Bee hives

[hunterhawk]

I love honey! But have no place for hives! Jealous of those who do so keep on making me jealous!

[ChunkyMonkey]

BUMP!

http://www.honeyflow.com/shop/flow-hive/p/129 <-- ordered one..

[kidicarus13]

40% of hives died last year...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...eard-of/<br />

[roberth]

The cold is lasting longer, I see alot less bees than in past years. Plants are suffering too because bees do an incredible amount of pollination.

[buffalobo]

Long time since last update. Still going?

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[SamuraiCO]

Ok time for an update. Had one strong hive and one weaker hive going into the winter. I don't understand why the strong hive died and the weak hive lived. Oh well. It was time to requeen the hive that lived. I used the opportunity to clean out the hive and break up the frames looking for the queen. We found her and marked her for death at a later date. I also cleaned out the other hive that died over winter and replaced all the frames. I will melt off the wax and recycle the frames for future use. I purchased a new queen and what they call a nuc for the other hive. It is an established hive with five frames and a laying queen. I think it is easier for the commercial bee keeper to make and prepare versus packages that we have used in the past that was just bees and a queen. Over a two week period I had to time the finding of the queen again and killing her to the delivery of my new queen and the nuc for the other hive. Weather was and still is playing havoc with our bees but it all worked out even with my work schedule.

Here is what the nuc looked like. I had to drive to Boulder on a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago to take delivery. All sealed up. I thought there may be bees still clinging to the outside so I threw on my soft topper but they were all inside. They got a comfortable ride in my cab.



I drove strait from Boulder to my buddies home in Elizabeth to place the bees. Here is the empty deep ready for the new bees.



Here they are placed. My buddy saw the marked queen on the opposite side of a frame as I was taking it out of the nuc and placing into the deep. That is always good to know you want to work fast so she does not panic and fly off.




Here is the final pic of the hive all buttoned up with some sugar water on top.



I had my buddy confirm the other hive released the new queen from her cage. This was all done two weeks ago and he checked four days later for the queen to be released. On warm days both hives busy. I am going out this Sunday to check for brood in both hives. This confirms both queens are healthy and laying eggs. I will look for the queen in each hive to also confirm she is alive and well.

Hopefully the weather holds for the inspection and our celebration of the weekend by retiring to their shooting range and squeezing off a few before eating and enjoying each other's company.

[Dave_L]

Cool! My buddy just got a couple hives going. Interesting stuff and I look forward to getting honey from him on Holidays. Lol.