First Bee Hive
- buttonbuck
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First Bee Hive
Just got our first bee hive put together. Bees arrive in April. Should be fun and the garden is going to pop.
- wolverinebuckman
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Re: First Bee Hive
Cool stuff! I'm looking to get into beekeeping this year as well.
Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.
- buttonbuck
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Re: First Bee Hive
wolverinebuckman wrote:Cool stuff! I'm looking to get into beekeeping this year as well.
Checkout Barnyard bees on YouTube. Hopefully soon it will be on another platform.
- Ryan549
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- headgear
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Re: First Bee Hive
Ryan549 wrote:What is the initial investment to getting into this ?
Same question, been thinking about it but never pulled the trigger. I would think taking care of bees is easy but maybe someone with experience can give us a few pointers.
- buttonbuck
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Re: First Bee Hive
The initial investment for a bee hive and bees with a queen was $260. But my wife also bought necessary bee keeping equipment, pest control, smoker can, etc. That ran it up to $450.
- UntouchableNess
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Re: First Bee Hive
headgear wrote:I would think taking care of bees is easy but maybe someone with experience can give us a few pointers.
I’ve done it and didn’t find it easy. Lots of equipment in the barn if I care to get back in it.
First 2lb package of bees with queen was $40. Now around $120.
I read once where the suggestion was start with 2 hives so you can compare how they are doing. If you have one hive, new beekeeper, you might not realize the colony is failing to thrive.
Even though we don’t have a current active hive, plenty of bees in the orchard when in bloom. Either some swarms went feral or the neighbors are benefiting.
- purebowhunting
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Re: First Bee Hive
UntouchableNess wrote:headgear wrote:I would think taking care of bees is easy but maybe someone with experience can give us a few pointers.
I’ve done it and didn’t find it easy. Lots of equipment in the barn if I care to get back in it.
First 2lb package of bees with queen was $40. Now around $120.
I read once where the suggestion was start with 2 hives so you can compare how they are doing. If you have one hive, new beekeeper, you might not realize the colony is failing to thrive.
Even though we don’t have a current active hive, plenty of bees in the orchard when in bloom. Either some swarms went feral or the neighbors are benefiting.
I've had simar experiences, I seem to often have a collapse late in the summer and can't figure out why. I still have 1 hive remaining if it makes the winter, if not I won't have honeybees for a while. For $120 plus for bees each year per hive, it gets expensive. The first few year I had bees I could handle them with no protective clothing besides gloves, then I had a bear tear one apart and guessing since I put the hive back together in the morning they associated me with what happened and I'd get stung dozens of times whenever I came close to the hive and that took most the fun out of it.
- UntouchableNess
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Re: First Bee Hive
We were given a lot of equipment from the father of a co-worker who was cleaning out his garage. We started with 3 hives, which then through capturing swarms and adding more packages climbed to 12 hives (made a lot of hive bodies in the wood shop). Then, we started losing hives over the winter until we lost them all. I think the erratic weather over the winters didn't help, from very warm days in the middle of winter to then extreme cold snaps.
Where I probably could have been better as a apiarist:
I should have probably been in the hives more often doing maintenance. 1) Rotating frames around to keep the queen laying as many eggs as possible. 2) Trimming queen cells off the bottom of the frames to prevent swarms. 3) Or take the frame with a queen cell, along with some brood to make a nuc for a new hive. 4) We didn't requeen hives. Tried that once on a hive that went "queen right" but the hive didn't accept the new queen, even after they freed her from the cage. Either way, need to replace the queen every so often to keep the hive going. 5) Did a fair job of working the hives when they were up in the farm yard, but when the one hive lost it's queen, it got VERY aggressive and attacked anything moving in the yard. Moved the hives down by the pond, where "out of sight = out of mind" and working them became more of a planned event.
Where I probably could have been better as a apiarist:
I should have probably been in the hives more often doing maintenance. 1) Rotating frames around to keep the queen laying as many eggs as possible. 2) Trimming queen cells off the bottom of the frames to prevent swarms. 3) Or take the frame with a queen cell, along with some brood to make a nuc for a new hive. 4) We didn't requeen hives. Tried that once on a hive that went "queen right" but the hive didn't accept the new queen, even after they freed her from the cage. Either way, need to replace the queen every so often to keep the hive going. 5) Did a fair job of working the hives when they were up in the farm yard, but when the one hive lost it's queen, it got VERY aggressive and attacked anything moving in the yard. Moved the hives down by the pond, where "out of sight = out of mind" and working them became more of a planned event.
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