Wagen Lake Apiaries

03/17/2025

06/19/2023

Fresh, local eggs for sale! $4/dozen
Laid for you by the Wagen Lake hens 🐓
Located in Wolverine

06/18/2021

Sometimes we collide!

"Crash Into Me"

06/14/2021

Monday Mentions!

Today, I wanted to give a shout out to our new "neighbors" here in Wolverine over at McCormick Farmz! These awesome folks have purchased a little slice of Northern Michigan heaven and are starting a brand new Lavender farm! Eric and I met them at their farm a few weeks ago, toured their property, and listened to their dreams of what the future holds on this very special piece of land. We couldn't be more excited for them, and will be following along as they embark on their journey! Follow along with us by giving them a like on Facebook, following them on Instagram, and Subscribing on YouTube!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/McCormick-Farmz-108685607974016
Instagram:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOjH6GXaIVGiSbP2lUwTOsQ/featured

Planting Day at McCormick Farmz!

06/14/2021

Weekend Update!

Well, more like "it's been a while and we haven't connected, so let's catch up!

After several more rounds of queen grafting and mating flights, we have some really beautiful, fat, monster Queens laying sheet after sheet of eggs. And we're not done yet. We plan to keep Queen Rearing through the next month. We also just purchased an incubator and are looking forward to trying it out!

We recently put in an order through Betterbee for some more frames and foundation. We've decided to try the black foundation this time to help us see the eggs better. So, we've been busy assembling frames and new hive bodies to make sure we have enough supplies to support our expanding apiary. Expansion is our focus this year, over honey production.

And speaking of honey, we finally extracted the last of last year's honey off the comb. It is currently sitting in a 5 gallon bucket waiting to be jarred.

Though the grass and garden plants are suffering from the heat and lack of rain, there still seem to be lots of flowering plants, and the bees are still finding nectar to bring back to the hives.

It was a welcome break from the upper 80 degree days this weekend, with the temperatures hitting only the mid 70s. On Saturday, our good friends Todd and Sarah came over. Eric and Todd went golfing while Sarah and Mary took the kiddos to the lake. We finished the night with brats and dogs on the grill, ice cream cones and a campfire.

Sunday brought another round of hive inspections, queen grafting, and after a trip to the hardware store for some fresh paint, added some color to our new hive bodies. Dinner with "Mimi," aka Eric's Mom, and another walk through the hives. Mimi got to see all the progress and the newest Queens.

We've been quite the "busy bees" here at Wagen Lake! Thanks for catching up with us!

06/13/2021

Any guesses what we're up to today?

06/01/2021

Mating nuc made out of scrap lumber. Four separate compartments fit two frames each. Each compartment has its own entrance. In go frames of pollen, nectar, emerging brood, and one of our queen grafts just days before she's ready to emerge herself.

Once she "hatches" and if the small colony of bees accept her, the virgin queen will take a few days to let her body harden before she makes her mating flight.

On this flight, she will mate with as many drones (male bees) as she can, and will return to the hive to live out her days as a laying queen, laying eggs and growing her own colony of bees.

05/19/2021

Checking in on our 2nd round of grafting and we find 13 drawn out Queen Cells and our Cell Builder packed to the brim with bees!

Our first round of grafting only produced two queen cells, and the cell builder created four emergency cells on its own. We pulled the frame with the emergency cells out of our cell builder and put it into a mating nuc. The two queen cells from our first graft went into a second mating nuc. We'll check in on both in a couple of weeks to see if our Queens emerge, successfuly mate, and become productive laying Queens!

05/17/2021

As a local business, we love supporting other local businesses! Our bees will be busy spending some of their time pollinating these beautiful plants from Bear Creek Organic Farm !!

05/13/2021

So much fun making Cinnamon Honey with our niece!

05/10/2021

Honey extraction! 🍯

After straining the honey through double mesh bags into a food grade bucket, our honey was ready to be filled into some new jars. 🐝

05/10/2021

Finally got around to extracting some of last year's honey harvest over the weekend. 🐝

Pure liquid gold!! 🍯🍯🍯