Confessions of a Bad Beekeeper

One cool, winter evening last year as I thumbed through an adult education flyer I got this bright idea of taking a bee keeping class.  By June I was an official beekeeper…that honestly didn’t have a clue how complex these little creatures really were. 

I thought medical terminology was challenging in nursing school but at this point I think bee terminology has it beat.  How many lay people have ever heard of bee space, capped brood, propolis, nukes, & varroa mites?

Heck spell check doesn’t even recognize these words.Here’s County Boy, remember the child who wanted NO part of my bees!  I’ll never let him live that one down! 

Several weeks back he helped me winterize them. 

Here’s the deal, when I first started  bee keeping I checked them  every week as instructed.   Despite my frequent checks I was never able to identify the queen.  Towards fall I checked them less and less with a span of over of month going by.  I remembered I was suppose to treat them for mites but according to the place I get my supplies I was “too late”.   Ugggg….so I dusted them with a little powdered sugar for good measures and treated them preventively for Nosema  (aka bee diarrhea). 

With this being the first year I did not harvest any honey from them.  I question if they have enough honey for themselves to make it through a long Maine winter.  As pictured above I have given them some sugar water but that won’t be enough.  I will have to do a little more research on winter feeding.

Last night I went out by flashlight to put there top cover on and be sure the foam insulation was still in place before the storm.  On the way out the door Maine Man  called me a “bad beekeeper”, hence the title.  He’s right!  Beekeeping isn’t really a fly by the seat of your pants project but that unfortunately is how I roll. Hopefully they’ll survive this winter despite the neglect.