Bee Keeping

Well, it's close to 9 months since the last bee posting. It's March now and time to think about bees. I make mead and locally good honey can get expensive when you need 6 to 12 lbs per batch. So I said, well, let's do my own bees! I've decided to build my own top bar hive and take the more natural beekeeping route. There are many obvious reasons why I've decided to go this way over the conventional vertical hives, which I won't get into here. I've ordered my bees from a local apiary and am awaiting the call in April. This was fun to build and extremely inexpensive.

See here for more pictures and narrative https://picasaweb.google.com/1037315...43392922/Bees#

Building the hive
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_g...0/DSC02205.JPG

Making a top bar
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_g...0/DSC02274.JPG

Nearly completed
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_g...0/DSC02283.JPG

Made a roof. Still need to put something protective over it. I think some brown aluminum flashing to keep it very light.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_g...0/DSC02259.JPG

Mudmucker I look forward to hearing about your first bees in April. :)

Of my two hives last year, one died over the winter but the other looks very strong now. they were flying like mad today at 50F and sunny. I have plans to split that one into several small new colonies, for raising my own queens this year. I also have one replacement nuc coming in the mail at end of April.
Hopefully I will get some honey this year one way or another. :rolleyes:

Well it's autumn, the two hives i started this year with have been multiplied to 3 full size and two small ones. I made some splits using queen cells, good to get experience in propagating new hives on your own. Getting winter preparations made slowly now- top insulation, tarpaper, mouse guards. With any luck I will have 2 or 3 surviving hives next Spring.
I actually got my first small honey harvest a couple weeks ago- wound up with about a gallon of very yummy beautiful honey.
some photos:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ewENUPIq-T...0/DSC07319.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-81kNz9xJWQ...0/DSC07324.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UGQ7N-NJla...0/DSC07362.jpg

and some nice wax...
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iwjXydsHDM...0/DSC07373.jpg

[QUOTE=BleeckerSt_Girl;607444]Well it's autumn, the two hives i started this year with have been multiplied to 3 full size and two small ones. I made some splits using queen cells, good to get experience in propagating new hives on your own. Getting winter preparations made slowly now- top insulation, tarpaper, mouse guards. With any luck I will have 2 or 3 surviving hives next Spring.
I actually got my first small honey harvest a couple weeks ago- wound up with about a gallon of very yummy beautiful honey.
some photos:

VERY, Very Cool! I just can't see raising bees where I live, but would love to do that some day