A BEE thread....for those interested in beekeeping.

[LONDON HENS]

Thats our queen from our strong hive. She is doing a great job!

 

[sgtmom52]

Thanks for the advice! We did a routine check of the broad frames and we spotted an unmarked queen in the weak colony. We knew a queen cell had hatched 4 weeks ago but since then we havnt seen anything of it until today. So we left that queen to it. We just have to hope she is mated or will mate before the end of the summer. Is there a photo comparison between a mated queen and a virgin queen on here??

I couldn't find any pictures, but a mated queen should be a bit fatter. It does take a newly mated queen 3 to 4 weeks to start laying after mating so I would keep a close check for eggs.

 

[OkieQueenBee]

Yippee! A beekeeping thread! DH and I have been keeping bees for over 15 years separately and 4 years together. In fact, bees are what brought us together. We keep around 200 hives and are chemical free having what we call "survivor bees" and keep them in Langstroth hives using PermaComb frames. We are extracting our honey now, looks to be a good harvest here in the middle of nowhere Kansas.
It's really good to see this interest in beekeeping. Now is a good time to be getting ready for bees in the spring. There is equipment to buy and put together, ( or make your own ), books to read, and decisions to made on how to keep these bees. A top bar hive or a Langstroth hive? If Langstroth, 10 frame or 8 frame, deep brood or medium brood boxes, screen bottom board or solid? What type of frames and foundation, beeswax, plastic or foundation-less? And then there is the purchasing of bees, a package, nuc or a starter hive. If you can find bees from a local source that is better than getting bees that are not as adapted to your area. This past spring a truck loaded with 1800 packages coming out of California got caught in a snowstorm and all of the bees perished. That left a lot of people scrambling to find bees and probably a lot of equipment set empty. Find a bee club in your area and see about buying local bees. I suggest getting at least two hives so that you can compare and have back up brood in case you need to strengthen a hive. Study and learn some basic beekeeping words like: apiary, hive, brood, queen, drone, worker, larvae, nectar, pollen, swarm, queen cell, supercedure, queen excluder, capped honey, (honey)super, varroa mites, small hive beetles and the various other pests and diseases that affect the honeybee. Fall and winter are the time to prepare.
London Hens how are your hives doing? Your new queen should be laying by now, you should be seeing eggs and larvae and possibly some capped brood. When a queen goes on a mating flight she tries to mate with as many as 15 drones. The more drones she mates with the more extended her abdomen will become and the longer she will be a viable queen. What happened with your other hive? Did it swarm?
I wish I would have been more prepared when I got my chickens. So much to learn about them....

 

[sgtmom52]

Collecting white pollen from Sweet Autumn Clematis



A frame of fall brood from one of my hives today.



Cells full of eggs



Plenty of Goldenrod around for fall nectar

 

[OkieQueenBee]

Those are some awesome pics Sgtmom52. Your queen is doing an excellent job. The two hives on the left have a good number of bees, did you put honey supers on them? We are doing our harvest now, looks to be a good one.

 

[sgtmom52]

Those are some awesome pics Sgtmom52. Your queen is doing an excellent job. The two hives on the left have a good number of bees, did you put honey supers on them? We are doing our harvest now, looks to be a good one.

That is an awesome looking super of honey!!

Thanks ~ There are more bees on the outside because we had just done a through inspection and added mite treatment and fall feeders. They do have a lot of bees though. The golden rod just started blooming and you can smell it in the hives.

We did our harvest about 2 weeks ago. We got about 200 lbs from the 6 hives we had supers on. All the rest of our hives were new splits or packages this spring. We actually harvested a little late this year as the bees didn't have all the honey capped earlier.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Those are some awesome pics Sgtmom52. Your queen is doing an excellent job. The two hives on the left have a good number of bees, did you put honey supers on them? We are doing our harvest now, looks to be a good one.

Beautiful!!!

 

[boskelli1571]

Hello everyone,
New beekeeper here!! Got my first 2 hives this year - top bars, built them myself. I have 1 hive that's doing very well and the other looks weak. I have started feeding the weak hive in hope that they will survive the winter.
There are some awesome looking pix. here - how long have you all been kept by bees?
Does anyone here has experience with Warre hives? I'm curious about them. Look forward to your input, Sue

 

[sgtmom52]

A short video of a few of our hives on this beautiful fall day.

 

[OkieQueenBee]

Those are some happy bees. What is blooming that has them so excited? We've got goldenrod, asters and a few sunflowers left. I hope the girls are taking advantage of this nice weather and are packing the stores in.