Wife and kids just got a starter hive from Dadant. A nuc of bees is scheduled for late April. Have to find a good place for the hive before the bees show up.
Managed to starve 3 hives this winter. Not enough attention last year. Lesson learned. 2 new packages installed on April 23. and colonies growing quickly. Added a second box to each yesterday. Strong brood and comb drawing on the frames. Hoping to build them up before the spring nectar flow. But we need some rain!!!
Caught a swarm last week. Pretty sure is from my only hive that is one year old. I have the swarm in a farm store hive. The farm store hive is poor quality and over twice the price as a hive from a bee supply store an hour away...but it was starting to rain and cool off for the next 4 days and the bees needed a home. Old hive has been inspected and 3 queen cells were left in it and one may have hatched. Should have a mates queen this week if everything goes well. I'm on the road for 3 more weeks so I'll either have a healthy hive or an empty hive.
Glad I found this thread. Our son works with a guy that has bees, he's also met another guy that has some too. Needless to say, he has jumped in with both feet...lol... He has built at least 3 hive traps and a couple big hives. He is building them horizontal style. I've helped him build frames. He uses the Commander scent, seems to work well. He caught 2 swarms at his house and moved them to hives. He brought 2 traps to our house, had a swarm move in 1 of them a few weeks ago. Yesterday morning about 9AM, I checked the box...several scouts were checking it out... We came in from a job, as I parked the truck and trailer, I saw an amazing sight...looked like a cloth was hanging on the box... Looks like a big swarm want to move in I checked on them after dark, seems like they all got moved in... He has started building a few with viewing windows...lot of bees in this box I'll get more pictures pf the other hives....
Our son checked his hives, pulled 11 frames. I think his bees did very well. He extracted the honey, got a 5 gallon bucket full.
Wow. Those are some super deep frames. No surprise he filled the bucket. Probably about 65 lbs of honey. I just helped a friend extract 32 lbs. her first year beekeeping and she was able to take some. Up here, each hive needs about 75 lbs just to get through the winter.
I know his frames are wider than regular frames. He has the horizontal hives. I had to help him load the tote with frames in it on the truck
I think I'm taking the plunge next year to get into bee keeping. My wife still isn't wanting me too though My local college is offering a beekeeper's class. It starts in January. They meet once a week. They will mentor new beekeepers starting in the spring
If you are buying equipment, try to use someone local. The local guys are getting destroyed by online sales, and the prices aren’t that much different. People just get in the habit of buying things online even if the quality is lower…. Nothing better than jumping in with both feet!!
Time to put some buzz in this tread. We started keeping bees last year, but didn’t give them enough attention, loss both hives over the winter, new nice on order for late May pick up. How did everybody else with their over winter bees, and what are your plans for this year?
I lost one hive early. The other had bees buzzing around as late as February. But it appears the Queen failed. She had made it through the previous winter. I have two 3 lbs packages scheduled for pickup from Barker’s bees in Massachusetts for May 8. I’m planning to split with a couple queens from White Mountain Apiary in June. I decided I need to pay more attention to the quality of my queens and endeavor to requeen each hive annually. I plan to make my own queens. I think the “blind split” method doesn’t yield the strongest of queens so deliberately choosing a queen for each hive would probably be best. Good luck this year!!!
I have a lot to learn yet, but I like the way you think about splitting your own and buying queens. I’m now working with some seasoned keeping and plan on moving forward with some help this year. All the best to you this year and please post how it’s going.
Our son has 10 hives, I think, on our place. All seem to be doing great. Some of the hives are at least 2 yrs old. He pulled 11 frames in the fall and got 5 gallons of honey. He has built a couple more hives this year, and caught a couple swarms so far...
Our bees up here wouldn’t even think about swarming for another month at least. Heck, we had 3” of snow two weeks ago. The swarms have the old queen with them. So up north, they are harder to sustain through the winter but they are certainly good for a season of making honey. The basic biology is the same. But the techniques are drastically different up north.
