Getting Ready For Winter

Hi Everyone,

I know I haven't posted for a while, but to be honest it has been pretty quiet recently.

The weather is getting colder and the leaves are changing color and the bees are mostly staying in the hive.

There have been a couple of sun breaks and the bees do seem to come out then, but most days the hive is pretty quiet.

I have been feeding periodically to make sure they get enough to eat in preparation for winter.

The yellow jackets have also dwindled considerable, though I still see a few every time I go to look at the hive.

I put on the entrance reducer to keep the drafts out and I also got a couple of corks that I plan to use to plug the vent holes into the hive once it starts to really get cold.

So far it has been a great first season as a beekeeper. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I'm eager to moving the hive to my in-laws place in the winter (they have some land with lots of blackberries and fruit trees).

I'll post again if anything exciting happens.

Hi Everyone,

Well I checked my hive yesterday and sure enough the third box remained empty so I removed it. Specifically I took it off the hive and set it a few feet away, it only took an hour or so for all of the bees in the top box to move back to the main hive.

Here is a photo of a center frame of my second box. I'm worried that there isn't much honey. Wondering if I should feed more.

Yellow Jackets Okay.

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to post an update and let everyone know that my yellow jacket traps are still catching a lot of YJ's, but the number of YJ's bothering the have has dropped considerably.

Here is a photo of the hive currently:

You can see one of the YJ traps that I put near it as well as the strip of red duct tape that I used to close the seam made by the frameholder. The YJ's seemed to be trying to sneak into the hive through that seam.

Yellowjacket Update

Hi Everyone,



I checked the YJ traps last Sunday and the three traps had caught approximately 120 YJ's total.



I emptied them and rebaited them and put them back.



Watching this week it looks like the YJ's are still there but they are generally just cleaning up the dead bees and not coming as close to the hive.

I think now that I have weathered the YJ attack, I can focus on wintering the bees.

My plan is to check them this weekend and then get ready to medicate for the winter.

Yellow Jacket Attack, Part 2 with Photos!

8/22/07



Hi Everyone,



Last night I went out to the hive and the yellow jackets were being pretty aggressive. For the first time I saw the YJ's landing on the side of the hive box and trying to sneak into the gap between boxes made by the frame holder. I managed to get a somewhat blurry shot of that:










Though you can't see it in the photo, I could also see bee heads on the other side pushing back to keep the YJ's out. This concerned me so I put duct tape across the seam.






The actual entrance to the hive looked pretty good still. The bees were guarding the entrance and the vent hole and I didn't see any YJ's even come close to entering the hive:







Here is a shot of the YJ's coming in to check out the hive, I just thought it was a cool shot:







This last shot is a shot of a bee being attacked and eaten by a pack of YJ's. I think those two little dots are the bees eyes:





I put out some more yellow jacket traps, and as I mentioned I duct-taped the seam made by the frame holder. So far I haven't seen a YJ even coming close to entering the hive so hopefully the hive is okay.

Yellow Jacket attack!

8/19/07

Hi Everyone,



Wow, what an interesting weekend. On the advice from several people I made home made yellow jacket traps and put those out on Saturday. Not a single yellow jacket had been caught so far, perhaps my home made trap is not very appealing to the yellow jackets for some reason.



On Sunday the weather was nice so I came out to watch my hive for a while and was amazed. I got to watch the yellow jackets and bees fighting in front of me. I would see things like yellow jackets coming kind of near the hive, then a bee would come out and attack it and they would fall on the ground rolling around as they fought. Sometimes I would see a second and even a third yellow jacket join the fight. I also saw the bees forming a semi-circle in front of the entrance to the hive as a way to protect it better. It was really kind of amazing, but also alarming to see the yellow jackets so aggressively attacking the bees.



I went out and bought one of those commercial yellow jacket traps and in an hour it had already caught 8 yellow jackets. I think I'll pick up a couple more and put them in place as well.

We'll see how that goes.

Robbing or reaping?

This morning I had a little time before I needed to go to work so I decided to walk out and take a peek at the hive and see how the bees were doing. I saw something that I thought was odd, but I'm not sure if I should be concerned.

First some background:
My hive is sitting on a palette which is sitting on cinderblocks which are on the ground.
What I noticed were:

1) Bees sort of walking around on the ground by the hive. I only saw three and they didn't seem to be hurt, they were just kind of walking around.

