Inspection for May 18, 2013

Hello All,
           Today I inspected my hive but unfortunately wasn't able to get pictures on the inside. My hive is going nuts though and have already put a third box on after three weeks. WOW. Every frame is filled with brood (babies) and honey on the top. I saw my queen and she is massive. I was able to get pictures of the outside. They are here below:

I call it the poor mans hive because this is the first time that we have put different colored boxes on. I hope to have more pictures next week!!!!

Starting Up Again

Well I'm starting up again. I found out my bees died again. I have decided to get more and am also getting a breed that is more aggressive in there honey production and spring buildup. My Dads hive survived the winter and have decided to get the breed that has survived the winters. I promise this year to keep you all in the loop as well as I will be trying to raise queens this year. So if you have any friends that are beekeepers let them know I will be doing queens. I won't have some for a little while but will have them in the middle of the summer.

Bee Update

Hey Guys here is just a quick bee update. We opened all three hives today and when I opened mine I was in trouble. Mistake #1...of this year. When I took out the queen cage I was stupid enough not to put a frame back in its place. So the bees took the liberty to fill one in. Ha Ha. Here are some pictures of what happened it wasn't pretty. This is on the inner cover by the way.

You also see that I looked puzzled. Well that is because I was trying to figure out what to do with it. So I moved it off to the side not wanting to remove it because I did not find the queen and had a feeling she was on there. Also I have some pictures and the size of the colony is amazing. My hive, my dad swears, is twice the size of his. The colony should be dwindling down a bit by now so that is why I was surprised.

Bees

So looking at my other posts I found out that I did not tell you that my bees died over this spring. So we think that they were so small of a cluster they didn't want to go to the top box to eat the honey. Well we have new bees now. We enjoyed it so much that we got three this year. One is of course mine the other is my Dad's (and Mom's) and the third is my Brother's which he won. We just got the bees yesterday. It was amazing. I got stung yesterday when one bee was crawling up my shorts. That was not amazing. Lets just say it was very uncomfortable. Rule #1 Never wear shorts without rubber bands around the legs. Today we ended up believing Nick had a robbing attack because we put the feeder on the top of the bars. Well the thing is about a top bar hive is that the lid isn't really a full blown lid. The lids only purpose is to protect the bees from the elements. There are holes on each side of the lid. The other two are plugging away just fine. I will go ahead and post another in about 1-2 days when we get in to see if the queen has been released.

Good Resource

For those of you that have kids then The Honey Files is a good science resource. There is a little evolution in it but you can skip over that.

Long time no post

Hello everyone it has been a long time since I have posted anything. It is beekeeping season again and I will try to get more posts out. My brother won a top bar hive from the Utah County Beekeepers Association and will get his equipment April 7 and his bees April 28. It will bee a new adventure for us because we have never had a top bar hive before. Please Comment if you have heard any tips about this hive.

Thanks,
Mitchell

P.S. I will not post anything this week because I will be at a Debate Tournament in Spokane, Washington this week.

Medication

Hey Guys,
Yesterday my parents went to Orem to get my medication and were talking to the guy who owns the shop and  he said that the time that I needed to medicate was when I pulled off the honey supers. So today I medicated my bees and that went better that expected so here is the process:
We took 2 pounds of powdered sugar and added it to the Duramyacin we also took the varroa strips and put them in and we also put in a protein patty. We put 1 teaspoon of the Duramyacin on the right side of the frames on the bottom box and the same on the left side. We put a varroa strip on the right third on the fourth frame and a strip on the left third of the 5th frame. We put the protein patty on the top of the second box. They had a good 7-8 frames filled with honey so they should make it through the winter. Also we have to do the Duramyacin medications every 5 days for three times so we have two more times to medicate. We also have to take out the strips 21 days after today. I will keep you updated on where they are every five days. Here are also some pictures of what was in the hive today: