2745 W. Kingsbury Street, Seguin, Texas - (830)305-7925
Update From Gretchen Bee Ranch
CTCT-20180322_221524
Dear Friends and Beekeepers,

Our bee colonies are growing rapidly now and we see abundant pollen coming into the hives and a moderate honey flow in both Guadalupe County and Medina County. The wild persimmon is starting to bloom heavily and this often is a forerunner to our main honey flow. The year continues to look promising – especially if we can get some rain soon.

We are finishing up our mite treatment using Apiguard. I am considering putting Hopguard strips into the hives when I put honey supers on just to knock down the mites one more time before the honey flow begins.

We received our first batch of queens this week so we are now busy dividing our colonies and installing new queen into the divides. We do this every year, but it is always satisfying to create new colonies that we can share with others or use to grow our apiary.
 
BEEKEEPING WORKSHOP

Our free beekeeping workshop on Saturday is “ Evaluating a Colony for Possible Dividing .”

We will open and examine one of our colonies and I will show you what I look for as I make the decision to divide or not to divide. As part of the workshop, I will go ahead and divide the colony if it passes muster. Please bring your protective gear if you would like to participate in the workshop. We begin the workshop at 9 and it is free. We hope to see you there!
 
Your friend,
Mark
CTCT-20180322_213032
Beekeeping Tip of the Week
The most dangerous part of your beekeeping work may not be your bees. Protect your hands from scorpions and poisonous spiders by wearing your protective bee gloves.

These critters like to eat bees and they live under and around your hives. We frequently find scorpions under the rocks that we set on top of our hives to weigh the covers down. We looked underneath one of our hives this morning and found four black widow spiders.

We also wear snake boots or snake leggings in the bee yards just in case we run into any of our friendly rattlesnakes or copperheads. Yes, that does happen though thankfully not often.
Items For Sale
Nucleus Hives for Spring Pick-Up : Please visit our website to find complete information and pricing for our 2018 nucleus hives: 2018 NUCS LINK .

Well over two-thirds of the nucleus hives that we will have available this spring are now spoken for. If you would like to reserve a nuc through us, please do so soon. You can order your nucs either online or in the shop on the days that we are open. Please let me know if you have any question about our nucs for 2018.

Queens Now Available : Early, unmarked Italian Queens are now available. The cost is $42. We ask that you notify us about a day ahead if you need one so that we can remove the queen from the queen bank and prepare her for you to pick up. I do expect the cost of queens to go down later in the season. We plan to have queens available now through about the end of September.
Shop Hours

Wednesday 9-12pm
Friday 10-6pm
Saturday 9-12pm