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Beekeeping

notveryyoung said:
About 5 years with varying degrees of success. With these being splits and nucs, probably won't get much honey this year but that's ok. I want to see the bees thrive, for me that's the goal.
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Yeah, I understand that. Technically I'm not even a "beekeeper".... just a bee owner or a bee haver. You gotta get your bees to survive a winter or two before you can truly call yourself a keeper, lol.

I started with 3 nucs, and started kinda late. I could have gotten them a month earlier, but I didn't have my hives painted and ready yet. Had I started earlier I'd surely have enough time to get a little honey, the way this spring has gone. But by the time I got them installed (May 9th), my bees had already missed the beginning of the spring nectar flow.

I have 2 strong hives and one weaker one. I do just hope I can get them all built up to survive the winter, but if I could get a little honey out of one or two of the stronger hives, that would be amazing.
 
Spider said:
Yeah, I understand that. Technically I'm not even a "beekeeper".... just a bee owner or a bee haver. You gotta get your bees to survive a winter or two before you can truly call yourself a keeper, lol.

I started with 3 nucs, and started kinda late. I could have gotten them a month earlier, but I didn't have my hives painted and ready yet. Had I started earlier I'd surely have enough time to get a little honey, the way this spring has gone. But by the time I got them installed (May 9th), my bees had already missed the beginning of the spring nectar flow.

I have 2 strong hives and one weaker one. I do just hope I can get them all built up to survive the winter, but if I could get a little honey out of one or two of the stronger hives, that would be amazing.
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Got it. Hope I get some honey also but the hives building up is more important to me. BTW, if anyone is looking to buy honey from a store (of any kind), look at the label closely. If you see Argentina as one of the sources, DON'T BUY IT. Argentina has been a pass thru location for Chinese honey which has been shown to be full of heavy metals/pesiticides and other ungood things. Only buy from local beekeepers or possibly organic from stores
 
Over the weekend, we had Missouri Bee Day put on by the Missouri State Beekeepers Association. Beekeepers from all over the state came together for a day of presentations, lectures, and hands on instruction. It was a good day overall. I learned a lot. One of the most interesting things I learned was how to mark queens.

Queens are marked for a couple of reasons. First of all, it makes finding your queen much easier. Marking involves dabbing a paint marker on her thorax. That makes her stick out quite well from the surrounding bees. And makes it much easier for beginner beekeepers to identify the queen. Secondly, it can help you track her age. There is an international standard of 5 colors to use based on the year she was produced. That can tell you if your queen is 2 or 3 years old and may help you decide when she needs to be replaced.

Now, marking queens is a skill that is fairly easy, but requires a bit of practice to get comfortable with it. There is only one queen in a hive and replacing her can be very costly if you mess up and hurt her. So the easiest way to practice is by marking drones. Neither the queen nor the drones can sting you, only the workers can. So finding and marking drones is an easy way to get practice with the marking tools.

Learning how to handle the bees, and mark them was quite fun. And it gave me a better idea of quickly picking out the drones from the workers in the colony. Drones are definitely in the minority, maybe 5% of the colony, so you don't see them all the time. I will post pictures of the drones I marked when I get back to my phone.
 
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