Nilo Bees

06/07/2024

One of our hives in Longmont swarmed last night. We checked them last week and must have missed a queen cell. It was a massive swarm and late at night so we did a different kind of collection. We knocked them into a sheet and had them walk into their new home. It worked and they are now happily by our barn.

06/07/2024

Last night one of our own hives swarmed. We checked them last week and didn’t think we left any queen cells but clearly missed one. It was a massive swarm and being late at night we had to do a different kind of collection. We knocked them onto a blanket and let them walk into their new hive. There were so many bees we ended up having to add a second box for them to fit. It was an adventure and they are now happily by our barn in a new home.

06/03/2024

Tonight we moved four hives back to Red Wagon Farms. This year we have two hives in Longmont, two on Gapter rd in Boulder, 4 at Red Wagon Farms and 3 at our house in Boulder. Huge thank you to to the amazing and very kind farmer who hosts our hives. If you are looking for an amazing farmer to support, stop by his farm stand and make sure to say thank you to him for helping the bees!

10/15/2023

Just finished bottling honey. This year we have 25 one pound jars available for $13. This year we have smaller jars available as well. 5oz jars are $6 and 1.5oz jars are $3. We only have 15 5oz jars and 10 1.5oz jars. We will have creamed honey in a few weeks. Available for porch pick up starting tomorrow. Once it is gone, we will not have more until next fall. All ounces are by weight not volume.

5 ounce jars are sold out. If you commented that you wanted some, I saved them for you.

10/14/2023

It’s that time if year again and we are preparing to bottle honey. Are people wanting creamed honey this year? Smaller jars for teacher gifts exc? Lotion bars? Now is the time to make requests:)

07/28/2023

Each year I post about swarms and advocate for calling a beekeeper. Yesterday I was contacted by a friend who has bees that moved into her stone post on her porch. This was a swarm that decided to live in her wall. Bees look for big empty spaces(in nature it would be a hollowed out dead tree). Well those aren’t common in our current world because we have so many homes close together and generally cut down old trees. So, they have nowhere to go and love these stone posts. It’s honestly a nightmare once they move in and so difficult to remove. So if you believe in Lea int nature be, that’s great but please call a beekeeper for swarms. They really don’t have natural places to live and cause so much stress for people when they move into a wall or post. Just know that we love our bees and take care of them, as do most beekeepers. Calling a beekeeper to help when you see a clump of bees us 100% what you should do to avoid this.

07/21/2023

When it’s hot our, bees sometimes do this. We don’t really know why but I like to think they are having a dance party…

07/04/2023

Mini hive project.

06/18/2023

Inspected hives today and got to watch a baby bee coem out of its cell❤️🐝

06/15/2023

4th swarm was caught yesterday. It was very high up but we were lucky and not only found the Queen but gotnhwr into a clip. Swarms follow their Queen so it is the easiest way to capture a whole swarm. We left the box until late at night so all the bees would go inside their new home. Then we released the qurn and started to feed them to help give them a little boost to build their new home. Excited to say they seem to being doing very well today❤️

05/27/2023

Second swarm catch of the season right before the massive storm hit! It was rushed and not so pretty so send them some positive energy!!!

05/21/2023

First swarm of the season caught. A few escaped on the drive home🤣🤪🐝

05/21/2023

Swarms have been late to arrive this year but are officially starting. Keep a look out for them and please don’t spray them!!!

05/17/2023

Hive splitting day!

04/30/2023

A small amount of honey available for porch pickup. Honeycombs are $12 and jars of honey are $15. Porch pickup. We have a cash box and also accept Venmo.

04/25/2023

We are now entering honeybee swarm season. a swarm is a giant clump of bees often high up in a tree. This is how bees create a new hive. They are generally very docile while swarming but it can look scary. Please don’t kill them, call a beekeeper who will come and place them in a safe location. Anyone in the Boulder or Denver area can call or text us at anytime and we will help. 720-628-5245

03/06/2023

A nuc is a small hive people buy to establish their own hives. This year we have decided not to keep any of our splits and will be selling 5 frame nucs. We will not be mating our own queens and will be able to have Italian, carniolan, Russian, locally mated in Longmont or Saskatraz bees available. We plan on making all hive Saskatraz unless people request another variety. Nucs will be $200 each. Message me if you want to get on the list for hives in the spring. We should have a good idea if how many will he available in a few weeks. Message me with any questions you may have!

01/01/2023

What I’ve we been doing while there is less beekeeping to do? For the past two days I’ve been working on designing shirts for Nilo Bees. Sophia may have stolen my computer and taken over…

12/16/2022

11/12/2022

Raw honey from out local bee hives is available again for pickup. We have raw pure honey, vanilla infused, cinnamon infused(only 2 left), and honeycomb left. This is the last of our 2022 honey. Porch pickup almost anytime. We accept cash and Venmo. Our house is located near 76th and S Boulder Road. Glass jars and honeycomb are $15 each and the smaller honey bears are $8. Honey should not be given to infants under one year old. It is a raw product and will eventually crystallize which can be solved by placing in hot water. It is a raw product that comes directly from our hives located in three locations, Crannell Dr, Gapter Road and Red Wagon Farms. The money we collect goes back to our bee project and allows us to continue with swarm collecting and hive management. Anyone interested in learning about bees or thinking about getting bees feel free to message us. We love helping new beekeepers and will be selling hive splits in the spring.

