5/1/04 Well the bees and queen arrived last week in April. Everything was going fine till it appears I smashed the queen so I have had to order another one. The bees have been very industrious. Half of the frames of the first brood chamber are drawn with wax and 2 frames are filled with nectar or the sugar water I was feeding them. New queen should be here sometime the week of the 24th of May. Hopefully there will be no more problems. I'm dying to see how my pumpkins will do with pollenators around. I'll be adding pictures and information soon so stay tuned.
11/22/04 UPDATE Well the pumpkins didn't do anything this year. And I mean ANYTHING. All the blosooms fell off before pollenation I guess. As for my bee keeping it has been a year of learning that is for sure. I am experimenting with a late season split. In the middle of September I bought another queen and took 3 or 4 frames out of my other hive and put them in another deep. She started laying pretty well considering the small size of the set up. I tried putting the feeder in there to begin with, but with the small size of her work force that just set off a feeding frenzy. So instead I put it in the other hive and stole frames as they got a few filled up. I now have the late season split on top of my other hive with a double screened top cover between them. The thought behind this is that the heat from the bottom hive will help keep the top hive warm even with their limited numbers. Should be good for venting both hives. With a bottom entrance for the one on bottom (fresh air) and a top entrance for the top one (moist air leaves) should be good.
12/28/04 So far so good, both hives seem to be getting along good. Last time I checked in on them they both had plenty of stores left (a week or 2 ago). It's in the 50s and 60s this week so I put out some sugar water for them to top off the stores.
2/4/05 The top hive didn't make it through our last cold snap. It just came on too quick for them. You could tell from looking at their frames they were going about their business and BOOM froze to death. Didn't even have time to cluster. The bottom hive is still alive. I ordered 2 packages of bees to get here at the begining of April. That way no matter what I'll have 2 hives to work with. If I'm lucky the other one will live and I'll have 2 out at my 5 acres and one at my house. Should be able to add pictuers soon.
4/14/05 The original hive out on my 5 acres survived and is thriving. The queen has been laying a great brood pattern all spring and the population is exploding. I have decided to move towards the natural sized cells (or small cell) in the bood nest. I am doing this by putting foundationless frames in for them to draw a smaller sized cell. If it wasn't for the fact I was pulling out drawn frames and putting in empty frames they would probably need an upper hive body. As it is I"ll have to get them 2nd story sooner rather than later. The packages haven't arrived yet. I keep hoping everyday when I go home and check my mail that they will be there.