2) I saw a few yellowjackets zipping around the hive. I watched pretty closely and never saw a yellowjacket enter the hive (or even really come all that close).

3) I think I saw a yellow jacket take off carrying a dead bee that it had found on the ground. I say I think because as I'm sure many of you know, trying to follow an insect in flight with your eyes can be very difficult so I only got a glance.

At first I thought it could be robbing, but when I never saw a yellowjacket entering the hive I thought perhaps that the yellowjackets were just scavening dead bees for food.

I didn't have much time to observe before I needed to head to work so I decided to put on an entrance reducer and I quickly taped pieces of window screen over the vent holes in the boxes.

I posted to the bee board to see if anyone has seen anything like this, and to see if my conclusions sound reasonable.

I am eager to see what people say.

Third box empty?

8/13/07



I checked my hive yesterday and I was hoping to see a third box that was well drawn out with honeycomb. In fact I was hoping that there might have been one frame of honey that I could take and harvest but I was disappointed.


When I opened the hive and checked the top box I saw numerous bees walking around in there, but the frames in the top box looked totally untouched. If seemed like the bees had cleaned the frames up a little but I didn't see even the earliest signs of the foundation being drawn out.


The weather the last few weeks has been spotty and I live in a suburban neighborhood so perhaps there just hasn't been the resources available to draw out the top box.


I posted to the bee exchange board wondering if I should start feeding again. It doesn't really matter if I get a lot of honey this year, but it would be great if I could harvest at least a little to see what the honey in my hive tastest like.

According to the replies on the bee exchange board the empty third box is not unusual. Apparently in this area most of the major nectar flows are over so the bees don't really have the resources for stockpiling, thus the empty box.

One person suggested I remove the third box, so I'm thinking that the next time I check the bees I'll do that. Since I plan to move the hive in the winter anyway it would be much easier to move two boxes instead of three, so that at least is a plus.

I am disappointed that I might not get any honey this year, but I've read that isn't uncommon and hopefully good choices made this year will result in a really good harvest next year.

Oh, and so I don't forget one person recommended I medicate my bees with Fumigil in the fall. I haven't even thought of medications yet.

-Paul

The third box.

Hi Everyone,



Well I put the third box on a while back and I was worried about the queen excluder. Mostly I was worried that the excluder was too small to let the worker bees through. I have been watching my hive over the last couple of weeks, specifically noticing that no bees were using the top box vent hole as an entrance or exit (they use the vent holes for the lower two boxes as entrances/exits constantly).


I was worried that maybe the bees weren't moving into the top box, so I decided that since I had a little more syrup that I had made earlier, that I would put the last of the syrup into the feeder as a way to draw the bees into the top box.


When I checked the feeder I discovered that there were quite a few worker bees walking around in there, so I think that the bees have actually moved into the third box just fine.

I wish I had left more time to actually check the top box, but I had to go, so I just refilled the feeder and closed the hive. This weekend I should have plenty of time and good weather to check the bees again. I am eager to see how the top box is coming along.

I might even check the top two boxes since I am curious to see how the second box is filling out.

So stay tuned, hopefully an update and pictures on Monday.

Research on honey extraction.

Hi Everyone,

Perhaps I'm being too optimisitc, but I've been researching honey extraction techniques in the hope that my hive will produce at least a little surplus honey.

It looks like there are essentially two ways for me to extract honey:

1) The crush and strain method. This is pretty much what it sounds like. You take the honeycomb, crush it up, and put it in a strainer. I found a great video of the process at:

http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/2007/06/honey-harvest-crush-and-strain.html

Pros - Minimal equipment needed, easy to do.

Cons- You have to destroy the honeycomb (some people consider this a pro, since you can use the wax for candles, also some people think that it's more hygienic to use new honeycomb each year).

2) Mechanical extraction. For this you get your hands on a spinning extractor.

Pros - Preserves the honeycomb for next year, very easy and efficient.

Cons - You have to build, buy or borrow an extractor.

I don't want to buy an extractor, not sure I have time to build one, and I've decided to not bother to rent one from my beekeeping club (I think it'll be more fun to have a method where I can do my harvesting whenever).

So that leaves the crush and strain method. Not much in the way of equipment to gather, just a matter of getting the surplus honey. The weather has been great and the bees have been busy, so we'll see how things go.

-Paul

Three Boxes Strong

7/8/07

Hi Everyone,

Well a quick check of the hive yesterday showed my top box to be pretty full of drawn comb. Following the 70% rule I decided to put on a queen excluder and my third box.

