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Beekeeping
- Thread starter Spider
- Start date
I think one out of my three hives did not survive the winter. This is ok, and why I started with 3 to begin with. I can still split the remaining two and end up with 4 hives this year.
But I thought I'd share some pics I took while doing hive check the past couple of days.
Hive 1 just opened up
Queens, I marked them. The color identifies their age, and the mark makes them easier to find.
Zoom in, these are freshly laid eggs. These are 1-3 days old.
Zoom in near that bee in the middle and you can see brood at every stage of development: egg, larva, and capped brood.
But I thought I'd share some pics I took while doing hive check the past couple of days.
Hive 1 just opened up
Queens, I marked them. The color identifies their age, and the mark makes them easier to find.
Zoom in, these are freshly laid eggs. These are 1-3 days old.
Zoom in near that bee in the middle and you can see brood at every stage of development: egg, larva, and capped brood.
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Yeah, I consider it a success. I've been told to expect losses of 30% annually, which if you have a few hives or more is easy to recover from. I guess losses this year were 60% on average, which is huge. Lots of folks are studying the losses to try to figure out why. I know a couple of new beekeepers who lost their hives completely.
This is awesome @Spider I wish I were doing the same. I have too many projects including running the farmers markets every Saturday and trying to keep up on my garden which keeps growing. ALSO, Iryna is keeping me busy with loads of home renovation projects and we may build a chicken coop in the next few weeks too!
You need to move to the country to have a proper homestead!
I'm going to a homesteading expo this weekend to see what I can learn. I'll probably sit at our beekeeping club's table for a while and answer questions.
Been a while since I've updated the goings on with my hives. I did indeed lose the one hive. It was weak coming out of winter, and I discovered it being robbed heavily by other bees.
But I had someone contact me about 2 swarms that were near their hives. They were away on vacation and couldn't get them, so they asked me if I wanted to go get them. These two pics are what they sent me. There are inside a greenhouse and in the first pic the bees are over 10ft high in the support beams, so I had to bring a ladder to get them.
Swarms a generally very docile as they are inbetween homes and don't have " home turf" to defend. Catching them was very straightforward and easy. The biggest challenge is just going through the bees to find the queen to ensure she is present. Each swarm had a queen so they were good to take home after I put them in their transport boxes, below.
I moved them to my beeyard and installed them into new hive boxes. They are doing well and filling their frames with wax comb, brood, and stores. They are both ready for a second box, which I should be installing tonight. My first two hives are doing great and each has honey supers on them collecting excess honey. My strongest hive has 2 supers on it with the first one being nearly full right now.
But I had someone contact me about 2 swarms that were near their hives. They were away on vacation and couldn't get them, so they asked me if I wanted to go get them. These two pics are what they sent me. There are inside a greenhouse and in the first pic the bees are over 10ft high in the support beams, so I had to bring a ladder to get them.
Swarms a generally very docile as they are inbetween homes and don't have " home turf" to defend. Catching them was very straightforward and easy. The biggest challenge is just going through the bees to find the queen to ensure she is present. Each swarm had a queen so they were good to take home after I put them in their transport boxes, below.
I moved them to my beeyard and installed them into new hive boxes. They are doing well and filling their frames with wax comb, brood, and stores. They are both ready for a second box, which I should be installing tonight. My first two hives are doing great and each has honey supers on them collecting excess honey. My strongest hive has 2 supers on it with the first one being nearly full right now.
