Here we go again! May is probably the busiest month of my beekeeping calendar. I have 155 nuc's to pull, manage my 60 mating nuc's and increase my own numbers. Not to mention farmers markets are starting and we have to get our product ready for sale. Make a trip to Calgary, as well as Williams Lake. My inspection work will also haul me around the Okanagan, Shuswap, Thompson, and the Caribou. These next few weeks are all about staying organized and not falling behind. Bring it on!!  Tomorrow I am grafting 150 cells in 4 starters. I have to keep all those cells tracked as I will be grafting from 6 colonies to ensure variation in my stock.

Well I took 3 breeders on Saturday and performed my first graft. It is always an exciting time to do the first graft of the season. I am starting to see drones running around in the colonies and nice patches of capped and uncapped drones. So there should be lot's of them out by the middle of May. This is the earliest I can graft in this environment. There has always seems to be a mating window around Mothers Day Weekend. Maybe the Lord sends some extra sun down just for all the mom's! There are a couple pockets in the Okanagan that you can get mating weather earlier, but not here. I have always been curious about the Kamloops area. I think if you could ramp up drone production you could possibly get mated queens early May around there. 

Anyhow the strong colonies are 6+ frames of brood and they are chomping at the bit. They are starting to build burr comb and bringing in lot's of pollen. I haven't noticed much spring dwindling at all this year. I know better than to forecast the weather but it may be a heavy swarm season if they continue their path thus far. Generally spearking a heavy swarm year often translates into good honey production.....now I am way ahead of myself!