Monty Ridge Farm

06/01/2026

Got the 'deposit' put into a hive over at Buddy's place. Also saved one of his colonies from falling over on an unstable base. I may have underestimated the size of the colony, they filled out 3 10 frame deep and immediately took to the 4th. And they don't like me because I changed out the bottom board and moved them one box at a time. I had to turn the dog loose because of the bees. Hell, they even went after the chickens. I think I got stung a half dozen times. I think I should've used smoke...

05/31/2026

Dad dropped off a nuc as a 'deposit'. Time to set up their new hive.

05/25/2026

05/25/2026

Post robbing clean out.

05/25/2026

Robbed some honey on Friday. We grabbed a box off one hive and we had a box from this past winter dead-out. We had all the little helpers out supervising on this job... It's sitting in a bucket clarifying right now, should have it in bottles later this week. It's 16.5% moisture, light amber according to the Jack's Honey Scale, and we have about 3 gallons of it.

05/17/2026

Just finished cleaning the honey extraction equipment. Discovered that some replacement parts need to be ordered. We're trying something different this year, trying a partial harvest memorial day weekend and still harvest all of it on the July 4th weekend. We'll see how that pans out. Pics and maybe videos coming after the fact (per usual).

05/02/2026

05/02/2026

How swollen could I get?

05/02/2026

Got a tip on the bee phone about a swarm at work. And, of course, I was not perfectly prepared for the job. But I was successful anyway. And we were able to get another swarm off of Fort Knox. Videos in the next post