u/Pogonia

First full year in SE PA; last year I started in June with a nucleus that made it over the winter. With a new nuc this spring, a swarm and split I now have four hives. The overwintered hive and nuc both did great and overall this season I got just over 100lbs of honey from those two. Had the nuc not swarmed due to lack of space (lesson learned) I would have had even more. They have a ton of honey socked away so I pulled out one deep frame just because it was so gorgeous. I did a late spring harvest when the one hive got honey-bound after the first swarm and some gorgeous water-white black locust honey. Then in July I had a full super on the overwintered hive I decided to pull, and they nearly refilled that, and then finally today's harvest.

The final image shows my three harvests this summer. From left to right it was today's harvest, an early July harvest and the early June black locust harvest. All of them are delicious, with the black locust being very mild and floral and today's harvest a perfect "honey" flavor. I suspect the harvest last month and this one are heavy on white clover.

The goldenrods are just starting here, so I'll start the Apivar 2.0 this week now that the honey is off and make sure they have enough stores going into the winter. They're pretty stuffed right now but of course if we have a lower fall flow they might need some help. I learned a lot this year--getting strong nuc, managing swarms and cast swarms, requeening a hive with failing queen and a split that lost its queen. I feel like I've go my bee legs now. Looking forward to next season now that I have more hives and they will be able to start the spring with a lot more pulled comb than they did this year!

This past weekend we welcomed our sixth TFT to the pack, the fifth that we got as a puppy. She is literally the most energetic of all of the TFTs we have had. When she's ready to play, she's WILD--and we love it. The two older dogs aren't so sure about her yet, so they are all kept separated. Paisley is 14 and really doesn't need any nonsense in her life, and Ollie who's eight, is anxious, jealous and would probably bite her if he could, but one week in and they are both slowly accepting she's here to stay. In a few more weeks they should be able to coexist with minimal mayhem.

Photo is just for attention. Just curious, are there any other SE Pennsylvania beekeepers on here? I'm just west of Philly and I did a second harvest two weeks ago as I thought we were entering a dearth...but all four of my hives are jumping busy and when I checked quickly last night, the strongest hive had socked a LOT of honey into the frames I spun out two weeks ago, and already have totally capped two out of 16 frames; 4-5 others they are starting to cap.

Just curious if others are seeing the same. We've had a mostly sunny and dry summer, but with just enough rain in the last month to prevent a drought. Still early so no fall flowers yet, but I guess plenty of clover still blooming in the lawns around the area.

As for the honey, it's a mix of lighter and darker in the cells. The honey above is from left to right: My late June harvest, almost undoubtedly all black locust (sometimes called "acacia"), my July harvest that I think is mostly clover and then last year's late August harvest.

Based on how it's going I think I'll get a third harvest (yes I know I could have left the supers on and done one, but this is a hobby and I LOVE extracting) in a few weeks, as we usually have a lot of goldenrod and asters blooming in September into October. All of my hives are double deeps and they all have at least 5-6 full frames of just honey and lots of honey above the brood in the upper boxes, so I think I'll probably pull a few deep frames and extract them as well. Worst case I have to feed them to load them up for winter.

Never get tired of this view when I park and walk away.

Located in SE PA just west of Philly. Back in early June I pulled some honey. I had done a split and captured a swarm and my overwintering hive and my nuc both had too much honey in the upper brood box so I did an extraction to free up space and create some pulled comb to put in the split and swarm box to give them a head start. That has worked well and those two have taken off and the overwintered hive and my spring nuc both managed to pull some comb in the supers and fill it up with some honey.

It was only about half-capped but we are about to enter a dearth here for a couple weeks before the fall flow, and I didn't want them eating the super stores, as they all have lots of honey in the brood boxes already. It's also been humid so I figured they were just waiting to cap it. Tested out at 20% so I dried it for 24 hours down to 18% and extracted.

The super light left bottle is the spring extraction and is likely black locust honey. The right is today's extraction. Not sure what it is but the major flowering plants during the last 7 weeks were the tulip poplars, Russian olive and honeysuckle as well as clover. Still pretty light in color but a bit more floral flavor than the subtle early harvest.

So far I have just about 60 pounds for my first full year (I started my first nuc last June) and I've managed to successfully go from one to four hives, all thriving so I'm pretty pleased.

No real tips or tricks here but it was the closest appropriate flair. Just sharing that persistence and learning work. I'm in my second full year with bees (well third, I tried 45 years ago when I was a boy), and after a successful first year and overwintering I decided to add a second hive this spring. For reference I'm located in SE PA west of Philly. The photo is my small bee yard located in a native plant meadow area we planted on our property to eliminate a small sea of grass.

I shared here how I ran into some troubles along the way--or just the usual bee stuff, but challenging in the first year. My overwintering hive struggled while my nuc from GA really took off gangbusters. The old queen in my overwintered hive was not laying well and the hive numbers were low, so I took a gamble and replaced her. Well, they killed the new queen. Meanwhile the nuc was crowded and I discovered swarm cells, so I split them to try and prevent a swarm. Less than two weeks later I learned I failed to give the nuc enough room in time and they swarmed. I am convinced I missed a first swarm while I was away for a weekend, as the swarm I caught about ten days later clearly had a virgin queen (it was a cast swarm). The nuc now was queenless, but there were about half a dozen supercedure cells still left so I left three in that hive and moved the other frame with queen cups to the hive that killed their purchased queen.

