Long live the Queen! (or queens in our case)

On Friday, I took my first look at the beehives since installing the bee packages. I needed to check to see if all was well with the two hives and to see if the queens had been released from their queen cages. I was happy to see that both queens were free and hard at work laying eggs in the new honeycomb. 4 or 5 frames showed a fair amount of activity. Because there are not a lot of flowers out yet, I have kept the hive top feeders filled with sugar syrup (2 and 1/2 quarts water and 5 lbs of sugar). So far the two hives have used a total of fifteen pounds of sugar! They will probably need the syrup for another 3 or 4 weeks.

Since I had to do the inspection on my own, I didn’t have Renee around to take any pictures this time. I hope to have some pictures later this week, so stay tuned!

— submitted by Darryl

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The Girls Have Arrived at Sunnyslope Farm!

Last week Darryl picked up two packages of Italian honey bees from Noble Apiaries of Dixon California. He was able to arrange to pick them up at the UPS distribution center by the Oakland Airport. Each package contained approximately 10,500 bees including a queen. He had previously ordered materials to build two bee hives and has been working on them for the past 3 months. So the day after the bees were picked up, he installed them into the two hives in our apple orchard.

Here are some pictures of the bees moving in.

Here are the two packages of bees sitting on top of a beehive. There are about 20,000 bees total in the two packages.

Darryl with the two packages of bees ready to install in their hives.

Here is the queen cage covered with attendants ready to be installed in
the hive. Hopefully over the next few days, the worker bees will be able to
chew through the candy plug on the cage and free the queen.

The queen cage has been placed between two frames of the hive. Just
to be safe, Darryl put a piece of wire through the cage so that it wouldn’t
fall to the bottom of the hive. The cage is surrounded by attendant bees.

The rest of the bees have been shaken onto the frames. The rest of the
frames are now being added. Finally, Darryl will put a top feeder and
sugar water (syrup) on top and cover the hive with it’s lid.

All done!  Now we will leave the bees alone for a week to get comfortable
in their new home.

Spring at Sunnyslope Farm

Springtime at Sunnyslope Family Farm


This is a view of the grape arbor begining to sprout leaves with Mariah eating in the background.

Spring is here and we are pretty busy keeping up with what needs to be done at the farm.Darryl has begun to plant corn. The first 3 rows of super sweet hybrid went in on Tuesday March 28. As soon as the corn has grown 5 or so inches, we will plant beans and squash around them. Darryl bit the bullet and purchased a John Deere riding mower! He was falling far behind in weed control and the mower is really a huge timesaver.

Here is Nathan trying out the John Deere.