mid june 2014 update

Well, I admit it - I've been slack.  I haven't posted anything about what's been going on around the apiary.  Let me try to sum up what's happened over the last few months ..

>  over wintered with 4 hives, lost 1 and was down to 3.
> purchased a couple of packages (wish I hadn't and didn't I say I had this issue last year?)
> had to re-queen 3 hives and then supply 2 brood stocks to get those up and running - all from the 2 packages I purchased.  Even the queens I purchased didn't go to well and had to be re-queened from 'my' stock.
> up to 7 hives now - and stable.
> built a top bar hive but had to queen it from "my" stock from grafting.  seems to be doing well so far with the new queen in there about 3 weeks now (from hatch out)
> tried my hand at grafting again on 5/31.  grafted 24 cells and got a survival (my issues I'm sure) of 15 queen cells.  made up 9 nuc's and will check this week for eggs.
> made 3 other splits.

So, I guess I've been busy and hopefully these 9 nucs will have good queens in them and I'll be able to double-stack nuc's and over-winter them this year in preparation for next years stock.

I have found a local organic farmer who has agreed and want's a couple of hives.  As soon as I have a couple of the nuc's going well I'm going to move them over there for the winter - and then into a standard hive configuration next year. 

I hope to pull some honey within the next week and hopefully should get about 70# of honey from the 6 hives I've managed to 'maintain'. 

Here's what the apiary looks like now ..  and some other misc pictures of the area. 

You'll need to overlook the untidiness of the surrounding area as I haven't had a chance to 'clean-up' yet ..