Slow posting this summer was too busy with the church youth and pushed this to the back burner. I replaced my queen when I saw a lot of queen succession cells so that I would have a known breed as queen. I have harvested some honey and a fair amount of honey in comb from the hive this year.

I look forward to splitting the hive in the spring and making two full hives and buying a bee package or swarm for a third hive. I think I will stick at only 3 hives.

That will give me plenty of work to do but also let me make my own queens if one dies. I can say as I approach the end of my first summer as a beekeeper that it is fairly easy to do and enjoyable. I was able to get my kids involved and while they were not as enthusiastic as I am they did think it was neat to see the bees. Here is a shot of me checking the hive for those of you less fortunate who do not get to do this yourself :)

I have moved the full super closest to the hive body so that the winter cluster can migrate upward easily to the full honey frames. I put a small wedge in the back of the hive top to allow for gentle air circulation and hopefully to release excess hive moisture. I have not reduced the hive entrance because they are still working hard on golden rod honey. This honey has a unique smell and flavor that my kids at youth seem to love (at least the ones brave enough to taste it :) ).

Drought is here and Bees are in feeding frenzy

We are having a drought currently and I think that is increasing the amount of food and water the bees are taking from the feeder jar. This is the feeder stand at the front of the hive just after I took out the feeder bottle. The bees are emptying the quart jar everyday now. I got 4 tyvek suits in the mail yesterday from an Ebay purchase. This are meant to be throw-away suits but since I wear them for 10 to 15 minutes I bet I can use them for over a year. Cost $20 including shipping.

Feeding the Bees

Well I added a spoonful of corn syrup to the 1 to 1 ratio mix of sugar to water and now the bees are draining the quart jar every day and a half instead of every 5 days. Seems they love the new taste. I dressed my oldest son Ian in the bee suit yesterday and let him change out the feeder. He was a little nervous and told me he didn't want to get stung. However once the bees started bouncing off the veil and he realized they could not get to him at all he thought it was fun to examine the hive up close.

First Stings

Well the feeding jar was empty today and I was too lazy to go get the bee helmet and dress appropriately. So I walked out with shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops and went to the front of the hive and pulled the feeding jar out. I would have gotten away with it but the lid of the jar had a dozen bees on it. When I pulled it out they got a little upset and two of them stung me on the legs. It was interesting in that they did not sting immediately so I thought they would fly off but they didn't. Sure enough they left the stinger in me so I walked back to the house and wiped the stingers out. Not really much pain at all and no swelling so good to know I am not allergic to the stings.

I plan to open the hive tomorrow for a brief inspection with my son. It will be his first time close to bees.

Add a super

The bees are still flying furiously in and out of the hive so I opened the hive for the first time today solo and added in a super. Surprisingly the first super had not be touched at all. The hive body had one new frame and foundation in it and that has been nearly drawn out already in two days. However no work has been going on with the super so I took the queen extruder out to see if that would draw the bees higher in the hive and get started on the super frames. I will let them be for a couple days then check to see if they are drawing out the new super.

Adding a Feeder

Even though I see the bees flying furiously, I decided to add a sugar / water feeder to give them water close to the hive until they find the local water sources about 100 yards away. I did a 1 to 1 ratio of sugar to water. They seem to be drinking about 1/6 of the quart jar per day after the first day.

Scout Bees Out

The next day I saw many bees flying in big circles around the hive then flying off. They started flying in two main directions towards the evening and then coming back heavy.

Starting a Bee Hive

I decided to get a bee hive for my small farm this year. I have multiple fruit and nut trees, grape vines and a small garden. I have noticed the last few years that we have little to no honey bee activity and the number of fruits on the trees is quite small.

I thought I would talk about my experience to help others decide if they want to give it a try. I started out by reading as much as possible on the internet and I can post some of the better links if anyone wants. I decided on buying two hive bodies (over 9 inch boxes for bees to live in, queen to lay eggs, and store some honey and pollen), two supers (over 6 inch boxes used for bees to store honey) and the tops and bottoms.

A friend of my family Leo had decided to get rid of his hive and sold the basic equipment to me for a good price. Thanks again Leo. This gave me one hive body and one super with the internal frame and foundation with a migratory top, inner top, queen excluder and bottom. He included some basic survival gear as well such as a hood, gloves and smoker. I bought two more supers with frames and foundation, and one more hive body with frames.

I was extremely fortunate to have a friend at church Bill who keeps bees and he had a recently collected swarm of bees that he let me keep. Thanks Bill. I assembled, cleaned and repainted the older hive components, painted the new hive components and placed them together before Bill arrived. Bill brought over the bees after dark so that they had returned to the hive and were more docile for movement. We left them overnight in his hive body and then waited for them to fly out the next day before we moved his frames and foundation into my hive body. I gave him new frames and foundation as a trade out.

This is a VERY big advantage for a new bee keeper as it gave me not only bees but bees with some existing honey, pollen and larvae on foundation that has already been drawn out. (That means the honeycomb has already been created on the foundation.) This is a great advantage because the queen has a place already built to lay eggs and I have new bees already hatching every day to replenish the hive. I plan to leave the bees alone except to water them for the next five days or so then open the hive to check on the building out of new foundation and to get some pictures.