Kruse Bee Good Honey

06/15/2026

Rapidly growing colonies require the timely addition of additional boxes for adequate hive space. We need to go through the equipment to rotate in some new foundation frames to stretch out the number of built-out comb frames we have available. Our spring splits are receiving an additional box for brood and population growth, with the deeper boxes commonly at the bottom of a hive stack. Our larger colonies have started pulling in more nectar and are receiving additional honey super boxes, which are the shorter top boxes. Beekeeping consumes a lot of time, but when the kids get involved, it's a lot of fun!

06/13/2026

Our spring hive splits are thriving and few will be finding new homes with fellow Iowa beekeepers. With that comes a thorough inspection by the state apiarist, confirming that our colonies are healthy and disease-free. We appreciate the expertise of our state apiarist, who completed an inspection, performed a mite count, and provided perspective on any questions we had. Our colonies received approval for prospering healthy bees!

05/30/2026

Heidi at Savvy Salvage mentioned that she loves the color variation of our honey from throughout the season. Today, we did a full restock and made sure to keep up with the color variety. Different plants provide different shades of honey, and typically, the darker the honey, the bolder the flavor. Bee sure to stop in to try a bottle and see what you've been missing!

05/16/2026

We're excited, the new queens have emerged! You can see how they have chewed their way out the bottom of the queen cell we placed a couple weeks ago. They have returned from their mating fights and started laying eggs for new bees (the little white specs in the bottom center of the cells).

05/03/2026

Our colonies are thriving as the spring build-up continues. To prevent swarming, we split our large colonies each spring. This year, instead of purchasing mated queens, we grafted queen cells from our own overwintered stock for the splits. In the coming weeks, the queens will emerge, undertake mating flights, and start laying eggs to expand their new colony!

04/06/2026

Savvy Salvage is officially back open so we stopped in this weekend to make sure the honey shelf is fully stocked! If you are in the Dyersville area be sure to stop in!

04/03/2026

Earlier this week, we performed hive inspections on all our colonies. Despite our erratic winter weather patterns, the bees have come out of winter strong and gearing up for another active season! Most hives had multiple frames of brood which will help expand the colony size.

11/27/2025

09/13/2025

Been a minute since we have posted, but our work with the bees never stops. We have been busy pulling honey supers and spinning honey! Most times the bees build out wax on the frames and make beautiful frames of capped honey. Sometimes though, the bees decide to build honeycomb between the frames which we remove to make managing our colonies cleaner and easier. When the comb contains honey, we bring it home and enjoy it with the kids. The kids love it and nothing tastes better than fresh comb honey!

07/03/2025

Hot and sunny weather is perfect for checking on the bees as many of the bees are out collecting nectar and resources for the hive. The bees have been busy building wax honeycomb and filling with nectar. We are only a few short weeks away from starting to extract this year's honey!