Hello Beepeeple!

Oh, so you are going to run two types of hives simultaneously! Excellent! You know I'll be watching this forum/thread closely over the summer to read about your observations/experiences/opinions! From what I can see, the entire bottom of the top bar is open to air along its length... How do you "dump in" the packaged bees and get them to stay in there? How do you keep pests and varmints out of the comb once its built?
you're right... sooooo many questions!

a video

Where the video came from
This guy is from Bowling Green, you can hear the guns at AP Hill hammering in the background of some of the videos.

The bees want to stay with the queen, her pheromones determine where they are drawn to. If they ignore the queen in the cage, there could be a loose queen in with the shook bees. It has happened.
If you are running the TBH naturally, then you rotate out the brood comb every so often. The bees keep the wax moths and hive beetles at bay, "bee-sized" drawn comb instead of bought foundation helps with mite control.

Latestarter said:

Barring anything unexpected, I expect to have honey the end of my first season.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't expect any honey the first year. The bees take a lot of energy drawing out comb and need their honey for reserves for their first winter. I got my honey harvest the 2nd summer.

Another beautiful spring day and less wind today as well. I've heard maybe snow coming later in the week. Forecasters - BLAH! Colorado weather - Who knows/knew??? Next five days looks like highs in the 50s then 40s. May be the calm before the storm, so to speak? Hope we DO get snow in the Feb-April time frame as we always need/can use the moisture. Been looking around at the city/state water retention/holding lakes (along the So Platte river corridor) here and most of them are near full at the moment. Even Barr lake (a major irrigation source here), which was down to a third of its normal size late last year, is nearly full again.

Today, in about an hour, I'm going over to an apiary dealer's place to purchase and pick up my bee hives! Pretty excited! Won't get the bees till April or May, but that will give me time to place the hives and get intimately familiar with them. Maybe I'll get really lucky and this spring a swarm will move into one and I'll get bees earlier than planned (after the weather warms continuously of course)! I'm beginning to realize this is gonna be a really cheap/inexpensive hobby... just like keeping chickens At least I won't need to buy feed and feed them daily! Hope everyone has a GREAT day!



Enjoy the football games! GO !!! <--- my team for 40+ years!

Got my beesuit yesterday....

We're getting close!

Wrote the check for my 2 packages today and put in the mailbox. Haven't even started purchasing gear yet and you're right... we're getting close.

Yellow crocus pushed thru today.

Starting to see my first dandelions in the yard as well as the little yellow flowers on the burr plants (HATE them! OUCH!). Haven't seen any bees around my place yet. Picked up a bunch of wildflower mix seed for pollinators (free from the local USDA folks) enough to cover 1/4 acre. Need to get the areas where I intend to put it prepped and get that seed in the dirt! Sure would be nice for some of them to be up and in bloom when the packages arrive!

Talked with the VP of the bee club and he's going to trade me 2 deep frames of drawn comb for 2 of my brand new frames and foundation so I can put one each in my 2 new hives to give the packages a good start. That ought to be a huge boost for them to get them started! The queen can start laying almost immediately!

That will be a good start.

Mine are bringing in loads of pollen. The lilacs are in bloom here now.