I've been thinking about what to do. I'm try to get to the point where I have ten to twelve hives going into winter each year. I don't think I can manage more than twelve on my own. If I could get to the point of at least having a 50% survival rate, I could split each hive in the spring, then I could always have 12 hives going into winter. I could do more splits with more skill and a little luck. I had ten hives last summer, eight going into winter, but only two survived. My problem isn't just maintaining enough hives after winter; it's also being able to make splits to cover my loses. I've put a good amount of time and money into beekeeping. I thought I'd be farther along with my apiary by now; have a good supply of honey, have a good outlet for selling my honey, selling the extra spring splits, raising and selling queens, making soap, and other bee related items. No, I'm starting over every year. I don't want to keep buying bees every year. It's discouraging to not be able to become self-sustaining.

My packages of bees will arrive soon and I'll be splitting the colonies that survive. I'm going to start my bees in nucs, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep them in there for next winter. I listened to a speaker talk about overwintering in nucs last year. I gave it a try with three packages and none of them survived. I'm up for a challenge but, once bitten; twice shy. Maybe I'll keep two colonies in the nucs and transfer the other two into 10-frame hives. I'm starting to configure all my hives with just medium supers. The deep supers are getting to be a heavy lift for me. If I had it all to again, I'd use all medium supers from the start.

-- March 25, 2026 --

Only 2 hives make it through winter. I can't see any clues that tells me why they all died. This happens every year. I had one strong colony and one weak colony that made it. I made a split from the strong hive. The split still had a huge amount of bees and they made about twelve queen cells. I didn't plan on making more splits so soon, but I didn't want to waste the extra queen cells, so I decided to make two more splits with the extra cells.

My four packages of bees came in today (April 27.) They all looked real good. I installed them with no problems. In a few days, I'll check if all the queens are released and later, I'll check if they are laying. I should know around Mid-May if all 9 colonies will be good. After everything settles down in a few weeks, I think I might extract some honey.

The temperature is going to go below sixty for about five days. I changed my order this year to have the bees delivered later, so the temperature would be higher. That didn't do any good. I made the splits expecting it to stay above Sixty. No, that didn't happen. I don't like doing anything with the bees when the temperature is below sixty, especially if its a new colony. There's not a lot of bees in a package or a split, so they have a hard time thermoregulating the hive if it gets cold. The packages are busy, but not much activity with the splits. I'll just have to wait out the cold spell.

I'm getting a little depressed. The weather is so cold that I don't want to go into the hives. It's past the time I should check the hives, but it's not important enough to risk chilling the brood. The queens won't die if they're still in the cages, but they wont be able to lay. I think one of the new packages is died and I don't think the splits are going to make it either. I think I'm going to end up with only the two overwintered and three of the new colonies.

Every year the bees don't always cap over all the honey on a frame, so I end up with frames that have a lot of uncapped honey and nectar. I only extract honey from frames full of capped over honey because I want to be able to say that my bee aproved the quality of my honey. This creates a big problem each year. I'm going to put the frames in the extractor without uncapping the honey. This will allow me to remove all the nector and uncapped honey from the frames and keep all the capped over honey seperated. It will take more time, but all the honey I bottle will be the honey that the bees approved as honey. I can feed the nectar and honey back to the bees or make myself some mead.

-- April 30, 2026 --

It's mid-May. The weather has been cold and then I got sick, so I'm not getting in the hives like I should. I have medical issues that really slow me down and sometimes I come to a complete stop, not good.
Mid-June with the temperature below 60. All the bees are slow this year. It's a strange bee season. I do have 10 hives. I'm surprised I made 4 splits, but 2 seen to bee queen- less. I took some capped over queen cells from a split I made about 10 days ago and put them in the queen-less colonies. I hope they can make colonies that will survive this coming winter. I still find beekeeping interesting and it's enjoyable to work in the apiary, but the die-off in the winter and the lack of people wanting to buy my honey is extremely discouraging. I'm getting into making mead, kombucha, and vinegar. I haven't made any yet, I'm just getting ready.

-- June 19, 2026 --

The bee season is winding down. It's that time when honey is gathered, mite treatments are done, weak colonies are combined with stronger one, and the hives are starting to get configured before they are wrapped-up for winter.

This year has been very depressing. I like beekeeping, so no matter how hard it gets or how much money I spend, I'll still be keeping bees. With that said, I would like to be successful. There are two types of success with beekeeping. The first and most important is keeping your bees alive; not having to buy bees every year. The second success is making at least enough money to break even. I've been failing at both from the start.

I never get to the point of having honey producing colonies, so I don't get a good amount of honey to sell. That really doesn't matter because almost nobody buys my honey anyways. Some of my wife's friends have bought some, but not one person from my community, not even my neighbors. I haven't been over the top happy this year.

When I think it can't get worse, it does. I tried to treat my colonies for mites. I treated one colony. While I'm doing the treatment, the smell of honey is floating around the apiary and it started a robbing frenzy. Most of the hives have bees flying crazy around the entrances. I quickly put robbing screen on all of them. Time will tell, but I'm sure I'm going to lose 2-3 colonies. I'm always making bad decisions. It's killing me.

-- September 08, 2026