I've stopped feeding the bees as the weather has been great so I think they're doing fine on their own. If I don't see much activity in the third box I may put some feed in the top feeder as a way to draw the bees up into the third box.

I also did a quick check of my brood box, and things there are looking pretty good. My frames have larvae again, and I saw no sign of queen cells. My wife was able to get a great shot of one of the brood frames where you can see the white larvae really clearly:

So far so good. Since the weather is getting warmer I have put out a couple of bee watering sources. One is a bucket filled with water and styrofoam peanuts (the idea being that the bees can land on the peanuts and drink the water), the other is a board that I have under a dripping outdoor spigot. So far I haven't seen bees drinking but I'm hoping to see that happening soon.

I'll probably check the hive again in a couple of weeks to see how the top box is doing. Maybe I'll actually get to harvest honey in the next month or so.

No Eggs, and Clumsy Hiving

6/10/07



I checked my hive again yesterday. I wasn't extremely thorough as the weather was looking a little spotty (didn't want to get caught with an open hive in the rain again), but I at least got the chance to check several frames for eggs and larvae. I saw capped brood, but no eggs or larvae. So I'm really starting to think that my hive is queenless.

I think I'll leave it alone for a couple of weeks....hopefully by then a new queen will have hatched, mated and be laying eggs. I think I'll feel better once I see eggs and larvae again.

Also, I've been having some trouble with my hive frames, specifically I'm trying to improve my hive handling technique.

Currently my biggest problem is that the frames have these spacers on them that I'm having trouble with. By spacers I mean these lengths of wood about the size of a pencil. There are two on either end of the frame running from the top of the frame to the bottom. They are just there to make sure you can't take two frames and press them flush against each other (which would of course squish the bees).

The problem I run into is that when I am closing up the hive I have to of course put all of the frames back in. I can only fit all 10 frames in there if the frames are snugly in there (where the spacer for one frame is resting right up against the spacer on the next frame, which is of course the point of a spacer), and I've noticed that sometimes I'll be pushing two frames together and I'll hear this unpleasant ---Crunch-- sound as a bee gets caught between the spacers.

I try to move the frames together slowly, but it seems like the bees don't get the hint and move. Instead they just sit there until they are trapped between the two spacers. According to the advice on bee source if you smoke the bees or blow on them as you slowly press the frames together the bees will scamper out of the way. I'm going to try very hard the next time I open the hive to not squish any bees in the hive.

Maybe this is how my hive ended up queenless in the first place.

Are these queen cells?

June 3, 2007

A very eventful day. I suited up and my wife was standing by with the camera.

The first photo I had taken was of one of my frames. I was concerned by the pattern. Seemed like no eggs or larvae:

On another frame, I blew on the bees a bit to move the bees. Again, not a very good pattern and I saw THIS:

That appears to be a queen cell, front and center on the frame. That really concerned me.

Another frame looked kind of disorganized:

This picture is one of my older frames, it looks more like what I was expecting with a nice patch of capped brood in the center:

Another odd frame, note what might be another queen cell down in the corner:

Yet another queen cell:

A good frame again:

In general I saw lots of capped brood, a little capped honey, and I even saw a bee hatching. However I saw several queen cells and didn't see any eggs or larvae. The eggs are hard to see sometimes, but I would think larvae is usually really easy to spot.

Here are close ups of the queen cells:

I wasn't sure what to make of all this so I went to the exchange on www.beesource.com and asked for help.

The folks on the bee source exchange were (as always) incredibly insightful and generous with their help.

From the many responses I got I generally learned that my situation was one of:

1) My queen was dead, sick, or gone. Possible that she died of natural causes, or maybe my newbie hive handling skills squished her. This theory was supported by the fact that I didn't notice any eggs or larvae and that my younger frames didn't have a very good pattern.

2) The queen is fine but the bees were reacting to the imbalance of age groups in the new hive by creating new queen cells. Essentially the bees think that the queen as failing. According to "Beekeeping for Dummies" this sometimes happens at the six week point and that was exactly the age of my hive.

3) The bees for whatever reason wanted to swarm.

Based on all of this information I decided that if it was option 1, I could either buy a new queen and go through requeening procedures (tricky since I'm still not too good at spotting the queen) or I could let the supersedure go and hope I get a healthy new queen.

