Sourwood Farm
Honey Bees!














Playing With Fire

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A recently caught swarm.  The bees are fanning nasanof pheromones to spread the location of their new home to the rest of the colony.

 
The bees are within a stones throw of the house and gardens in 2011.  

 
Late night NUC construction Summer 2011.  
Sometimes you need the equipment yesterday!



What's that pollen on your bee?
Here is a good Link to learn about beekeeping basics



CLICK HERE TO READ AOUT INTRODUCING QUEEN CELLS
 Honey Bees for sale.
2025 Farm Raised Nucs
$270 overwintered
$210 spring raised

 NUC details

- Marked queen, raised this spring from my best hives that survived this winter in my bee yards.
- Bees from solely from hives that over-wintered in my bee yards.
- 5 deep frames OR 6 Medium frames of drawn comb busting with bees. No frame exchange.
-A typical nuc has 3 or more frames of brood - 1 frame of honey - 1 frame of pollen/mix

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR BEES ONLINE

The current genetics that I have in my opperation:

-----My best stock that I have kept for years that are gentle, productive and keep mites low.   Selected by running treatment free and keeping very low mite counts and scoring high on the Harbo VSH Assay

I also have
-----F2 granddaughters of Stevens Bee Company VSH breeder www.stevensbeeco.com

------F2  granddaughters of Pol-line 2.2 breeder from VP queens. vpqueenbees.com
------F1 and F2 daughters from open mated queens I bought from Michael Palmer's breeding program. frenchhillapiaries.com

 F1 Carni breeder from New River Honey Bees

 

What to bring:

We will transfer the bees into your equipment here.   The benefit is a longer inspection where we will identify brood, honey, pollen, find the queen and answer any questions you have.  Plus when you get home you will not have to bother the bees and as you can just set them in their new spot, open the entrance and let them be.  

Please bring :
1. Bottom board (screened preferably for ventilation if you have a solid bottom board we can screen the top and put a metal queen excluder on top to hold the screeen if you have one)
2. Entrance reducer
3.Deep Hive body with all the frames except 5 to make room for the nuc
4. Inner cover and a lid.  
5. A ratchet strap to hold everything together is really good but we can also use duct tape on the spot here as well.  
6. Beesuit

 

 

434-960-2858
 
gotakeawalk@yahoo.com

CLICK HERE TO ORDER BEES ONLINE

Grafting Queens from a Breeder Colony 


Pulling a frame of open "milk" brood from my pol-line x Allegro hygienic Italian breeder colony


Assessing the brood .   Notice 5 frame mating nucs in the background  made to look different for returning queens.


Removing a day old larva with a grafting tool.
A damp sock is used to protect the cells with freshly moved larva.


Placing the day old larva into a plastic cell cup to be moved into the cell raising colony.


Frame with earlier grafts that I am about to place the freshly grafted larva bar into.


A close up of queen cells in production.   The upper cells are about to hatch and the lower bar are about to be capped.  Watching queen cell development is my favorite part of raising queens.


The queen emerged successfully from the cell on the left while the queen in the right hand cell was killed by another virgin queen.


Introducing a queen to a colony between two frames of open brood.   The tube in the bottom of the plastic cage is full of queen candy and the cage is suspended by a toothpick...more often or not that is a small twig.

A virgin Carniolan Queen.   Not the neatest marking job on this one but the irregular markings helps for identification after mating.