We're Famous! (locally)

The Noe Valley Voice paper has published a really lovely article about us in their April Issue which just came out. The new issue is not online as of today, but should be very soon. The paper is out on the streets in Noe Valley so if you are making a trip to Lovejoy's Tea House, pick up a copy.

We are very proud!

At the same time, this issue is arriving just as we are getting down to our last stock of honey. It will be at least a couple of months before we have any more that we can extract; so while we are very excited about the exposure, I'm afraid that a lot of the new people that find us through the article will have to wait a while to try the Princesses' honey.

Today we are going to go add some room to our original hive and make some space for the new hive going in that location. We want to make sure that as the queen has been busy laying eggs the newly hatched bees have room to start expanding the comb and the field bees have space to bring in more supplies of pollen and nectar. They will be very busy these next couple of months and we want to help them be as productive as possible.

We'll also be adding to the other location in a week or two -- we are going to be filling the new hives we add with package bees instead of nucleus colonies. Package bees arrive three pounds at a time in a wire mesh cage, with a queen in a separate tiny cage of her own. They are basically an artificial swarm -- there is no comb, no brood, no supplies -- they start from scratch. This is the way we started the very first hive three years ago. We'll explain the process as we execute it. First I need to make sure when the packages we ordered will be arriving.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Weekend of Bees

This past weekend was a busy one on the bee and honey front. The adventures started with a call from the Bi-Rite buyer saying that they needed more! As luck would have it we had already given them our entire remaining inventory of jars, holding back only what we have listed on our Etsy storefront. However, we had recently pulled off five frames from the existing hive body to install a nuc. These happened to contain a bit over a gallon of honey that we had extracted. We just needed to order the jars.

The buyer gave us the breakdown in jar sizes she wanted, I ordered jars and we waited.
We heard from the buyer again asking when we would be able to bring the honey by because their shelf was running low. We told her by Saturday.
Well, by Friday afternoon the jars we were expecting that morning had still not arrived. We did not panic though -- we didn't think it would take more than a couple hours to bottle the honey the next morning, slap on some labels and carry it down to the store.

Except the jars arrived late on Friday when we had plans meaning we had to wait until Saturday morning. Upon opening the box on Saturday morning, we saw that the jars we had ordered were the wrong shape (thank goodness they were the correct volume). We hemmed and hawed over whether it was better to use the different packaging or delay the order further.

We settled on using the different packaging -- but the shape of the jars would not accommodate our simple little sticker labels. We had to develop a sleeve to wrap the labels around the ball shaped jars.

Suffice to say that after a trip to the art supply store, a trip to the copy shop, and a few hours of arts-and-crafts time we finally had this ready to go.

We got the jars down to Bi-Rite in the mid afternoon. But the weekend was not over yet!

We got a call that same day from the woman who was selling us another nuc for one of the hives we will dedicate to Bi-Rite. She needed us to take the split right away because the colony had grown too big and was preparing to swarm! Tragically, we had not received all of our equipment yet. We called her back to let her know that we couldn't take the nuc because we did not yet have a complete hive to put them in.

Fortunately, she has been gathering equipment for some time and let us know that we could borrow whatever pieces we needed from her until our own parts arrived. Then we would just swap out the hive parts and bring them back to her.
We called the store back and let them know we would be delivering the first of their hives on Sunday morning and reserved a car.

Sunday we went to get the bees. They were still in their hive so we put on our veils and gloves and went to help take the frames from the hive and put them in a nuc. We found the queen quickly on the first frame by her piping. They were indeed getting set to swarm.

Once we got the nuc to the new location the queen seemed to have calmed down -- we didn't hear any more piping from her. Above you see us getting ready to move the frames from the blue nuc to the hive.

The new location is on a roof so we devised a way to tie a cradle around the nuc to lift it to the roof of the building, set up the hive and moved the frames from the nuc into it.

