Twas a busy week with the Leon bees. Last Monday I pulled 9 supers off the Leon and home hives including a partial super of comb honey. I put the comb honey super in my freezer to kill any hitchhikers. Last Tuesday we extracted these and supers from Jefferson county at the Full Moon honey house. Final tally was 350 pounds.
On Sunday I inspected the hives and added deep boxes and feed to most hives to give them room to grow more bees. Hive two was making queen cells for some reason so I left them alone. The number 1/3 deep had a laying queen and seemed to be growing. I added two honey supers back to number 4 in hopes they will make a late super of honey off the pinto (jelly) palms that are blooming now. There are a lot of those in the Leon EO area and the Leon bees have made late honey from those in years past.. the hive started from a nuc this spring is still going strong. I didn’t pull the honey super since they had only filled one frame and it wasn’t capped yet. Hopefully they will utilize the pin do palm flow too. The nuc I previously made from a split is still in slow motion so hopefully the sugar syrup and palm bloom will get the going too.
I hope to do a mite check during our next open hive inspection in July and plan to treat w Apivar if needed.