Mr. Charlie (my mentor) and I went through my ten hives last week. We expected to be harvesting honey this week, but to my chagrin I will not be harvesting this week. We found three hives with no queens. I have no idea what happened to them. Yesterday Mr. Charlie brought frames over with queen cells and lots of brood. (babies) to replace a frame in all three hives. We are hoping the queen cell will emerge about the same time as the baby bees, so the queen will have bees to care of her and get the hives working and productive again.

When there is no queen in the hive the bees chill out and don't do much work. Spring is the most plentiful time of the year. They should be bringing in lots of pollen and nectar. This is a set back and I will miss out on lots of honey production, but as Mr. Charlie says... This is a learning experience and a part of beekeeping.

I met a fabulous lady, Carla Grayson a few weeks ago at a holistic fair. She linked my sasserfrasshill.com website onto her becomeonewithspirit.com site. She is a renowned web designer and has an interesting and informative website. I am very grateful she added sasserfrasshill.com to her site. Check it out.

Mr. Charlie and I will go through my hives again soon to see how the queens are progressing. I hope we will be back in full production in just a few weeks.

Bee Well,

Deborah