Happy New Year!
Happy Birthday to Beekeeper Marty!
The Bee Yard
There is not much going on with the bees right now. They are all nestled away in their hives, wrapped up, and eating their honey or candy board. Good thing for us. We have had cold weather, snow, icy rain, warm weather (Yes, 50° is considered warm now) – Just your typical Chicago January.
January Chores
Since there is no need to run out to the bee yards, I have been working on products to sell at the upcoming craft shows this year – bottling honey, soap, lotion, candy, honey straws. We have 3 shows in March alone!
Kane County Flea Market, Kane County Fair Grounds, St.
Charles, IL – March 2 & 3
Carl Sandburg High School, Orland Park, IL – March 9 & 10
College of DuPage Craft Show, PE Building, Glen Ellyn, IL – March 23 & 24
For our other events – Check out our Calendar of Events – https://www.twobeekeepers.com/events/
Also on the agenda is to make the woodenware we need for the upcoming year. Marty has put together about 300 new frames for the brood boxes. We have old frames, poorly drawn out frames, and frames packed with bad or old pollen that need to be removed from the hive.
This is the month to order packages. We have an idea of how many packages we want to order, but we are in a holding pattern. The package price has not been released yet. The price goes up every year. We receive our packages from California after almond season and the season was horrible this year. The bees had a hard time and their numbers did not build up as well as other years. They are not sure how many packages they are able to create. Beekeeping is getting harder every year.