About 5 years ago, I started keeping bees. I was able to keep them for a couple of years, but lost the last hive 2 years ago. Last year I went without them. But I got 2 packages this year and am hoping to successfully keep them and grow my apiary.
I do not plan on going into business with them. I hope to get some honey out of it, but my main interest is to just keep them.
I use all medium boxes with plastic frames. The boxes they are in right now are the standard white. But I was trying to get my daughter interested in the bees, so went with a bunch of different color. That experiment was not a success, she wants nothing to do with them. But it makes my apiary nice and colorful.
Here's a couple of pics for those that are interested. I couldn't get my wife to come down for action pics.
These are both supposed to be 3 pound packages of bees. Obviously there are many more bees in the one on the right. Maybe they gave me a 4 pound package.
Here's a shot of the new set up. I did learn from my previous hives. I put the earlier ones too close to the fence. Every time I mowed, it pissed off the bees. I also had them a little too close together. This time I have room for 4 hives and they will be about 6 feet apart. If I get bigger than 4 hives, I'll create a new area like this.
This is just showing that they eventually settled down. This hive had the smaller number of bees. The other hive that had the bigger package also seemed much more pissed off than this hive. I got stung on the hand when installing the bigger package, this is my 5th or 6th package install and I've never been stung doing this. Usually they are fairly docile, but they were up in my face the whole time. Both packages came from the same supplier in Georgia, so I'm not really sure why they were so much more aggressive.
I'll post again once I pull out the queen cage and get another box onto the hives. Should be next weekend when I do that.
