Nick's Nectar

I've now lost 4 out of 6 hives before we're even into winter. You expect to lose bees over winter - maybe up to 50-60%. But that's over winter not approaching winter. I've already set up with 4 packages of bees to arrive in March and April. At least they won't have to spend the energy building up the hive like the bees had to earlier this year. We'll tend to the remaining two hives and hopefully get them through until spring.

In this video, we look at a new app that will help with the verroa mite counts without having to kill the bees. We also look at a new tool we have to see the heat in the hive. This should help us with checking on the health of the hives in the winter without having to open the hive.

In this video, we check on a newly installed queen. We found that the hive accepted her and that she's getting down to business. We also did some other maintenance around the apiary. We removed a feeder that wasn't quite working right and also removed a queen excluder on our large super. We'll have two of the hives with double brood boxes going into the winter.

We've added three more hives! Our dream of beekeeping has grown to six hives this year!

Our first extraction. Not a lot of commentary or outtakes for this video. But it does document our first extraction, our first bee escapes and our first bee vac.

Checking in on the hives. Two weeks now without finding the queen. We're going to let these hives do as they will. Create a new queen. On the second hive that's also trying to create a queen, I'm going to try to do a split - maybe as quick as the end of the week.

We recently found swarm cells in one of our hives. Not sure what to do. Make a split (make the hive think it's swarmed so they will stay). Do nothing (let it runs its course). Go in and remove the swarm cells (perhaps give them a chance to calm the tendency in place). At first I was going to split. I prepared a place for a nuc. Then looked again and changed my mind. Decided to give it a few days. Slept on it. Then decided to remove the swarm cells. Who knows if it's the right thing to do. Especially when there is no perfect formula for the right thing to do.....

We checked for and found swarm cells. We removed them again. We'll go back in a week. If the hive is still trying to swarm, we'll split the hive then. I also got my first sting. Painful yes, but just carry on.

We've had our bees for one month now. One hive continues to be sluggish and the other is doing well. Perhaps over the next week, I'll pull one frame from the better hive and put it into the slower hive and boost the slower hive with more brood.

Hive check and decisions on what to do for each hive. The weaker hive will spend the season building up. No honey from this hive. The stronger hive will continue to grow and will possibly give us some honey by July. After that we'll start preparations to build the colony's resources and treatments for the end of the year.

Our 2nd hive inspection. And I accidently dropped a frame during the inspection! Of course it was the one with the QUEEN!

Our third hive check. The weaker hive is chugging along. Still not ready for a super. But at least they are building new comb and doing their thing. The stronger hive continues to thrive. And I found the queen this time. I thought I found her before but I didn't. She's marked.

Completing a nuc and painting First hive inspection with our new bees!

Making syrup to prepare for our bees arrival on Friday 4/10/20 Last painting to get the queen excluders ready And a first for me on a hive side visit to inspect a few hives.

We got our two nucs and place them in our two hives. The wind was a bit high so we rushed to get them in and didn't really inspect them to the fullest.

A new place for our hives thanks to the Forsyth County Beekeepers Club and a local veterinarian that allowed us to place our hives on his land!

Unboxing equipment for the starter beekeeper. The equipment was from Mountain Sweet Honey in Georgia.

Still preparing parts of the hive to be ready for April bees

This is our second beehive build and painting. We got the hive from Mountain Sweet Honey.

We are becoming amateur beekeepers. This is our first video of getting ready and assembling the hive and painting.

Checked both hives today. It was a great surprise to see the slower hive really taking off. Today we went ahead and added a honey super to the smaller hive and moved some frames around in the super of the larger hive. Hopefully it will promote quicker comb build out in the super.