Bees are doing well

I was out to see the bees last week. The temperature has been quite mild for March and I've been able to open up the hives and see what's going on. The bees have consumed all of the white granulated sugar that I put on top of their inner cover, and are hungry for more. With the warm weather, it's kind of a dilemma because they are out and active but there is no pollen available for them to pick up. I do hope the weather remains constant so that the early blooming plants start to produce pollen for them.

I'm expanding, and hopefully will get to about 10 hives this year. I'm purchasing two nucleus hives for June, and 3 new Queens for the beginning of May. With that, I should be at 8 hives,  all of them basically nucleus hives.

If I play my cards correctly, and feed them aggressively, I may be able to split three more hives before the fall. I'm working with a gentleman named Terry Langford on his hives, and I'm seeing how he is doing with them. He is a much bigger deal than I am, but focuses more on producing nucleus hives for sale. I would like to work on selling honey, until I get my number of hives up to the level where I can start to sell nucs.

On another front my green house is coming along well. I'm putting some finishing touches on it this week, and I'm looking forward to germinating some vegetables for myself, and using the greenhouse to help further the tree nursery stock.

Much of the work around the farm is going to be automated using Arduino, or Raspberry Pi technology. I'm excited about this opportunity and I look forward to sharing some of the results with you in the future.

Yellow Door Farm is waking up!