💗🐝Our Backyard Beekeeping Journey!🐝💗

[drstratton]

My husband is the best. Yesterday we started on the bog filter.

Repurposed barrel, it's 29.5 gallons. We've probably had this for 20 years. Hubs brought several home from that dam place...lol The only things I've bought for this build is the pond liner and 2 containers for the waterfall. They were on clearance for $3.24. I have several old pumps to choose from, so I won't need anything new there.

Built a box to hide the barrel.
Repurposed wood for the frame, part of it was an old picnic table that came from his dad's place. The cedar boards are from the cull lumber we bought last year. One of the best deals we've ever gotten.

Outlet hole back to the pond.

This hole is for a drain. We will add a short length of pipe and a ball valve.

That's all for now. The inlet pipe will be brought up inside the box to hide it. It will be visible where it goes over the top into the barrel. I'll show that once we get there.

Have other things to work on, but I will probably stain the box today, depends on the wind.

I need to get the space ready for the Nuc. Hopefully our new hive box gets delivered early on Saturday.

 

[drstratton]

I spotted this Salvia at Lowe's. I bought it, brought it home and then realized that it's an annual, 0-10°F. If we have another warm winter, it might make it.

 

[drstratton]

We added more pavers and built a cinder block stand for the new hive. Hubs didn't volunteer to weld together another pipe stand...lol This will work.

I will angle the hive to face the same direction as the other hives.

We could have really used air traffic control. We were working right in the flight path... I don't know how many times I had one bounce off of me..

If the newly mated??? Cordovan bee hasn't started laying, I will combine that hive with the small Buckfast hive. I'll know next week.

 

[drstratton]

Just installed our new Nuc. The queen is beautiful, cleanly marked, lots of bees, capped brood, eggs, larvae and resources. They were so calm. I love that he also included a pollen patty and OAE pad. Excited to watch this hive grow.
Sorry about the light ring in the pictures.

Still waiting for our new hive. All we need for now is the lid, inner cover, bottom board and entrance reducer. We had enough components that we could fudge a temporary setup.

 

[drstratton]

We decided to grab a frame of capped brood from resource hive #1 for the Buckfast hive, (it's smaller than I like) and what did what did we find...they are replacing their queen. We found 3 capped queen cells. No eggs, a little larvae. So, we decided to let them do their thing. I was wondering about her when I was in there a couple of weeks ago.

We looked in the (Italian) resource hive #2 and saw that the queen had been released. We were able to take a frame of capped brood and bees from there. There are still plenty remaining. We didn't search for the queen or eggs today. We'll check next week.

The Buckfast queen has also been released. We also didn't search for her. Hopefully this extra frame of brood will balance things out. I love having hives to pull from.

We didn't check on the Carniolan queen. That will also happen next week, along with checking for eggs in the Cordovan hive.

This is keeping me on my toes and it's either good for my brain or overloading it, maybe a little of both...lol.

 

[fuzzi]

Beekeeper's Math...

 

[SageHill]

So now that the new gals are settling in. What's the difference between them all and why did you choose what you did??

 

[drstratton]

Beekeeper's Math...

I'm that good...lol Actually, this is partly my husband's fault, he wanted to order all those queens! Without thinking where to put them, if our queen cells actually produced laying queens... so that makes me innocent in all this right?

 

[drstratton]

So now that the new gals are settling in. What's the difference between them all and why did you choose what you did??

The Italian queen is actually a hybrid x/Carniolan:
Bred with VSH genetics. (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene). Meaning they will hopefully be better at managing the varroa in their hives. They're also gentle. Have steady spring buildup.

Carniolan:
Gentle, easy to manage, good for cold weather, very fast spring build up. I liked my two Carniolan nucs from last year. I saw some VSH tendencies from them. Great layers. Hope this Queen won't disappoint.

Buckfast:
Another hybrid. VSH tendencies. Strong and balanced. Hopefully not too spicy. Well soon know...lol

There are a couple of other queens I would have preferred, but they were not available at this time.