If it was option 2 then I could either cut out all of the queen cells or let the queens hatch and supersedure.

If it was option 3 then I could either let the swarm happen or take steps to prevent it.

I decided to wait, and let the bees sort it out. Hopefully I will have a return to normal in a couple of weeks. I'll probably check the hive again in a week and see how things look.

Stay tuned.

Tiger by the tail

May 27, 2007

Hi Everyone,

Another check of the hive yesterday. Population seems to be good, and it's actually getting a little intimidating to see so many bees when I open the hive. When I checked the hive I noticed that the frames were about 75-80 percent filled with honeycomb so I put a second box on.

I also was a little worried to see a couple of what I thought might be queen cells. They were about one third of the way down on one of the outer frames. Two little peanut looking things sprouting out of the honeycomb. They were each about .75 inches long, and I'm really not sure if they were queen cells, and my wife wasn't around to take a picture but I cut them out because I was worried.

I plan on moving the hive out to my in-laws place in the winter (they live on 10 acres) but I wanted the bees close by the first season so that I could watch and learn better. I am hoping that I don't end up with a swarm. I think I'll wait a week and give the hive a thorough check and see if I see more of these cells, and make sure I have a camera handy so that I can take pictures.

Stay tuned.

My First Three Stings

May 20, 2007



Not my best day as a beekeeper. I made a couple of mistakes that ended up being quite memorable.

The first was to open the hive when it was cloudy and overcast. The hive was crowded, which was not a big deal, but the real mistake I made was leaving the hive open when it started raining.

I was almost done checking the hive so I decided to stick it out. The bees didn't enjoy the rain at all.

This wasn't too bad, but the real mistake I made was I didn't check my suit and I think somehow I didn't have my veil properly zipped. I'm checking the hive when I notice that someone is crawling across my cheek and I see a bee on my veil, but it's on the INSIDE of the mesh.

I am proud of the fact that I didn't panic. I closed up the hive, walked a little bit away, and took off my gloves so that I could unzip and remove my veil. Unfortunately there was a bee sitting right on the zipper so when I reached for the zip pull I got a handful of unhappy bee (sting 1). Then I was trying to unzip the zipper, but it's not easy to do as it's a zipper that goes all the way around your neck, so I managed to upset one of the bees that was walking across my neck (sting 2). I finally got the veil off and unzipped my suit and there were probably a half dozen or so bees in there with me. One got me on my ankle as I was removing the suit (sting 3).

I'm actually pretty pleased with the fact that I handled it pretty well, though I wish I knew for sure exactly how I incorrectly attached my veil. From now on I have my wife check me real quick before I go outside to make sure I'm properly done up.

The hive was progressing well, population seemed to be growing and as near as I could tell all looked good.

Population Boom

May 17, 2007

I opened the hive up to fill the feeder and noticed that it seems like the hive is a lot more bustling. It could just be that I caught the hive when a lot of the workers had come in for the night (it was in the early evening) or it could be my imagination, but it seemed like there were a lot more bees in there than before. I hope this is a good sign that the hive is established and getting well populated.

My plan is to check the hive on Sunday and see if they're ready for a second hive box.

Some other highlights:

-As I was pouring the syrup into the feeder bin I saw bees run up and start drinking the syrup straight from the little stream of syrup that came from the pouring.

-As always there were about 50 or so bees on the inside of the lid so I am always careful to set it so that they don't get crushed. When I put the lid back on I did so slowly to make sure I didn't crush any bees and I noticed that as soon as the lid got close to the open hive top the bees all started to meander in the direction of the hive. Perhaps they were following the phermone scent of the hive, but it was kind of cool to see all of the bees suddenly marching in the same direction right into the hive.

Solar Wax Melter

Hi Everyone,

Since I had accumulated little bits of burr comb over the last few weeks I decided it would be fun to build a solar wax melter.

My goal was to have something that could turn a small pile of honeycomb into a nice clean brick using only solar power. I had a secondary goal of having the contraption be cheap, not too big and using as many "around the house" parts as possible.

I based my design on common designs I found on the internet, I mostly had to work on scaling it down since I wanted a much smaller version of what I generally found on the internet.

Here are my trials and tribulations:

Version 1.0 - a black plastic mini paint roller tray that had a hole poked in the paint reservoir part so the wax can leak out. Under the hole is a strainer and a margarine tub to catch the wax and the whole contraption goes into a rubbermaid bin with a sheet of glass over it. I liked the fact that the paint roller tray had a nice slope to it already.

