Last Year I Started Beekeeping - So Exciting

[sgtmom52]

Today we went out to the 2 farms where we have 8 hives to check them. I removed a capped supersedure cell from one of the new hives and put it in a hive at the other farm which had lost it's queen and had a laying worker. I am hoping that this will take care of the problem with that hive. I had another hive there that I could not find the queen, eggs or larva only capped brood, so I move 2 frames of eggs & larva into from a very strong hive.

This is a picture of a frame from one of the new packages where I had marked the queen last week. It is very nice to have a marked queen!

 

[madamwlf]

Yes a marked queen is great. I saw her today as well. I'm a bit nervous about the second package of bees. Right now I'm dealing with half a hive. The new bees will be a full blown hive with tons of bees.

 

[karlamaria]

I admire you all who have bees I wish I could do it, but landlord says nope. I'm a lover of honey comb, try as I may to find it half the time lol. If I do it's so epensive and my kids have it eaten in a day. I have probably 36 pounds of honey and 11 pounds of comb, and I can never have enough!
My kids go nuts over the comb so I purchased last years comb from a wonderful seller here in Montana, paid only 4.00 for very large containers. Beings honey is now being faked all over the USA I was sad to note much of my honey I threw out was on the fake honey list. ( no pollen ) the honey population is so scarce these days, and when I was a kid we used to purchase very large combs and all the neighborhood kids came over and were always running around with a chunk in there mouths lol. It must be very rewarding to know you have pure honey ! To make this story short, the reason I purchased, the comb for several years was my kids and I are very allergic, asthma severe food alergys dust mites, trees grass, dogs cats you name it. Honey comb ' pure unfiltered unprocessed honey has changed our lives. We are doing so well, no more asthma, very rare pollen alergys now. 95% Meds free! Honey has changed our lives!

 

[chigger bait]

. It is very nice to have a marked queen!

Amen to that.

 

[sgtmom52]

Amen to that.

I learned how to mark them last year by practicing on drones. This queen is marked yellow although it looks lighter in the picture.
There are 5 different colors rotated by year.


International color code
Years ending:
1 or 6 - WHITE
2 or 7 - YELLOW
3 or 8 - RED
4 or 9 - GREEN
5 or 0 - BLUE

 

[chigger bait]

Do you use modeling paint?

 

[sgtmom52]

Do you use modeling paint?

No ~ I use a non-toxic acrylic paint marker with a medium point. You can buy them at any craft store. I know a few beekeepers that mark all their queen white by using "White-Out". I like using the year colors as you can tell how old the queen is easily.
I also use a queen marking tube similar to this..


You need to be very gentle as not to crush the queen when marking her. You then must allow the paint to dry for a few minutes before returning her to the hive or the workers may clean off the paint.

I keep a queen catcher in my pocket while I'm working my hives just in case I see a queen that needs marked. The queen catcher allows workers to exit but a mated queen can't. Sometimes a virgin queen or a slimmed down "swarm queen" may slip out.

 

[madamwlf]

If I put 2 entrance feeders on could I remove the entrance reducer?? The new bees should be here tomorrow and I want to get everything set up.

 

[sgtmom52]

If I put 2 entrance feeders on could I remove the entrance reducer?? The new bees should be here tomorrow and I want to get everything set up.

That should be fine. The entrance feeders will reduce the size of the entrance they have to guard.

More bees!!

 

[madamwlf]

Good. Considering this will be a larger hive then the first one I was hoping it would be okay.