Success So Far

Today was Big Bee Day at the Farmette.  It was the day to check and see if the queens had escaped from their cages and were making a home in the hive.

This all started in January when I started taking beekeeping classes from the Madison County Beekeepers Association in Huntsville.  www.alabees.com   I've always thought beekeeping would be an interesting hobby, and I'd been attempting to get started in it ever since I moved back into the area.  Due to various circumstances beyond my control, it just hadn't become a reality.  This year the stars all lined up and I began the process of getting bees on the farm.

I took the classes and ordered two hives from Rossman Apiaries in Moultrie, GA. www.GAbees.com  I picked the hives up at a bee conference in Auburn on Feb. 2.  The hives came in parts, so I improved my nailing skills by putting them together.

 

 

 

 



 

Then after all that nailing and gluing, I had to put everything in place.

First the platform

 

 



Then the stand

 

 



Bottom board

 

 



Empty super

 

 



Add the frames

 

 



Inner cover

Top cover.  Done.  Who would have thought there were so many parts to a beehive.

 

 



So Monday was the big day.  The bees were arriving.  Sister and I traveled to Lookout Mountain Honeybees in Gadsden to pick up two packages of bees.

 

 



I thought the farmette was in a rural area.  I've got nothing on these guys.  They are truely out in the middle of nowhere.  It was in the mountains though and very beautiful.  We wandered our way home on back roads through Collinsville and Albertville and by the lake in Guntersville.  A beautiful drive that would have been restful if I hadn't had about 40,000 bees right behind the back of my head.  Just as we got home, the heavens opened and one of the worst storms I've seen this year barreled through with buckets of rain, hail and some hefty winds.  We later learned that an F2 tornado touched down and traveled the road we had been on about 30 minutes earlier.  Several businesses were destroyed and many people lost their homes.  Luckily no one was killed.  I haven't heard how the beekeepers came out.

After the storm passed and it cleared up, it was time to install the bees.  Bees are tough.  You just turn their cage upside down and dump them in the hive.  Prior to that I had placed the queen in her cage in the hive.  She comes in a small wire and wooden cage with two corked ends.  You take out the cork on the side that has a candy plug behind it and then the bees eat through the plug to release her.  I attached the cage to a frame with a tack through the tab that comes on the cage.  Sorry I forgot to take pictures.

After the bees were in the hive we strapped the tops down so the wind wouldn't blow it off and added a feeder full of sugar water and then left them to settle in.

So I impatiently waited two days and today I got to open the hives and see how things were going.  The sugar water was going down in volumn and bees were all over the frames.

 



If you look closely at the above picture, on the bottom frame you can see the white tab from the queen cage that is attached to the frame.  So then I carefully pulled out the queen cage and found.......

Nothing!  She was gone, out of her cage and crawling amongst the hoards of workers busily preparing a home for her and the future generations she would breed. 

I carefully put the hive back together and went to the second hive to find the same scenario taking place.  I am left with humming hives and two empty queen cages.  This is a good thing.

So in spite of my ineptitude, the bees are taking care of themselves and they seem to be settling down and making their home here at the farmette.  Life is good.