We Bee Cleaning Hives

Bee Warned, there will soon bee thousands of bees in these hives! 

As promised, here is a little bit about our latest adventure.

Neighbors used to raise bees but lost their colonies during 

one of our past bad winters.  Raising meat goats was taking

up the majority of their times so they asked if we would like

the old hives to which we replied,  Yes!

It's been a couple of years but we are now ready.

My job was to take everything apart and separate

the good from the bad.  

These are particularly good 

and these are not so good!  We will clean what we can

and toss the rest.

Additionally we see evidence of old wax moths which needs

to be cleaned and steralized along with removing the mouse nest.

These too have to go.  Not that they hurt the bees

but I really don't care for them.  They are wood roaches

and we find them under logs and rocks everywhere here.

A beekeeper friend came out to inspect the hives and thought 

most everything can be salvaged except the worst fame/foundations.

We need to order some equipment plus go get the bees in April.

They will ship the queen but not the full colony which means you have

to go get them-  from St Louis to Des Moines, IA.  That's about six 

hours with bees in your vehicle so I hope they are packaged well.

If everything goes well we will have honey next year!