Author: Queenbee

The latest cold snap may have us turning the heat back on for a bit, but the bees wait for no one and our first 2 sets of grafts are in. The grafts are the careful transfer of day-old eggs onto frames which are dropped into what’s called a cell builder. This is a strong… Continue reading Spring Bees

Our fall was busy wrapping up the winter preparation for our hives and getting the honey harvest packaged. We were excited to attend the annual Illinois State Beekeeping Winter meeting in early November in Springfield and listen to interesting presentations on bee health, apiary management and pest control, as well as spending times with other… Continue reading Fall

Bees don’t hibernate, although the polar vortex coming through may make them reconsider…They cluster up inside the hive. We have clustered up as well, and, like the bees, are slowly gearing up for spring. We are working on getting our kitchen up and running allowing for a wider range of bee-based products under the Steamship… Continue reading Winter Cluster

We are gearing up to start harvesting our 2024 honey soon. The weather this year has been less than cooperative, so cut comb will be scarce this year. For all the setbacks, we are making progress on our farm and growing our business. Life is good. Looking forward to offering some bulk honey options soon.… Continue reading Summer season harvest is coming!

We are so excited to have formalized our partnership with the Lincoln Land Community College and their foundation to provide education on both hobbyist beekeeping and commercial beekeeping practices. We’re looking forward to see what the future will bring: beekeeping provides so much to our communities and agriculture and, in our modest opinion, is an… Continue reading West Nature Grove

Early summer has been busy. We have set up new apiaries, and are expanding our operation. With the end of June near, we are hoping for a good flow to start our Spring/Summer honey harvest soon. Go little bees!

The nucs are coming along nicely. The new queens have started laying, and we are looking forward to seeing the brood start to emerge in the next few days (2nd week of May). The last quality check on the queens will be on the nuc itself: are we seeing good brood patterns, no supersedure cells.… Continue reading Spring Nucs

We are blessed to have had both production colonies and nucs come through the winter healthy and strong. April has been very busy trying to grow our apiaries and mange the bees’ swarm desire. We have had overwintered nucs already swarm or at least try to. Alas, our queens are clipped and have little success… Continue reading Swarming – a note on spring management

Swarm season is here! Andy is busy setting up apiaries and getting our woodenware ready. The number of our apiaries is growing and so is the number of bees and hives in each apiaries. We got them inspected just a couple weeks ago and all looks well. Our hives are healthy and robust. We have… Continue reading Swarm Season waits for no one

We are excited to start offering overwintered Nucs and Spring Nucs this year. What are they? A few years back, Andy wrote a pretty comprehensive guide for fellow club members for deciding what to purchase. In a nutshell, an overwintered nuc is a small colony with a queen raised the previous year during the summer… Continue reading Local Nucs and Genetics