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I have a large collection of Beekeeping Books that I am willing to loan. The list is available at:
https://www.libib.com/u/lackey1rjl

To borrow, you must contact me directly and make arrangements to borrow. This is generally available to any beekeeper (or interested in becoming one) that I know or a member of Grand Rapids Are Beekeepers. You will then have to pick up the book at my house and return within a month or make arrangements for an extended borrowing.

Dec 23 was a kind of day that our bees depend upon, a mild day after a long cold period. The bees were taking cleansing flights as they hadn’t had a chance to defecate for several weeks. This helps them to clean their gut out before another cold spell. I was able to feed my Styrofoam nucs about 12 gallons of sugar syrup, only a couple pounds each but every bit helps.as brood rearing is about to start around Jan 10. I also got around to all of my out yards. The bees are in good shape. The day was warm enough to open hives and check them, just by separating boxes, not pulling frames.

I have been out to check my bees and they are generally in good shape. Unfortunately this mild January weather can be very bad for the bees. Any time the outside temperature goes above about 42 degrees F, the bees can break cluster and wander around, thus using more reserves. As the days get longer, the queen is stimulated to start laying. At the Grand Rapids latitude, it is generally considered to start around January 10. With mild weather, the colony can start a cluster that is as large as they can maintain at the mild condition. Unfortunately, as chillier weather hits, they collapse around the brood and may pull back from the honey. The bees will not leave the brood to follow the honey so they can starve to death with only a few days of colder weather. It is also true that this happens to the strongest colonies first.

I am currently working up the plans of 2019, both beekeeping classes and queen breeding.  We have started evaluating a number of queen stocks and started over 100 nucs for overwintering evaluation. We are going to be breeding from the survivors and will try to enter into winter 2019-2020 with over 200 nucs with survivors being offered for sale in spring 2020.  A limited number of queen cells and mated queens should be available as excess from the nuc production in 2019. 

As I am retired and my wife and I plan on doing a significant amount of travel and camping, queen cells will only be offered once a month on the second Friday/Saturday after the first Wednesday of the month by reservation only, May through July ($12/ or $10/ in batches of 10 or more).  Queens will be available at the same time at standard rate of $30 or as emergency pulls if I am available at a higher rate of $38.

Class schedules are being planned so that they fit in with our traveling and the queen grafting schedule..

We have a schedule up on the web but have had little response.  I have been having trouble getting the word out in a timely fashion.  We may cancel the classes completely or delay them for a month.

Bees are on order so quantity is fixed.  Get your order in soon to reserve a package.

We have been in Michigan for a year and a half and have been getting to know the local beekeeping community.  We are starting up as a business with the new year in 2018, offering beekeeping classes and package bees.