💗🐝Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!🐝💗

[SageHill]

Lucky ladies!! Home "cookin' "

 

[drstratton]

Lucky ladies!! Home "cookin' "

I hope they like home cookin...lol

 

[Mini Horses]

Loots like caramel

 

[drstratton]

Loots like caramel

They'd probably like that too!

 

[drstratton]

I've been trying to come up with a name for my Apiary. I think I've settled on Bees & Blooms Apiary. I'm not setting up a business, but wanted a name.

Had some fun using my own pictures for a logo.

 

[drstratton]

It's been a busy day for me in the bee keeping realm today. Studying, trying to get ready for spring, feeding the bees to get them all the way to spring.

Note on feeding bananas. You don't want to feed them during the winter when they can't take cleansing flights. I'm going to edit my earlier post to reflect that.

They were showing interest in both before we put them in the hives.

The girls are definitely much more interested in the patties than the bananas. This is the swarm hive.

The package/combined hive decided they didn't like my camera and kept attacking it. Couldn't get any pictures of the banana or pollen patty
Just angry blurry bees...

Wasn't able to get an angle on the banana in Hive #2, but, I could see they are all over the pollen patty. These girls were a little spicy today too. Came right at me when we opened the box. Thankful I had my veil on...lol

Went out for dinner and one of the girls decided to join our date.

 

[drstratton]

Our beekeeping plans are ever evolving. I think we are going to order at least one package or Nuc for our resource hive to get it started. We talked about it on our way to dinner earlier.

Trying to decide:
Local
Buckfast from Mann Lake
Golden West
Oliveras

I'm hoping to learn how to raise queens, especially if I buy bees bred for hygienic behavior.

 

[drstratton]

We decided to buy a locally raised queen and Nuc. Just waiting to hear from the guy that sells them. He's one of the officers in our bee club. I hope he still has some available.

I would also like to buy one of the Golden West queens, use her to raise my own. I will wait until I know how to raise them. It's really fascinating.

 

[drstratton]

I heard from Robert. He sells his Nuc's for $150 and he marks his queens. Such a good deal. The only downside is they won't be ready to go until almost June. I'm on his list, but we need to think about if we want to wait that long. I like him and want to support his business. It takes longer to get your Nuc's up and running here than it does down south. What to do, what to do... sigh

 

[drstratton]

Hubs used a dado for the handholds on the ends of the Nuc boxes. He's building two individual screened bottom boards. We will screw them together, that will give us the option to run them separately if we want to. He's also building two inner covers & feeder boards. He'll make a single lid to fit over both. That can also be changed later if we decide to change them to singles. I'm glad we decided to build 5 frame boxes, instead of the four they use for double Nuc construction. The advantage of being able to customize and build our own equipment is a blessing.