🐝 Day 28: Progress Checks & The Buzz-Mail Bag
Between monitoring colony expansion, keeping tabs on our queen development, and spinning fresh honey, the yard has been moving at warp speed! Here is the latest buzz.
Amanda Lea Collins
7/19/20262 min read
📈 Hive Progress: The Keep & The Vanguard
Our routine checks showed some exciting growth across two of our key vertical stacks:
The Keep: The brood nest is booming! The workers are packing out the main chamber so fast that we’re getting everything prepped for a second brood box very soon to give the queen ample laying space.
The Vanguard (Freyja’s Crew): Freyja’s army continues to impress. The population is soaring, and they are officially right on the verge of needing another honey super to handle their incoming nectar haul.
👑 The Ranch: A Wall of Guards
Over on the honey super side of The Ranch, we did a careful visual check on the progress of our transferred queen cells. The colony’s behavior was unmistakable: the bees had formed a dense, protective "wall of bees" around the cell cluster.
When a hive is actively incubating and guarding developing royal cells, they cluster tightly to maintain a precise temperature (around 93°F to 95°F). Seeing that solid curtain of dedicated worker bees means they are taking full care of that royal cell as she completes her pupation inside!
🍯 The Jar Count: Liquid Gold
After wrapping up our extraction from the 18 prime frames, James and I spent time filling jars straight from our 5-gallon bucket!
Without getting bogged down in retail logistics, the final count from our first major harvest came out to a gorgeous lineup of 9 six-ounce jars, 12 twelve-ounce jars, and 8 forty-five-ounce jars! There is nothing quite like lining up those crystal-clear glass jars on the counter and watching that warm, amber honey shine.
📮 The Buzz-Mail Bag
In this section, we answer burning beekeeping questions from our readers, family, and helper crew!
Question from Jr. Beekeeper James:
"How much honey do bees actually need to eat during the Summer months to survive versus what they need to consume in the Winter?"
Answer: Great question, James! It turns out a honey bee’s diet changes drastically depending on the season, the weather, and what’s happening inside the hive.
Summer Consumption (High Energy, High Demand):
In the peak of summer, a strong colony can actually burn through 1 to 2 pounds of honey or nectar every single day! Raising tens of thousands of baby bees (brood) requires continuous feeding of honey and pollen. Plus, thousands of field foragers flying miles back and forth consume massive amounts of carbohydrate energy—think of honey as high-octane jet fuel for their flight muscles! However, because flowers are blooming everywhere, a healthy summer hive usually brings in far more nectar than they eat, storing the surplus for later.
Winter Consumption (Conservation & Heat):
In the winter, bees don't fly outside or raise large amounts of brood. Instead, they form a tight "winter cluster" and vibrate their wing muscles to keep the center of the ball warm. To survive a cold northern winter (from late fall through early spring), a full-sized colony needs a bank of roughly 60 to 90 pounds of stored honey left in the hive! In early winter, they eat slowly—around 10 to 15 pounds a month. But as late winter hits and the queen starts laying eggs again, their consumption spikes right back up as they burn fuel to keep the brood nest warm against the freeze.