Catching up

Cause I can't seem to find time to blog.

I've been to 3 wake county beekeepers assoc meetings since I blogged last: the holiday dinner (where a guy had a full on seizure - freaked the hell out of me), the Dr. Ambrose talk (very interesting discussion about the history of beekeeping - it matched nicely with the book I was reading "Robbing the Bees"), and the last which was a Q&A with 3 senior members of the club.

In the last I did ask some questions about Supering my hives this spring/summer. When should I, how many should I put on, and should I go with 10 or 9 frames per super. One of the people I have talked with in the past was on the panel and he said the more reasonable thing: watch your hives and they will let you know when to super them. Once the hive bodies are 75% full put on a super and when it is 75% full put on the next one.

The rest of the questions were from people wanting to start or just started. No one in the medium to old timer asked anything which was a little disappointing, but not surprising. About 50% of the questions asked I would have answered the same as the old timers - o.O - sweet.

I have spent a lot of time this past month and this month getting ready for the spring and summer. I have completed building and painting the other hive bodies to put finally have a 2 hive body setup on Elizabeth and Mary's hives. Susan is a little concerned about how high they will be :D. Well I hope not much over 6 feet. Any more than that and I will have a heck of a time lifting the supers off.

Saturday was a really nice day (sunny, no wind, ~60F) and I decided that it was time to do my first hive inspection of the year. I started with Elizabeth's hive because her's still has more supplies and is my best hope for the year. I was not disappointed, she still has 20# or more of honey capped and about the half again uncapped. All frames are pulled too, so there is plenty of room for brood - but I didn't see any :(. I actually saw her - which made me very happy, so now she just needs to get down to business. I put the new hive body on the hive - it fits very poorly - which is something I need to correct this weekend. I didn't see any supercedure or swarm cells; so I'm guessing they aren't stressed. I was much more comfortable handling them this time because of my new gloves and frame grip. I do need to work on using the frame grip better - i dropped one frame about 3 inches with a full covering of bees - they were not impressed.

Mary's hive was next - it went well too. I saw her and the hive seemed to be doing ok. I have been feeding them for about 3 weeks now. I noticed last month how light it had gotten. I made a paint can into a feeder than sits on the inner cover so that no one has to go very far to get food. It works ok, but I'd be happy to not have to use it again next year.

All told my inspection took me about 1.5 hours - not efficient, but it got done. I'll see how Mary is doing this weekend or next after the State Beekeepers Conference and put the other hive body on. She has a lot of space already, but hopefully that will change shortly.