C & M Prairie Bees

06/01/2026

White City bees! Thank you to everyone who tagged us in a bee cutout in White City. A cool family was cutting into a tree and got more than they were expecting!

I was able to get there and finish the chainsawing, in a bee suit, so we could safely remove the bees. After finding no eggs I thought it was a queen-less hive. But then while vacuuming some bees up I found the queen!

She must have been an emergency queen that the hive brought up after losing the last queen. Hopefully she will start laying eggs in the next couple weeks!

Another happy bunch of bees in our apiary, and I was able to salvage some delicious honeycomb for the family. Win win!

05/25/2026

It is still swarm season!!! We had a call from a friend who had a swarm of bees grouping up on a tree. We missed the initial call, but thankfully he got ahold of us in time!

It is much better to catch these bees and put them in an actual hive rather than let them find a spot in your house or garage!

Thank you for calling a beekeeper when you find these swarms. This group is living the high life in our backyard apiary now!

04/19/2026

Want to see a queen bee lay an egg? Queens can lay 1000-2000 eggs a day at peak times. Her entire job is to walk the hive, find empty cells of the correct size, and lay an egg into the cell. The other worker bees take care of her needs, feeding her and even removing her 💩 from the hive!

In 21 days these eggs will become fully developed bees that hatch from their cells. Bring on the new workers!

02/18/2026

1st hive checks of 2026!!

The bees took sort of a backseat during 2025 as we had two baby girls needing our attention. We have been itching to get out and go through bee boxes and today was the perfect mix of sunshine, warm-ish temps, a lack of wind, and long toddler naps to do quick hive inspections!

The bees all look great and still have good food stores. No eggs yet (as expected) but that's from lack of pollen. Things will be kicking into high gear soon. Each queen let me get a good look at her & snap a few photos. First sting in the glove for the year, too!

We have some really fun things coming up this year in terms of bees and are excited to share our journey, failures, experiments, successes, and everything in-between. Ask us questions, let us know if you want to see photos of anything in particular, and BEE on the lookout for swarms!

02/15/2026

Beehive prep day! We scraped old frames, cleaned boxes, built new frames, and melted some wax to put on new frames. It was a good day! What a way to spend Valentine's Day. We are ready for spring and bees!

01/30/2026

Here is our Pollinator Award video put together by the wonderful Mindy Andres. Doing the interview with her and Mallory Lee was very fun! We were honored to receive this award at the Morris County Conservation District Banquet. We are ready for spring, flowers, and bees!

This is "McIver26" by The Flint Hills Life Channel on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

01/22/2026

We made the paper today! You should snag a copy and see why. We are looking forward to the 2026 Beekeeping season. Bring on the swarms, cutouts, and honey!

It's Morris County Conservation Edition time! Pick up today's 8-pager to see what local farmers/ranchers have won this year's award plus LOTS MORE. It's a great value for 75 cents.

08/06/2025

Bell Tower Bees!

We were contacted to get bees out of the bell tower at the Catholic church. Don't look down! The bees have been in there a couple years, based on the size and color of the comb.

I brought a vacuum and a couple buckets. As soon as the comb was disconnected from the ceiling, it started raining honey! This wasn't honey we could save for bottling, but it will be fed back to the bees.

I am praying I found the queen. It was hard to keep track, and was a cramped spot 40 feet in the air. I saved the brood comb in hopes the queen was there, and vacuumed the rest! They will get put into a hive in our backyard apiary tomorrow.

These bees needed rehomed because the bell was removed and the holes needed sealed up. I guess the construction guys didn't like the bees! Or vice versa. :)

Another colony saved!

05/10/2025

We got a swarm call today! Watch me dump it into our box. We love swarm calls!

03/03/2025

Spot the Queen! 🐝
First hive check of 2025 and one of our queens let herself be seen for quite a while before climbing back down into the hive.