First Hive

Welcome to the wonderful world of bee keeping! :icon_thumleft: :icon_thumright:

Dennis

Wolf,

Congrats! Welcome to the Band of Beekeepers! (Sounds like a B movie title...)

Hey, you learned the very first lesson in beekeeping. Which end is the pointy one - and why you should avoid it!

They'll probably drive you crazy with worry your first year, but you will find them to be an amazing and fun hobby.

David

Band of Beekeepers and appropriate B rated title, it should also have a cult following.

Welcome to the club! It is a great hobby. But don't kill off all your bees by letting them sting you. My mentor says I am cutting into his profit margin when I kill them like that..lol

I suggest after the queen gets settled in, to go visit your colony once a week or so. It is important to get comfortable handling them. The more comfortable you are handling a box of 60,000 bees the less likely you will be stung. Its kind of overwhleming your first year at the peak of the season.

David is right about worrying about them your first year. It will be much like your first batch of mead. Luckily the bees take care of themselves pretty well with little intervention from you.

A word of caution. I never had a problem with bee stings. But my at the beginning of my 2nd year of beekeeping, my third sting of the season caused me an allergic reaction. I just broke out into hives (no pun intended) nothing to serious. I did end up going to the ER and then seeing my family docotor. My doctor told me that it is possible to become allergic to anything at any point in your life. Several hundred bee stings later I haven't had another reaction. But the first few stings of the season keeps me on my toes. I would urge you to pick up an epipen for your first year out, until you are sure you aren't going to have a violent reaction. Also, if the bees are in your yard, you may want to keep an epipen around for an emergency, like a visitor who gets stung and has no previous allergens to bee stings. You just never know.

Good luck and have fun.

That's great that you have got a hive together, get use to checking them once a week or so and watch the bees entering the hive. try not to rile them up too much, if the girls are agressive one day close the hive up and check them another time. If you are worried about a allergic reaction to a sting keep some benadryl handy. My primary doctor wouldn't give me a script for an epipen, he said I needed to show an allergic reaction to a sting before he would write the script. It is a real catch 22, to get the epipen I need to have a reaction to a sting but by then it would be too late. If you want any type of honey crop the first year plan to pull what you can mid summer and then feed them to build up for the winter. With bees you need to plan at least two months ahead. Welcome to the club.

Wow, had a problem with the doctor for a scirpt for an epipen.

My doctor was more than happy to give me a script for a 2 pack epipen. He also told me about how important it was that I got rid of them after the expeiration date. He told me the story of a local teenager who died from a peanut allergy after he had hit himself with and epipen. The epipen was outdated.

So who was the brave camera man?

I read somewhere that there is about 3,500 bees/pound with a 3# pacakge which I assume is what you got, that is about 10,500 bees and a good package company will shake some extra in there to compensate for what die in transist.

I got one question though. Whats with the zip lock bags of water in the colony? I haven't heard of that before and if I have I forgot about it. It worries me a little but it would also depend on where you are at. At this point of the season I wouldn't want that in my colonies, it gets way to cold at night still and with spring here, or starting to show up, there should be plenty of water for them to get at. But technique has a lot to do with location. My worries may be unfounded.

I didn't even think of feeding. I thought it was just water. Wish I could have attended a class when I started out. Would have saved a lot of headaches.

I would imagine she has you handling drones because they don't sting.
You plan on going into queen production?

Always keep an eye on you queens and how they are doing. Out of the three hives I started by packages last year one requeened itself after tossing two small swarms, one collapsed last August and was lost because of queen failure and only the third hive had a queen that lasted over a year. My fourth hive was requeened mid last summer and is still hanging in there. I've an extra queen coming in next week to start a nuc with so I will have a backup for late summer. The good news is that I checked the hives over the weekend and have over a full deep honey super on each hive so I'm looking at moving three or four 100 lb supers. Should get an easy 10-15 gallons of honey this time and the Florida season has just begun. ;D I plan to use the big 6 gallon primary buckets to store the honey in till I bottle.