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

[CherMoz]

I h haven't heard of an AZ hive. I will have to look into it.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I thought an AZ would work well as shed area for grafting and mating queens. In golden years it makes for little lifting too.

If your into making honey the down side is less honey per hive and the honey will be darker due to constant use of brood comb.

 

[0wen]

I thought an AZ would work well as shed area for grafting and mating queens. In golden years it makes for little lifting too.

^This. The less lifting the better, and being able to work the bees in a shed or such would also be nice - out of the weather and all. Main concern(s) I guess is pest management - specifically SHB. I've always heard to keep hives in sunlight, else SHB could become a serious threat to a hive. Just wondering if having 3 sides of the hive essentially fully shaded would be an issue here (with sides and back of the AZ within the shed/wall - or, if positioning the hive face to the sun would be sufficient to ward this possibility off.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I'd not heard that about small hive beetles but essentially having a shed with all the hives on South wall is the same as a hive with opening facing South. What's the difference? Both have three sides of solid wall.

It's been awhile since looking into the AZ but know with a little tweaking you could make existing langstroth frames work in a two box AZ setup.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Caught a swarm today. Sure it was my own bees but would have sucked if they left.

I'll try to capture in photo what went down...

Was home literally putting together bee boxes in preparation of some VSH queens coming likely Friday. Started hearing a buzz, sustained and intense. Looked around expecting one of the many flowering trees/shrubs to be covered with bees. Nope. Walked up to the wee apiary to view the sky filled with bees. A living cloud.

After an hour or so they started to congregate on two branches of apple tree, became much quieter. By the time I hob cobbed a hive for them they were all on one branch of apple tree not 20 feet from apiary bear fencing.
6 ft ladder, grey plastic tote from walmart and not a clue how heavy that mass of bees was going to be....knocked it from top of ladder leaning into tree branches and when they dropped nearly dropped them! Fingers pressed on tote it rotated providing a niagra falls of bees until I quickly took a few steps down to right the tote on top of ladder. Wow, that was three times easy the weight of 3lbs package by finger tips pressed on tote stretched out though the limbs.


Anywho, glad to say they seem to have accepted the new hive. I won't bee far shy of bees when the new queens arrive in two days now. Phew!

Had an extra frame so used it to prop lid up, since replaced with thin shim and will go later this evening to fasten top of this swarm trap I'd made last year. Funny thing is in bit over an hour in they already started making comb on the waxed frame shown in photo to vent the hive. Wow...

 

[Egghead_Jr]

This new format of uploading files/ copy paste or what have you is really bad...tried to fix all that but gave up in the end. Multi posts of pics, did manage to delete many...

 

[Leahs Mom]

Great photos and catch!!!

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Finished installing the Spartan VSH/New World Carni queens this morning between rain yesterday and this morning. Had to hurry up on the last hive with drops falling again and can only hope it realized they were queenless before placing the new queen in cage.

It was incredible how much comb the swarm had drawn in three days. The hive they came from was a complete mess! I'd put on a double frame feeder and six waxed foundations week and half earlier. Didn't want to get into the hives until the new queens arrived. Well, that was a mistake...everywhere they could pack drones they did. Even had drone comb built sideways out 3 inches from frame next to feeder. Top box was stuck fast to bottom from every frame. Ugh, took some time to clean that mess and attempt to ensure if took out queen cells that easily numbered over 20. In all stages of growth from fully capped to packed with royal jelly growing growing larva. Didn't find any that had emerged so called myself lucky even though it took a very long time to clean up the hive.

Made sure every box had an open frame in it this go round. Theory being they will use those for adequate drone cells instead of glueing the hive together with them. Experimenting this year with no treatments, small cell with few open frames for drone area and VSH Carniolians and all medium boxes. If all goes well I'll have a few hives survive to expand on. Fingers crossed.

 

[CLSranch]

Sounds like you didn't need to order new queens. But you didn't know your own were going to produce so many new queen cells.
I don't think you'll have a problem expanding with survivors next year if that was your swarm and they're already doing so well.
Best o luck with it.

 

[CLSranch]

Oh and great pics. I've taken a lot of my last swarm and you can't see the bees.