Alright, so it has been awhile since the last time I posted anything; so I am going to just give the significant stuff from the bee journal we have been keeping. 5-16-11 we took off entrance reducers at the beginning of the month. We added the second hive bodies as planned to each of the hives, but we still fed them sugar water, though not as much. 5-28-11 today Ron and I went out to peek in on both of the hives. Both hives were very active, more active than ever before. Went into the Carniolan's hive and took away the feeder. Smoked the hive quite a bit and took a look at the top hive body. the girls have already started to lay wax and the queen is laying in the middle of the upper body. The hive had a lot of burr com that we had to get rid of, and we tried to space the frames a bit better. We then took a look at the Italian's hive, it was nearly identical. 6-?-11 we put on queen excluder and honey shallow since the girls had filled about 8 of the frames in the upper hive body. 7-9-11Carniolans have yet to do anything up in the top, and we are unsure why... they seem to be doing good work in the bottom still. the Carniolans don't seem nearly as active as the Italians, just slower in general. the Italians have been poking around in the honey shallow a bit but they have not done any real work up there yet. 7-22-11 Carniolans still have not done anything in the super. Italians are doing some great work, they have laid wax and are putting nectar up there! 8-21-11 Today was a big day Carniolans still not really doing much with the super, laying some wax but that is it. Italians on the other hand have laid wax on all frames... not completely on the outer frames yet, but they are working the whole box. They have 4-5 full frames of honey, so against better judgement we took 1 frame for ourselves. We scraped the wax and honey from the frame into a cheesecloth lined colander, then we took the cheesecloth and twisted it and wrung it until we could get no more honey out and there was just the wax left. We got 1 medium dip jar plus 7 baby food jars full. It isn't much but just think, that is from 1 frame... we have 19 more. next year hopefully we can pull all that upper honey since they will be more established. 9-17-11 checked in on the hives,they seem to be doing fine still very active in the Italian's. we looked down into the hive honey shallow has 4 frames full of honey right in the center, upper hive body has brood in center and little honey around the outer, bottom body has hardly anything in it, a little pollen and honey around the outer edges but nothing in the center. Carniolan's hive has nothing in the shallow but wax, upper hive body has honey throughout nearly the whole thing with a bit of brood in the lower portions of the middle frames, bottom has lots of brood in the center area with honey/some pollen around the outer edges. so it turns out that they might be doing just as well if not better than the Italians, though you would not no it by looking at them. I also put the entrance reducers on this week to prepare for this winter.

Almost a month as a beekeeper!

Alright, so just a wee little report on the bees. Ron and I have not had to do too much with them so far. We have been providing sugar water for them and checking their progress as far as how much wax they are putting down on the foundation. Both hives seem to be doing just fine! I checked in on them yesterday and both of the queens are laying, the larvae seem alright (from what this novice can tell), and I was able to actually see the queens in both hives wandering around doing their work. This was quite a good thing since before I was not able to see the Carniolan's queen. Anyways, everything is perfect so far. Next week I think I will take off the feeders since they seem to be finding some good stuff out there to pack the comb with. I also will be adding another medium hive body to give them some room to expand the colony.

Hive inspection numero uno...

So this last weekend Ron and I went out to the field to check up on the girls. It had been 1 week since installing the packages into the hives. We put on our goofy looking suits, lit up our smoker and started breaking into the hives. I am stoked to let everyone know that everything seems to be up to par at this time. We were able to see the queen in the Italian bee's hive. We were not as lucky with the Carniolan's hive, but both hives had a fair amount of comb being laid down, and we were able to see that there were eggs laid in both hives! The girls had made some burr comb between where the queen cage was sitting and the frames which I was able to pull off intact. My son Brighten is happy because he gets to take the comb to show and tell tomorrow. It is so amazing to see how labor intensive they are, and how much they were able to accomplish in 1 week... if only humans had half the instinct to work towards a common goal we wouldn't be in the state we are right now. Anyhow, looks like everything is fine as of now.

The bees are in the hive!

Okay, so it is pretty late so I will keep it short. This was an exciting weekend for the Aumsville Apiary as our two colonies of bees arrived. We got one of Italians, and one of Carniolans. I put up a vid of me putting them into the hives so check it out! Grace got some great footage. All in all I think that it went pretty well, aside from me forgetting a couple steps and having to do some backstepping to correct... but for a first time I think I did alright. I had to improvise at one point when the cork on the queen cage fell into the cage itself. It took some time but I managed to pull the screen off and get the cork, then place the screen back on all without letting the queen out or hurting her! I also had an issue with the top hive feeder spilling sugar syrup all over me, but hey it was all a great learning experience right? It is quite amazing to hear all that buzzing around you and see thousands of bees in one place. I was pretty surprised that I walked away without even one sting! Well, the girls are in and now it is just a waiting game to see if they take-off (make lots of honey) or take-off (leave to find better digs)... we of course are hoping for the first. Goodnight friends. I will keep you posted as next week we will do the first hive inspection...

A great day for Aumsville Apiary of Hope Acres Farm... the bees are home!!!

Hive progress

Not too much to report on. We spent Saturday at the Borden's place. Ron and I went to the hardware store and picked up some stuff for the hives. Once we got everything together we headed back to the house and started pulling out all of the wood for the hives. It looked like quite an ominous task before us... there were literally hundreds of pieces of wood that all have to be put together. Once I had convinced Ron that I somewhat knew what the pieces were all for we got to work. We still have a bunch of work left before it is complete, but at least we have a start on it! So far we only have the frames (the part where the bees make the honey) glued, but I think that the rest of the project will go pretty smooth since we have a majority of the pieces glued at this point. If any of you decide to tackle something like this make sure you have ample room in the garage, and ample time on hand if completing the task alone. As for me, I had my son Brighten sorting the pieces and handing them to Ron, and then Ron setting the wood in place for me to glue and then we would assemble them together. We had a regular little sweat shop going! Brighten loved helping out, and he looks forward to the hives being complete so he can check out the bees. Well, that's it! We will be heading down next weekend to get them finished up, and I will keep ya posted on the outcome. Pictures should follow shortly...

THE BEES ARE COMING, THE BEES ARE COMING!!!

So it is coming to a point of reality; the bees have been ordered through a local company http://www.bee-outside.com/ and they are set to arrive April 2nd. This week I will be going in to get all of the supplies and whatnot. We will be starting two hives out at the Borden's place in Aumsville, OR. We are going to do a garden hive style that is supposed to be better as far as ventilation and winter heat retention for the bees. I decided to go with two different breeds of bees to see what the difference between the two would be as far as honey production, temperament, and so forth. Our girls will be Italian and Carniolans. Both of these species is said to be good "beginner" bees. I have not been able to get into a beekeeping class simply due to time constraints. I have been reading up and watching tons of youtube videos  about bees though.
Next weekend I will be heading down to Aumsville with all of our new tools of the trade in hand and ready to get set up. Ron (Grace's Father) and I will be putting the hives together and painting them, which I am sure will be interesting since neither of us has any experience in this stuff. After that we have to find the perfect spot on their property to place the hives. The next step from there will be to just wait for the bees to get here! I will try to get some video when I go to install the bees in their new homes, but it may be hard since Grace is allergic to bees and Ron will be out of the country, so I won't have a cameraman. I think I will try to use a tripod to get as much video as possible. Nothing much more to say right now... I will keep you posted once the plans start to unfold a bit more, and I will add a vid after the package install.