Something a little different - bees for the farm

You know it's spring when bees hit the road.
I've been keeping bees for a few years at my parent's place. My sister and her husband built me the best bee yard, which is on the same line as the cattle fence. I call it the "Bee Fortress of Solitude."
The past number of winters have been pretty epic learning experiences.
You do not want to get into it with me about climate change. I will be (un)happy to point at hundreds of dollars worth of thousands of dead bees who couldn't winter over because of bonkers weather.
Right now, it's cold and wet and we have to feed the new bees like crazy because all the rain is literally washing the nectar out of the spring blooms.
Ahem.
Anyway.

New Bees!

You pick them up at night so that any of the bees that were out flying for food
in the daylight will be home in time to come along for the ride.

Trucks are the best way to do this. Ian and I get our bees from Hudson Valley Bee Supply. They've been great. I got 2 spring nucleus colonies, Ian got 3 overwintered nucs. I've also gotten bees from BetterBee before.
This year sees the introduction of top feeders to the operation. My first year we used entrance feeders, and they seemed to work fine. Every year since it's been a leaky, sticky mess. The bees must be fed, especially right now, so, we'll see.

A nuc sitting on top of it's hive.
A few years ago I got creative and painted some of the brood boxes.
It's been a long hard bee-time since, and I've lacked time and creativity to paint new ones.

Little faces in the top entrance after installation.

Here we go again.
Keep your fingers crossed.

At one point I was up to 6 hives. There's enough room in this yard to do 6 comfortably. 8 gets tight. I can only hope that my worries this year are about space and not disease, swarms, absconding, freezing, pests, etc.

Get into beekeeping, they said. It's a fun hobby, they said. You can make a little side money, they said.
It's been a lot of reading, trying to keep up with the most recent developments in management and medication, heartache and dead bees. When you have livestock, you have dead stock, but it doesn't get any easier when you crack into a hive and no one flies out to greet you.
Where once there was a hum, only silence.

The hum is back - let's hope this time I manage to beat the odds and get it right.