10/28/2022

Today we noticed tons of wasps coming and going from our hives. Cool fact, wasps will fly at colder temperatures than bees. What does that mean for bees? Well, while they are all huddled inside there so nobody protec to be their door so wasps come and raid. A few wasps go and tell their friends and before you know it the precious winter honey is being stolen by the wasps. So what did we do? I closed the enterances with grass ane set wasp traps. Now let’s just hope the wasps trying to get in loose interest and the ones inside are “taken care of” by our bees!

08/29/2022

Honey is available for pickup. Right now I have pints of pure raw honey, 12oz jars of vanilla and cinnamon infused honey and creamed honey. All these products are $15/jar. We have two hive locations with available hoeny. One from 76th and S Boulder Road(right at the border of Louisville and Boulder) and one from Gapter Road which is close to Bobolink trail in Boulder. Later this week we will have honey from our hives in Niwot anext lotions available. Available for porch pickup anytime. We accept cash and Venmo. Message me if you have any questions or requests. We are starting a new system of accepting back used jars in an attempt to be more aware of waste and the environmental impact of waste. We will set out a bin and will be accepting any glass containers our products come in and any size mason jars for re-use next year. We use all size mason jars for a variety of things and are happy to recycle any you don’t need or want.

08/29/2022

This weekend we spun all the honey from this year. The process tok three people two full days to accomplish. First we have to set everything up. The screen tent is there to keep bees out. The rest of the equipment needs to be sanitized and set up. The process is fairly simple but time consuming. First we uncap the frames. Then we place the frames in a spinner which spins them really fast and pulls all the honey out of the frames. After this we have to filter the honey twice. Once this is done we use a tool to test the amount of water that is in the honey. Honey has to be under 17% water in order to be shed stable. After this we bottle all the honey. Then we are ready to sell honey. We often get asked how much money we make. Well, very little and that doesn’t include our time. All the money we collect goes back to bee supplies. One day we would love to make enough to count it as a job but for now we are simply focusing on teaching the community and helping create a better world for bees. We do have honey available and will post available options tonight or tomorrow.

08/25/2022

So I’ll be making baked cheese and honey Monday…

08/22/2022

Throwback to the first year we had bees and honey. We are currently planning to extract honey this weekend. This is my favorite time of year!!!

08/21/2022

Today we started the process of removing the honey boxes from our hives. To do this we have to place a bee escape between the boxes and the hive. These allow the bees to leave the honey boxes but they can’t find their way back in. This makes it so when we come back the next day there are very few bees inside the honey boxes. Today we brought the kids with us and Kaden suited out and helped Kevin. We did discover that several honey boxes were full of honey but uncapped. Bees cap honey(place a thin layer of wax over it) when the moisture is low enough for long term storage. For us this means we have to wait to process honey because if we take the honey now it would have too much moisture in it and would not be shelf stable and rot which is not what we want. So we will wait a week and check again. Once all the honey is capped and taken off the hives we will spin all the honey.

08/12/2022

This week, a local beekeeer asked us if we could take his two hives. We were more than happy to take them and excited to expand our apiary. When moving the hives, we accidentally shifted the hive slightly and the bees were getting out from the front and side so it turned into a challenging move. We did our best to get all the bees but many were left behind the next day. So I went back at night and they were all clumped on a bush. I took an old frame of brood and placed it right by the bees. This video shows them matching onto the frame. The next day there were still bees in the yard and they were MAD so I bright a box with a frame of brood and honey inside and they all swarms in so tho box was closed and bees re-United with their hive. Why does this work? Well lost and swarming bees are looking for home. Old brood frames smell like bees so when gathered they peacefully walk into the frame looking for home. This trick is used for swarm catching(in fact I did this a few days prior while catching a swarm) and in cases of lost bees like this. Both hives are now happy and all the bees are together.

08/10/2022

Another crazy bee week. One of our hives was a very small swarm we caught and has really been struggling this whole time. First it was robbed. Then it was queenless. When we te-queened the hive, the new queen didn’t escape which was unexpected and the hive had no laying queen for almost 3 weeks. During that time they decided to re-Queen the hive themselves. Kevin realized this last week but we decided to let them assuming they Queen was no linger strong and needed replacing. When a hive decides they need a new queen they raise several. When the start to hatch the protect them and don’t let them leave until all the new queens have emerged. Once they gave all hatched they release them all and they fight to the death and the winner is the queen of the hive. Well, we’ve been watching closely and the bees started acting strange a few days ago. I went and checked on it and actually saw the marked Queen on the front of the hive fighting with a newly hatched queen. We assumed it was the new queening process but then the hive swarmed. I caught the new tiny swarm and put them in their own box. I fed both hives as their population is so small. Well, they both got robbed like crazy today so now I’ve closed both hives. The bees inside that were there to steal the sugar syrup will re-align with the queen in about 3 days and become part of the hive. I am hoping this will end up helping the hive but knowing that the queen in one of the hives may be unmated i am not sure what will happen. We will just have to wait and see…

08/06/2022

Watching something super cool while working on potty training our toddler. Stay posted for a detailed update this afternoon:)

08/05/2022

I have 6 jars of creamed honey left. I’m debating whether or not to make it again after fall harvest. What do you all think? Worth the time and effort or would people prefer a larger quantity if regular honey available?