This will be the first of many blogs to come. I figured i'd start off with all the details of my hive so far. I started my first beehive the second week in June. We mail-ordered Italian bees from Georgia and arrived via the US Postal Service. Me and my father picked up the bees at around 7 AM after a frantic call from the postal staff. We installed them that day in a single brood box. The box was made from pine and contained 10 frames. These frames contained Plasticell wax-coated foundation.
They got a late start, but eventually drew out the comb on the frames in about a month. We then placed a identical brood box on top of this one. They quickly drew out 4 frames in about 2 weeks. Then we hit a bump in the road. We usualy inspect the hive every 2 weeks, but we had not inspected the bottom brood box the week after we put the other one on top of it. We figured as long as the queen was laying eggs, there was no reason to inspect the bottom.
About 4 weeks after we placed the top brood box on, we inspected the bottom of the hive. We decided to do this because we had found that the queen was not laying. Apon inspection, we found about 9 queen cells. Some of which were already hatched. We waited a week before we inspected the hive again. We found that by this time all of the queen cells had hatched. There was still no eggs, so we looked for what we guessed would be a virgin queen. Though we had not found her, we did hear her. Queens sometimes make this odd chirping noise. It is very distinct and sounds very different from a typical bee buzz. So we closed up the hive in hopes that a virgin queen was indeed there.
We kept our fingers crossed.
About 3 days later, i noticed some strange activity coming from my hive. I went over to investigate and saw that my bees were in a fury. They were not swarming or leaving, but there was alot of bees out. I'm guess that this day the virgin queen must have flown out of the hive to take her mating flight. This certainly made me feel much more relieved.
Tomorrow, Saturday, August 29th, 2009, we will be opening the hive and find out if they'll be ok or on their way to doom.
I'm hoping for the first
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As a first time beekeeper, a tradtion that's been in my family for generations, i have decided to blog about my experiences with the courious little creatures. I will keep well documented observations about my hive(s). Mostly from the days i inspect the hive. Now that i've begun, it feels almost natural. It must run in the blood (:
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