Results: It worked if anything too well. It got so hot that the paint roller tray melted! I came back to a puddle of wax at the bottom of my rubbermaid and a paint roller tray that was so melted it was practically unrecognizable. I went to the hardware store to hopefully buy a tray made of metal or heavier plastic but they didn't make mini paint roller trays in metal, and the full size trays wouldn't fit in my rubbermaid bin and I didn't want to buy a new bin if I didn't have to. So much for my first attempt.

Version 2.0 - instead of the paint roller tray I bought one of those small disposable cookie sheets from the grocery store. I put it in the bin so that it had an incline to it (using a piece of styrofoam to elevate one end of it) and used a nail to poke a drip hole at the bottom of the incline. Same strainer, tub, bin, glass.

Results: Much better, the wax melted beautifully and all of the gunk (larvae, pollen bits, etc.) were left on the tray. The problem was that I think the melting heat was coming from the temperature of the metal sheet, so when the wax dripped out of the pan it cooled quickly so I ended up with an "icicle" of cooled wax coming from the drip hole and a blob sitting in the strainer (it had cooled to the point where nothing came through the strainer). Plus the drip hole seemed almost plugged up by the cooled wax.

Version 3.0 - I removed the strainer entirely (it seemed to be superfluous anyway), and instead of a little drain hole I made a bigger drain slot.

Results: Better still, I got a nice wax melt and the wax flowed into the margarine tub. The only problem was that I think the wax cooled the moment it dripped off of the hot pan so I had a stalagmite of wax sitting in my margarine tub.

Version 4.0 - Instead of a margarine tub I'm using a mini pie pan. I'm hoping that the metal pie pan will hold enough heat so that the wax will cool more slowly and I'll get a nice flat disk of wax. I'm trying it out today (assuming we get some sun).

Results: The best so far, in fact I think this design will work. I got pretty close to a uniform piece of melted wax.

Here are some photos of the "final" design:

You can see the bits of pollen, larvae, and other gunk that was left behind on the tray. The chip clips were so that the piece of glass didn't slide down. I put a piece of wood under that end of the plastic bin to elevate it.

This is the melter with the glass and baking sheet removed. Not much in there, just a piece of styrofoam on on end to keep that end elevated and the mini pie pan that I used to catch the wax.

The wax collected in the pie pan. If I'd had more honey comb I might have gotten a nice disk of wax, but since I don't have much comb I got a half moon of wax instead. The wax is clean and solid, so I would consider this a success.

One Month In

May 14th, 2007

Well the bees have been in for almost a month. They have still only drawn out about 60% of the comb, so I'm going to wait a week before putting another hive box on.

Some things I noticed:

-They use the ventilation hole in the hive almost exclusively. They actual bottom entrance of the hive is pretty much unused to far.

-The newest honeycomb seems to be a slightly different color. The original honeycomb was almost white while this new comb has a yellowish tinge. I hope that I can attribute the new color to the bees gathering more nectar and pollen.

Two weeks in

May 6th, 2007

My first real check of the hive. I got my suit on and my smoker lit and opened the hive.

The first thing that surprised me was honeycomb was being built in the gap inside the feeder and a little was on the inside of the lid. The bees were really busy!

I removed that comb for the burr bucket (removing it carefully to not injure any bees), and then removed the hive top feeder.

Wow, the inside was pretty busy. The first frame I removed was almost entirely empty (I was a little disappointed).

However, as I got closer to the center the frames got considerably heavier and more impressive:









I think that's capped brood in the middle, and even though I tried I never saw the queen.

I then put all the frames back in carefully, put the hive top feeder back in place and closed up the hive. It had been a really fun first look at the hive. It's like a super-cool ant farm.

As I continued to feed the bees I noticed that new comb was often built in the center gap of the feeder. I noticed that if you're new to this like me it was nice to have new comb that I could check for eggs. I figured that if I saw eggs in the new comb it meant the queen was still doing okay.

The next major milestone will be the second hive box.

A few days in

April 19th, 2007

A quick check to make sure the queen had been released (she was) and to see how the hive was doing.

Some highlights (sorry no photos) were:

-Quite a bit of comb had been drawn (I would say as much as two or three frames).

-I actually saw the queen!

-I saw eggs and larvae.

So for this visit to the hive all I did was remove the queen cage and then added the final frame in and then buttoned the hive back up again.

