Beekeeping: winding down for fall

So in an effort to bolster our hives as much as we can before we let them go on their own until spring, we are starting to feed some of our weaker hives. We are  going with jar-feeders instead of traditional hive-top feeders. 

We put these on in the morning, and by this evening they had drained about half of the sugar syrup. We also have some pollen patties on the struggling hives 

Stay tuned for the next phase: sugar boards. 

Beekeeping trials and tribulations

So, there's been a dearth of beekeeping posts and it's not due to lack of adventures in the apiary - quite the reverse is true. Unfortunately, our adventures have tended more toward the hard-knocks variety instead of the easy-peasy types. 

Ash has requeened about 6 or more times - all but one queen were raised by him. We have had hive losses, queen losses and even a laying-queen hive that we managed to requeen.  

Here are just a few recap photos of a learning/experience-rich, honey-poor season. 

Marking one of our new queens with a blue paint pen (this year's color). 

Queen cells on a brood frame. 

Old, empty queen cells. 

Treating hives for mites. 

There's obviously a liter haven't documented this summer. It seemed like every hive check presented a new problem to solve. There was so much swapping and reswapping of brood, queens and nukes, that we could hardly keep track. We are just hoping to get some healthy colonies to survive the winter and maybe next year we'll be able to get back to honey-making. If any fellow beekeepers out there run into some weird challenges with your apiary and need a sympathetic ear - we're your folk to go to. ;)