The Boojum Bees

A little background information.

The Boojum Bees are a swarm that arrived on our property last May. They took residence in some beekeeping equipment that we had on property. They were not wild bees meaning that they came from another beekeeper's hives nearby. How do we know? The queen was marked on her thorax with a small dab of colored paint. We were able to harvest about 90 pounds of honey from the colony last fall leaving plenty for them to survive over the mild winter months.


Making Splits:
Beekeepers often make new colonies by dividing-up colonies and introducing new queens to them. We made an observation hive with three frames that included bees, brood (unhatched bees) and some honey and pollen. This hive also had the old queen.

We then took the remaining colonies and made them into four colonies. Since we live in an area of the country that has Aficanized Honey Bees, we do not raise our own queens and allow them to open mate. If they were allowed to open mate, the colonies could become "africanized" or aggressive. We ordered four queens from a breeder in Northern California to ensure that we know the pedigree of the queens.