Forgot to mention in the last post that I got 36 gallons in all of honey in 2012!!!!!

It has been a long time since I have posted.... I get busy and forget about the blog. Sorry everyone!

I have lost all of my Strachan Apiary Carnis. They have all either frozen due to small cluster size, absconded or outright died. I only had 1 hive that was awesome and I had the most supers ever on it. They all absconded with food in the hive. I am not impressed with their queens.

I am going to be trying Russians this year. I will hopefully have 4 that are coming from an approved Russian breeder. We will see how they do.

I have had 3 other cut outs since my last post. 2 apartments and one house.

Bee yard report:

I have lost 1/2 of my bees. They have either absconded or starved/froze. I think it is partly due to not being able to do 2 powder sugar shakes in the fall like I try to do. I do not treat with chemicals and the mites probably got bad with no sugar shake.

A vast majority of my honey crystallizes every year and it is hard to sell. Because of this, I am going to use at least half of my honey every year to continue making mead.