Beekeeping Meeting tonight!

[simple life]

The nearest I found is Rhode Island and he does it to your specs and I like his philosophy so that is where I ordered from.
People around here are just catching up to that.
The only issue is with the mediums nucs you get a little less brood and bees.
Although after I ordered mine I had a couple of producers from my bee club tell me that they would have done it for me as well.
I'll just keep them in mind for another time.
I also have some coming from New York from someone I got to know and he is delivering them, you can't beat that!

 

[Reinbeau]

That shouldn't matter, because you're already way ahead of the ball with a nuc, she's laying, they're a going hive. Much better than starting with a package, but correspondingly more expensive. We're getting at least one more package next week, hopefully someone will drop out and we'll get two, that's the number we originally wanted. That way we'll have five up north, four in the backyard and two at Mom's.

The three packages we installed last week are going gangbusters, haulin' in pollen, the queens were all out in three days, so all we need now is to get confirmation they're laying. Greg will check for that sometime next week, and in 21 days after she starts, the new bees start their orientation flights - wait til you see that, they all come out and swirl around in front of the hive, getting their bearings. Very neat to see!

 

[simple life]

The ones I installed were nucs so I had brood in all stages and some of the bees were actually hatching out of the cells when I installed the frames so there have been orientation flights already, its very cool.
The front of the hives are just a flurry of activity all day long since the day after I got them in there.

Mine have been bringing in bright yellow pollen from my neighbor's forsythia shrubs.
Some of them are so laden with pollen they can barely get in the door.
I checked on them and they are building new frames of nice white comb and filling the cells with that bright yellow and some type of orange pollen that I hadn't noticed them bringing in.

The chickens are keeping a respectable distance now which is great because I had trouble keeping them out of that flower garden and now that the bees are there they aren't bothering anything.
They will walk past the hives but won't dig dust bath holes along there anymore. A couple will nap behind the hives in a shrub but thats about it.
The youngest ones will go lay under the topbar hives but they don't do any digging...yet anyway.

 

[Southern Gardener]

Ann, thanks so much for the spreadsheet! I'm glad you approve of the English Garden hive - I really like that one! Simple, thanks for the sound advice - the members of the club are quite elderly and just may be set in their ways - we'll see - still, I'll take any advice I can!

I have to run. My dad is here and we are starting on my new and BIGGER chicken coop! I can't wait.

Talk soon!
Joan

 

[897tgigvib]

What are the easiest kinds of bees and supplies to get for a gardener?