Paul Perkins

These seven hives are at the Urban Horticulture Center on the University of Washington campus. The hive on the far right is the swarm hive that was featured in the previous blog. It is coming right along. The hive on the far left is the hive that swarmed. We know this because it ended up without a viable queen. The old queen flies off with...

This is our Seattle Urban Honey logo on a sign at the farmers’ market last summer. Our bees are not yet producing honey that we can take this summer. This might delay the July 1 date that we had hoped would be the debut of this season’s honey. Our bees are hungry. The blackberry bushes are just about to bloom as are the locust trees...

The hive on the left is a combination of two weak hives. We piled the one hive on the other with newspaper between. It must have been too late because both hives died. There was plenty of honey. The top box must have weighed 30 pounds or more. The hive on the right is a new hive placed in April. It is doing very well...

We have a new spot to keep bees. We are so excited to have a spot at the University of Washington Urban Horticulture Center. It is in an out of the way fenced area. I hope these bees do well enough to earn their rent! Our own bees ready to go in a hive. One of the members of the Puget Sound Beekeepers invited club...

This is what the bottom board on one of our dead hives looked like. It looks pretty much like the bottom boards of the hives that survive. There are a few dead bees there. We are getting some new hives ready to receive the new packages of bees that we are expecting. We went into the winter with 19 live hives. 15 of them have...

We struggle with a large hive die-off and contemplate testing our hives for bee diseases in closing earlier in the fall to prevent Nosema.

So here we are loading up our pick-up with new bee gear. We have ordered 10 packages of bees and parts for 8 new hives. Some of the bees will be for beehives that are dead and some to increase the number of our hives from 19 to about 26. Some of the hives will go at the Urban Horticulture Center at the University of...

Take a look at the photo above. It shows the entrance to a beehive that is in our backyard in Seattle. The place where the bees land as they come into the hive is covered in a damp dirty substance. It is probably a mixture of dirt and mildew. This hive is dead. I don’t know what it died of but then lots of beehives...

We found the marker commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Lorenzo L.Langstroth (b.Dec. 25, 1810). It is near the Delaware River in the old part of Philadelphia. Langstroth developed the modern beehive with movable frames. We were visiting relatives in the city of brotherly love. The darkest part of the year is behind us and already there have been days warm enough for...