It has been very cold in the Upstate today (mid 40's) and I am a little concerned about the bees. I have visually checked on them twice today and everything seems OK but still concerned about a couple of things. I am going to name the hives so I can reference them. I am going to call the hive on the the left Maddy and the other one Sam. Maddy is not as active a Sam but they have taken the same amount of sugar water. I am using a ration of 5 lbs. of sugar/ 1 gal of water. There are a few dead bees laying on the ground and on the hives. I wish it was warmer so I could open the hive and make sure they are OK and also to retrieve the package container out of the hive and replace it with the 5 frames. But I think it is to cold to open the hives and may do more damage to them. Mike called me and stated that his bees were active today but there was about 200 dead bees at the entrance of his hives!! He said he couldn't wait any longer and opened his hives. He stated that they were all grouped on the center frames were we put the queen but they weren't moving. I told him it was probably to cold for them to be moving much and that they were probably trying to keep their hive warm. They need to keep it around 93 degrees. It is supposed to get into the 70's in a couple of days so I will probably check them out then and just pray until then.
One last observation was that Maddy had a couple of little ants hanging around the feeder. I am not concerned with them yet but will be keeping an eye out on them.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Moving at the speed of a Honey Bee
I finally received my bees and my equipment on Saturday all within 3 hours of each other. Talking about calling it close. Doesn't help that Dadant was closed on Good Friday and spring break for my 4 year old son was the following week. I was extremely lucky that a friend of mine, Mike, from church had decided to take the class and raise bees with me. Or God was actually wanting a couple of laughs. Mike and I decided to order all of our equipment from dadant and have it delivered to his house. He put 4 complete hives together. He said the first 2 took a little over an hour a piece but by the time he did the last 2 he had it down to 45 minutes per hive. iIwas able to get back in time to put some frames and foundation together. I told him that I would also put the supers together but that's not for another month. So hopefully I can get that done in time.
Once I got back in town and attending my sons soccer practice I met over at Mikes house to do a little prep work and to pick up my equipment. He showed me his set up and we were off to pick up our bees. The place we were picking them up from called us twice to see if we were on our way. They closed at 5pm and it was only 2:30 so we would be there by 3:15 but when we picked them up we discovered we were about the last one to pick up their bees. They had ordered over 230 packages!! I hope we didn't get the scrapes but there wasn''t very many dead bees in the pakages so I wasn't concerened.
Once we arried at my house, we set up my equipement and put the bees into the hive. I have read numerous ways to empty the bees into a hive but I decided on the following:
Take 5 frames out of a 10 frame hive body and then put the package of bees in the space were the 5 frames were located. The reason I slectd this method was just in case there was a lot of dead bees I would be shaking them all over the interior VS. putting in the open package into the hive and then in a day or two you open the hive and take the package out, put back the 5 frames and your good to go. No mess for the bees to clean. See the video to see why you should wear a bee suit when doing this.
THE ONLY CONCERN IS THE TEMPERATURE SATURDAY WAS ONLY ABOUT 45 SO I HOPE THEY MAKE IT.
Once I got back in town and attending my sons soccer practice I met over at Mikes house to do a little prep work and to pick up my equipment. He showed me his set up and we were off to pick up our bees. The place we were picking them up from called us twice to see if we were on our way. They closed at 5pm and it was only 2:30 so we would be there by 3:15 but when we picked them up we discovered we were about the last one to pick up their bees. They had ordered over 230 packages!! I hope we didn't get the scrapes but there wasn''t very many dead bees in the pakages so I wasn't concerened.
Once we arried at my house, we set up my equipement and put the bees into the hive. I have read numerous ways to empty the bees into a hive but I decided on the following:
Take 5 frames out of a 10 frame hive body and then put the package of bees in the space were the 5 frames were located. The reason I slectd this method was just in case there was a lot of dead bees I would be shaking them all over the interior VS. putting in the open package into the hive and then in a day or two you open the hive and take the package out, put back the 5 frames and your good to go. No mess for the bees to clean. See the video to see why you should wear a bee suit when doing this.
THE ONLY CONCERN IS THE TEMPERATURE SATURDAY WAS ONLY ABOUT 45 SO I HOPE THEY MAKE IT.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
RUSH RUSH RUSH
Just not enough time in life. Tuesday was the montly meeting for the South Carolina Piedmont Beekeepers Assoc. and it was very informative. There was an experienced beekeeper by the name of Charlie Holden that delivered a presentation on "Swarm Control and Supering". I have realized that there are times when you have to pay attention to the bees and times you can forget about them. I also discovered you can ask the same question and to different beekeepers and get a different answer everytime. Each one thinks they are 100% correct!!
My bees are coming on March 29th and I haven't even had time to order the equipment yet. I have to order it tomorrow to ensure that I get it in time. Class was tonight and we put together a complete bee hive. It was a "some assembly required" bee hive. The instructor had us put together one from pieces, just like you would receive it from the distributor. I thought the instructor was just getting some free labor but it was actually beneficial. The distributor also sales them preassembled so I still want to check out the price then make my decision. I have priced all the other equipment and it looks like it will cost around $500 to get up and running. That includes the 2 packages of bees I ordered. Each package contais about 10,000 bees and 1 Italian Queen bee.
My bees are coming on March 29th and I haven't even had time to order the equipment yet. I have to order it tomorrow to ensure that I get it in time. Class was tonight and we put together a complete bee hive. It was a "some assembly required" bee hive. The instructor had us put together one from pieces, just like you would receive it from the distributor. I thought the instructor was just getting some free labor but it was actually beneficial. The distributor also sales them preassembled so I still want to check out the price then make my decision. I have priced all the other equipment and it looks like it will cost around $500 to get up and running. That includes the 2 packages of bees I ordered. Each package contais about 10,000 bees and 1 Italian Queen bee.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
What am I doing??
I have now started my latest project and I am letting the world take a look at this and maybe someone will learn something or maybe just get a good chuckle. For some reason which I can not explain, I want to raise honey bees. When I tell people this I get all kinds of reactions but so far they are either excited about it or they laugh. Well once they see this blog, hopefully they will learn how to raise bees or learn what not to do (Ha! Ha!). Before I start this, wonder how many times I'll get stung???
To bring everyone up to speed I have zero experience on how to raise honey bees. I have read one "How To" book and recently enrolled in a class that is held at a local Tech. College. This 6 - week course meets once a week. I am currently two weeks into the program. So far I have a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of questions.
In my last class, 2 nights ago, I discovered that the deadline to order bees was in 2 days if I wanted to get a good price from a local store. Since I would be saving $25 per package I decided to take the plunge and place an order. No backing out now!! I ordered 2 packages since my goal is to have 2 hives to compare to one another. Each hive will eventually be home to 30,000 +/- honey bees. The store is going to place their massive order from a place in Florida. I was wanting to raise Russian bees but it looks like this group is getting Italians. It's my understanding that I can eventually switch in future years if I decide???
To bring everyone up to speed I have zero experience on how to raise honey bees. I have read one "How To" book and recently enrolled in a class that is held at a local Tech. College. This 6 - week course meets once a week. I am currently two weeks into the program. So far I have a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of questions.
In my last class, 2 nights ago, I discovered that the deadline to order bees was in 2 days if I wanted to get a good price from a local store. Since I would be saving $25 per package I decided to take the plunge and place an order. No backing out now!! I ordered 2 packages since my goal is to have 2 hives to compare to one another. Each hive will eventually be home to 30,000 +/- honey bees. The store is going to place their massive order from a place in Florida. I was wanting to raise Russian bees but it looks like this group is getting Italians. It's my understanding that I can eventually switch in future years if I decide???
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