We'll check back in a week or so to make sure we see eggs.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Find Us at Bi-Rite

It is official  Bi-Rite grocery, on 18th Street near Dolores Park is now carrying Pollen Princesses Pure Noe Valley Honey. Tell your friends!

Yes, that is me in the picture on their sign.  They call us their "good neighbors."  The feeling is, of course, mutual.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Picture Day

This morning we are off to have the bees' pictures taken. We'll probably do a group shot as much as we can.
There's actually a reason for this: the Noe Valley Voice is doing an article for April about Pollen Princesses and our honey. We've submitted the interview already, but they are taking the photos.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Installing a Nuc

Well, we took another more in depth look at the colony this past Friday and sure enough all the brood from the eggs we had seen were drones.  That means it was a worker laying infertile eggs and not a queen.

As luck would have it, another local beekeeper had some 5 frame nucleii (nucs, basically a small split from a larger colony in a small box) for sale.  She called us right away and said she could bring the bees by Saturday morning which she did.

We met her where our beehive is kept and she helped us select 5 frames that were empty or had some some honey and pollen to remove.  We kept two frames:  one with mostly honey and one full of both honey and pollen.  The existing bees were on the remaining three frames except for a few stragglers.

We pushed the three frames of existing bees over to one side of the hive body and then put the two frames of honey and pollen next to them toward the center.  We spritzed lightly with a mint tea sugar solution we had made up for the purpose.  Then we put in the five frames full of bees and brood from the nuc.  We checked for eggs and even saw the queen as we were doing this so we know they are a healthy colony.  As we put each new frame into the hive we spritzed with the mint and sugar.

When we were finished we had two unrelated colonies in one box, but they were sparated by a couple of frames, they were going to take a little time to clean themselves off, and hopefully the mint scent would overwhelm their natural scent so by the time they realize they are not all related they won't care.

The weather then promptly turned rainy which will a) keep the bees indoors and hopefully make the new field bees less likely to try to fly back to their old home, and b) keep us indoors so we can let them sort of settle into their new home before we get anxious to check in on them again.

Honestly though, after the past year I think we want to take a less invasive approach to helping the bees manage the hive -- of course we want to minimize swarming, but if we can do that by simply keeping extra super space above them at all times rather than continually going in a messing with each frame I think everyone will be happier.

Photos?  I forgot to take any but perhaps Deno has some.  I'll try and post them soon if he does.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Some exciting news

Stay tuned --

We are talking with a local grocery about them carrying our honey in their assortment and perhaps using it in their ice cream.

There is even a possibility that they will want to set up their own apiary and use us as the beekeepers!

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.

Quick Peek

While the sun was out yesterday and it was relatively warm and free of a chance of rain we went to check the hive and see if the princesses had room to start growing their colony -- with the weather being so warm I thought the would likely already be starting to rear brood and I know they've been able to start gathering pollen and nectar.

When we got into the hive we got some mixed news.


We saw a few eggs! But at the same time the hive population is very small -- less than 1 lb of bees total from what I can estimate. And the eggs we did see were very few. Usually eggs are a good sign meaning that the queen is present and laying. With such a small population I expected we would be able to see the queen easily, though and we did not. So I have a suspicion that we have a laying worker and not a queen. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that in at least one cell there were two eggs.
We'll wait a couple of weeks and see what happens. There is every likelihood that the reason the population is small is that is is late in the Winter. The queen, if she is present may simply not have started laying yet so the bees that remain are only those that have survived since October.
Once the eggs we did see hatch and the larvae are sealed in their cells we will be able to determine if they are workers or drones. And by that time if there is a queen there should be more laying.
If, on the other hand there is not more laying then we will know it is time to order a nuc or a package and start over.
There was not evidence of too many mites on the bottom board of the hive, and no signs of disease which is something to be grateful for.

We did dust the bees for mites with powdered sugar before we left them. Here is one of them fanning to attract her sisters back to the hive.


And one trying to brush herself off.




On the way home, we saw a few bees buzzing around the fruit trees that are blooming in the neighborhood, so there is still hope.

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Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.