Starting a new hive

I am starting up two new hives. Once we open up the three pound package, place the queen cage in the hive between a couple frames, then you just dump the bee in.

Since the bees do not have a home to defend, they will not sting. So you do not need the bee suite. Last year one went up the pants leg looking for a home and stung me. Thus the bee suite.

It really is fun just dumping the bees in.

Pallet of bees. The new packages of bees are raised in CA and shipped to a Beekeeping supply shop in WI. Each box has 3 pounds of bees, or about 6,000 and a queen.

We went up there to get 3 boxes and brought them home this weekend.

Bees at School

Today Aleena taught her 4th grade class about bees. She had shown a slide presentation explaining many of the finer aspects of bees. With her she displayed a frame with a queen cell and a full frame of capped honey. She also had the observation hive with 3 frames of bees.

Her class asked a lot of great questions. They enjoyed seeing all the bees and got a taste of fresh honey.

Spring Queen Cells

In the spring it is natural for hives to colinize. They do this by creating new queens, thus creating the queen cells.

I will need to go through my hives every 7 - 10 days are remove these to keep my hive strong for the season.

Added a Super

Since the hive has taken off so early this year I have added a super. This will expand the hive and provide a place for the bees to add honey for me to harvest. This year I am only putting 9 frames into the box. This will allow for the bees to draw the comb out farther and place more honey in each cell. This actually result in greater honey production... so they say. I have a bar that spaces each frame an equal distance apart.

New bee suites

Aleena and I got new bee suites. There is no way for the bees to get into sting us. I guess we have a bit more confidence with them on. The real test will be mid summer when the hive is full with 50,000 bees and the get agitated.

Start of Year 2

It is the middle of April and Aleena and I went in to the hive for the first time this year. The bees have been active for a good month now and we expected a population explosion. We were right there was a lot of bees and the next batch will hatch in a week or so. As you can see in the photo there is honey in the hive, so they have food. There is not a lot of pollen, so I will need to get them a supplement for that.