Field Day 2016

Dear Beeks,

Just wanted to send out a thank you for all who attended today’s Field Day.  We had about 50 folks show up in weather that didn’t seem to be too promising.  However, the weather gods played nice and we had no rain, the fog lifted and temps rose to around 55-60 degrees by the time we decided to head down to the hives.

A huge thank you goes out to Allen Winpigler for allowing us to delve into his hives, and Dean Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald’s Heavy Timber Construction for being gracious enough to allow us to ‘swarm’ onto his farm every year without complaint.

Although we didn’t think we were going to be able to get deep into the hives, Allen soon saw that conditions were favorable to do so.  We saw just about everything we were looking for; brood, larvae, queens, drones, workers, baby bees being born (emerging), and some were able to see some eggs.  We saw capped honey, as well as uncapped nectar, and all different colors of pollen to boot.  We were treated to seeing how Allen splits a hive as a swarm he caught last week was teaming with bees, and quite a few swarm cells were visible.  Allen quickly asked for a new box from his truck and started moving frames around.  Allen had about 15 queens banked in a hive ready for new homes as soon as the weather breaks and we talked a little about those.  We also went into his recently made nucs, which will make it to some of the newbees homes in a few weeks, to see if the new queens were released yet.  Some were, and some weren’t.  Allen proceeded to release the remaining queens and we watched them march into the hives ready to start laying eggs and raising a huge family.

I thank all of you for bringing your delicious recipes to share with everyone.  There was plenty of food and great questions to be answered.  We hope that this experience, the class and field day alike, were well worth your time.  We wish you all the very best in your endeavors to become full blown beekeepers and wish you all have a very successful year ahead.  Please don’t let this be the last we hear from you.  Ask any questions you have through email or on Facebook.  We’d love to hear from you, and see how you’re doing.  We would love to see some pictures posted to the Facebook page, as well.

Happy Keeping,
Glen

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