This left me about six weeks ago with four hives, only one of which had a queen, two with sealed queen cups, and the split which I bought a queen for. So three hives all needing new queens and virgin queen from my swarm. My options were limited so I had to just trust that the queens would mate and start laying. I left them all alone for two weeks to give the queens time to hatch and mate and start laying. Two weeks ago I checked and the virgin swarmed queen was laying and so was the split with the purchased queen--there was plenty of visible larvae and lots of cells with shining jelly at the bottom. The other two had signs of laying with tiny bits of white royal jelly in a lot of cells--without my reading glasses I couldn't see any eggs!

Today I checked and all of the hives are doing great. The nuc is built back up and storing away honey in the frames I extracted a few weeks ago. The re-queened hive from last year is going gangbusters and also putting away honey. The split with the purchased queen has good numbers finally and is pulling out most of the frames in their deep, so I added a second one for growth room and to help with this heat wave. Finally the cast swarm has really taken off, she seems to be a great queen. They've pulled all of the lower deep frames and laid up some honey and in the second deep about three quarters of the frames have been started to be pulled with lots of honey and some brood in the lower parts of a few middle frames.

The moral of the story is...just keep at it! Manage the bees the best you can and then trust them to do what's best and raise new queens. Obviously I had to step in to limit the number of queen cells, and swapping them between hives helped me get more queen-right hives. Right now I'm at where I wanted to be next year, with four hives all of which are doing well. I am now thinking I might add two more next spring!

Seeing another post here I thought I'd share a photo or a what a true mandarin orange spessartine garnet looks like. The best of the best are a rich orange with no brown hues or yellows--just ORANGE. This 2.74-carat gem is faceted in my award-winning "Testudo" brilliant oval design; the rough was from a find in Nigeria back around 2015.

I pulled 7 deep frames from my two biggest hives to harvest--I probably could have pulled a little more but I wanted to leave the bees enough to get through any dearth as our local flow slows down for summer. The color is amazing...we had a great local honey locust bloom this spring and I suspect that is what the honey is mostly comprised of.

In a hive update, I had ended up with two big hives with no queens, and a swarm that I think was a cast swarm with a virgin queen, and a split where the queen didn't make it--so it was looking bleak. I bought a queen for the split and after a week I saw larvae and a lot of cells with white royal jelly at the bottom, so presumably a lot of young larvae. In the other three that have/had virgin queens they all should have just started laying and when I looked I did see a lot of cells with white royal jelly at the bottom, so I am assuming a lot of very freshly-hatched larvae. I couldn't see eggs but without my reading glasses that's pretty hard for me to see, so I'm going to go with the royal jelly in the bottom as a sign of laying. Hopefully I'm right, if so I'll have gone from one hive starting the spring to four now.

Back between 2008-2013 I drove a 997.1 4S that I loved, as I lived in SoCal and my daily commute was up and down some twisting canyon roads. When I moved back east I switched over to a Cayenne Turbo for winter driving but got tired of an SUV so since 2018 I've been driving Audi's. Alas, the RS7 I love is now discontinued and my current RS7 lease is up in a few months so I was on the hunt for something new.

I test drove an M5; too big and heavy. So Saturday I decided to go drive a Panamera as my next best RS7 replacement option. I had given up on a 911 as supplies are so tight and getting an allocation is near impossible. When I walked in the dealer, right next to the Panamera I was interested in was this newly-delivered GTS. That was all it took....and I walked out with it. Never thought I would like white and never would have ordered it, but I actually really like the look with the gloss black exterior options; she looks like an Imperial Storm Trooper. So happy to be back in a 911!

I had also split this swarmed hive into a nuc a week ago in the hopes I *might* suppress the swarming urge, but that seems to have been a failure. I decided to move the nuc to a deep today and I couldn't find a queen and it looks like the queen cell I thought I was giving them was a dud as it hasn't hatched and it should have at least 3-4 days ago. My question: Do order a queen for that small nuc or just let them die out and swap their combs back into the three hives I now have?

Now for the rest of the swarming story; it was my first swarm as this is only my second year with bees--and last year I started right after swarm season with a swarmed split from a local beekeeper.

I had asked about this hive a few weeks ago--it was an overwintered nuc from Georgia that just exploded here in SE PA after I got it in late March, and was clearly ready to swarm. For a bit I thought the queen had died as I couldn't find her anywhere, but clearly not--I went out today and there was a swarm just finishing settling on a tree near the hive--luckily only about six feet off the ground.

I managed to get them into a new deep and stole two frames of empty drawn comb from my other weak hive that I am trying to requeen using supercedure cells from the hive this swarm left. I checked both of those hives quickly and found hatched queen cells in both--by my math they should have hatched anywhere from Thursday through Saturday. We've had pouring rain since Wednesday--over six inches in the last few days--so today was the first opportunity for swarming and likely the first for any mating flights for the queens.

Now I'm just going to wait ten days to give the queens time to mate and start laying.