Hive Number 1 – 2012

January 1, 2012

Susan Bee Updates 3 Comments

A Quick History of Hive Number 1:

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Hive Number 1 started as a nuc, in 2011.  A nuc is a nucleus hive – it contains 5 frames full of stores and brood, and a queen.  My friend and I picked up our nucs at the apiary of a nice man in Blacksburg, Virginia.   I kept my hive at her house while I started the bee garden, but I’ve since brought them home.  My goal is to create an environment for the bees where they’ll be happy and it’s easy for me to take care of them.  The garden is filling up with sun-loving perennials – herbs, fruiting plants and an asparagus bed (the asparagus is mine).

This is my first hive, temporarily housed at my friends house...

My friend has kept bees for years, and acted as my mentor.  If you’re just starting to keep bees, I’d strongly suggested starting with a mentor.  If you don’t already have a friend with bees, you can find a mentor through a local bee club.  This queen is really prolific – the following photos are from the first hive inspection, probably about 10 days after installing the nuc.  The queen is in the picture, wearing the blue dot:

She was so prolific this spring that I divided hive number 1 to create hive number 3.  You can see how full of bees the hive was before the split:

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 February 17, 2012 - Hive Number 1 is still going strong – the supers are still full of honey, and the bees are really active.  We did a quick inspection of the top two supers, and everything looks great.


Hive Number 2 – the Top Bar – 2012

January 1, 2012

Susan Bee Updates , 3 Comments

A Quick History of Hive Number 2:

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My second hive is a top bar hive.  My top bar is a bit of a hybrid, with sloping sides on the bottom half, and vertical sides on the top.  I had originally purchased the bottom half of the top bar on ebay, but it seemed a little shallow to me, so I added the top section (with observation windows on both sides).  It’s now about a foot deep (where the bees are building).  It looks like a small yacht in the garden…

I added a package of bees to the hive on March 26th, 2011 and they are building a nice comb, really fast.  They seem pretty happy – they’ve freed the queen, but I don’t really want to dig around in there yet, so I’ve just left the queen cage.  They’ve anchored their comb to it, and were running in and out of it like it’s a spare room…

Sadly, late in 2011, the bees disappeared…

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February 17, 2012 - My friend and I have ordered packages for 2012 – a new package for the top bar should arrive toward the end of March.

March 21, 2012 – I’ve hived a new package – there was still some comb left from the previous occupants, and the new bees seem happy enough to settle on it.  Last year, we installed the packages a day before a snowfall, but this year, the weather is beautiful, and we’ve got lots of pollen and nectar available for the bees.  I still gave them a feeder full of sugar candy, but there is so much forage available that I doubt they’ll eat much of the sugar.

March 23, 2012 – I went in and removed the queen cage – the new colony is clustering very well, and building out comb.  They aren’t eating a lot of the sugar, but they are out gathering…

Hive Number 3 – 2012

January 1, 2012

Susan Bee Updates 2 Comments

A Quick History of Hive Number 3:

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Hive Number 3 is a split that I made from hive number 1.  In early March, Hive Number 1 was so full of bees that they were just pouring out everywhere.  The hive was 5 supers tall, and the bees were building up in numbers really quickly, so as soon as I knew there were drones flying (April 7th), my friend came down and we found the queen and made a split.

We started doing a hive inspection at the top.  The top super was mostly stores and workers, but halfway through the second super, we found the queen.  We moved the queen and the 12 frames of workers and stores to the new hive (number 3), leaving the remaining workers the eggs and remaining larvae and stores so the bees in Hive 1 can hopefully make a new queen.  It feels a little risky, but bees have been re-queening themselves for quite a while without my help, and this is such a good and prolific hive that I can’t imagine them not working this out.

February 17, 2012 – Hive Number 3 has a strong cluster, and a good amount of stores.  This is the original queen from Hive Number 1, and as strong as this hive, and her daughter’s hive are, I think I’ll take another split from this queen to refill Hive Number 4.  I don’t use any chemicals, so I appreciate her hardiness!

Hive Number 4 – 2012

January 1, 2012

Susan Bee Updates Leave a comment

A Quick History of Hive Number 4:

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Hive number 4 is an 8 frame medium Langstroth, installed from a package on the 26th of March, 2011.  It snowed the day after installing the package, and a lot of the bees didn’t make it, but the ones that did seem happy enough.  They have a long season ahead, and I’ve kept sugar water in front of them on any cloudy or cold days, so I’m hoping they make a good comeback.

Thee package made a lot of burr comb in the bottom super.  Some of the comb was empty, but the majority of it was full of larvae; she is laying really well.  I decided just to leave the super a mess until the hive had built up a bit – the bees seem happy.  We did find the queen:

February 17, 2012 - There wasn’t a lot of bee activity around this hive, and there were signs that mice had gotten in, so we did a quick inspection, and found that the cluster was very small.  Even with the cluster being so small, we didn’t see the queen… there were some larvae, but I’m suspecting that it may have been from eggs laid by a worker bee.  There is a full super of stores, so we put on a mouse guard, and closed up the hive with the remaining bees.  I suspect that the hive won’t make it – I’ll likely replace it with a split from my first queen’s hive.

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