Installing the Bees.

April 16, 2007.
The bees arrived! I was told by the bee supply store that I could pick up my bees anytime so I went down there that same day.
The box of bees was a little bigger than a lunch box and was quite impressive. The box was filled with bees, but I was surprised by how quiet and peaceful they were. Instead of a buzzing box of activity it was just a quiet box with a "beard" of bees sitting inside.

It was a tense car ride home with thousands of bees riding shotgun, and then I installed them that evening.

Here are some photos and my experiences, I won't give detailed instructions as those can be found in various books or web pages, instead I'll focus on what I specifically learned.

The first surprise was that as soon as you open the box the previously quiet bees start buzzing and as soon as possible they run out of the box like a mini stampede. It was a little intense.

The first mistake I made was when I sprayed down the bees with sugar water before installing (to calm them down). I had my glove on so when I sprayed the backsplash went onto my glove so for the whole installation my left hand was a popular place for the bees to hang out. Here is a photo of the bee box right after I opened the box:

The second mistake I made was when I removed the queen cage from the box. I tried to be very careful but I was a little clumsy (thanks to the gloves) so I ended up dropping the cage into the box. I would highly recommend a pair of pliers next time.

Here are a couple of photos of me trying to get the cage out of the box:

Reaching into the box just resulted in a glove covered with angry bees (once again some pliers or tongs would have been nice).

I ended up having to dump the box over and shake out the queen cage:



With the queen cage finally in hand I proceeded to put the cage in the hive. I knew that you need to hang her so that the other bees can get to the screened part of the cage to feed her. I had to fiddle with it a little to get her in their properly. Next time I would definitely ask at the bee supply store for an example cage so that you know what you're dealing with. Once I saw the cage I realized I could have hung the cage easily by having a bit of wire handy, but since I didn't know that ahead of time I had to sort of hack it together.

The other surprise was that I had read that the cage hole would be blocked with a bit of bee candy. Not sure if it was a mistake or if there was some other reason but there was no candy in my cage. I pulled the cork out and the queen made a break for it. Luckily I had read that if the candy falls out you can use a mini marshmallow, and luckily we had some on hand so I sent my wife to fetch one for me while I kept the cage hold plugged with my finger. Definitely ask your bee supplier details about the queen cage to avoid these hassles.

Here is the picture of me putting the queen cage between the frames:





Once the queen was in it was just a matter of shaking the bees into the hive. This actually worked pretty well, though you ended up with a lot of flying buzzing bees. Again, pretty intense.

The only additional things that I learned was I left the bee box outside the hive entrance figuring that any straggler bees would move into the hive eventually. Instead the next day I saw a small clumb of bees in the package box clumped where the queen cage used to be. A quick posting to the Bee Source Exchange told me that the bees were probably sensing the residual phermones from the queen and were getting confused. One person suggested that when you shake the bees out into the hive to really do a thorough job of it and to then move the box far away so that the bees can't get to it. I just took the box the next day and shook the rest of the bees out into the hive and then took the package box away and it seemed to work fine.

At that point it was just a matter of feeding and waiting.

How I got started.

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to my beekeeping post documenting my trials and tribulations as a first year beekeeper.

To start off I wanted to describe how I got into this.

About one year ago I was at a Farmer's Market and started talking to this guy who had a booth selling honey. Talking with him sparked an interest I'd always had in beekeeping so I contacted a local beekeepers club.

Conveniently the club was having a bee day where they met at a beekeepers place and worked many hives. I borrowed a bee veil and went out there and was fascinated by the experience of keeping a bee hive. Since it was too late in the year to start my own hive I spent the year reading up on beekeeping and accumulating equipment and going to the beekeeper club meetings.

A few things I learned:

Definitely check around for used equipment. I found a guy who was getting out of the hobby and he sold me all of the equipment I needed for very cheap.

Definitely spend some time reading. I bought and read "Beekeeping for Dummies" which I still refer to frequently.

Definitely find a peer group. I really enjoyed the beekeeping club, or if you can't find one I would suggest an online forum (I really like "The Exchange" at www.beesource.com). I use both my beekeeping club and the online forum all the time for questions. People are friendly, helpful, and have a lot of good experience you can draw on.

I decided to start a bee hive from scratch with packaged bees. I had all of the equipment set up and ready, so I just ordered my bees and waiting for them to arrive.

Next post, the actual installation.