Jacob Springs honey program
Jacob Springs Farm practices beekeeping producing comb honey from about 15 topbar beehives. Beautiful, local honey on the comb is sold for $10 per pound. Call or email us for more information. farmteam (at) Jacobsprings.com
Their hives are a combination of farm-built Jacob Springs topbar hives and OpenSourceBeehive project's Colorado Topbar which Andre Houssney helped to design.
The farm also runs the Jacob Springs package bees program providing bees and queens to local area beekeepers annually in the spring.
Contents
Beehive activity May 13, 2016
Caught a swarm from #5 and installed it in #2
Hive 5 needs to be harvested already.
Beehive activity May 1, 2016
New queens and 2# packages for the following colonies: #2, 4, 6, 11, 13 (a few days later I transferred colony #2 to a customer)
Beehive activity observations January 23, 2016 (The first warm sunny day for about 2 months)
- 1 active - cluster inside very little honey reserves
- 2 dirt on landing board no activity no window
- 3 very light activity dead bees in entrance – cluster inside
- 4 no activity lots of pulverized comb at entrance Dead inside
- 5 very active some dirt near entrance – Clusters inside
- 6 no activity dead inside
- 7 1 bee at entrance alive others dead no window
- 8 light activity no window
- 9 light activity no window
- 10 light activity good cluster inside few honey reserves
- 11 light activity at entrance dirty landing board – dead inside
- 12 no activity at entrance some be parts fairly healthy cluster inside no food
- 13 no activity outside no bees inside
- 14 good activity no window
Swarm hive by shop - died
Action taken: Fed syrup water to bees for the first time ever - looks like honey stores are largely consumed - bees fed heavily
2017 Summery
- by springtime, all colonies were dead.
- Installed 8 new packages from the package bee program
- Good year - most hives are strong by late august
- Harvested ~$1200 worth of honey August 23 & 24 from first 4 hives
- Harvested ~$900 ~Sept 1 from last 4 hives
