My first hive this year, very cool!!

[djuniorfan8]

Hey guys,
My Names Tim Grimstead, I'm in Northeast North Carolina and hived my first colony of Italians. I'm brand new to this, but i've consumed every book they had in my public library on the subject. I first got interested in it from my Great uncle and cousin. They gave me some equipment. Now I have 2 brood boxes full of happy bees and am getting ready for my supers. Thats all guys, i'm sure i'll be asking plenty of info through out the year. Thanx - Tim

[djuniorfan8]

Thanks James, If all goes well i'm planning on 3 to 5 more hives for next year. I'm interested in maybe Carnolians. If anyone has some, tell me what you thank of'm. The wife and kids are pumped about the new hobby. I bet my 5 year old daughter knows more then I do!!

[dickm]

Carniolans,
Love 'em. Fast build up, small economical winter clusters, good mite tolerance, gentle and I think good producers.
Swarmy, I think these queens tend to lay in the supers more, supercedure cells all the time(make me nervous), hard to spot the black queen. I found them a little hard to requeen. I think the breeders have many italian drones (or others) around because I got several different kinds (colors) of bees in the hive.

dickm

[Flewster]

I have 6 hives of Carniolan and 6 Itilian.....by FAR I prefer the Carni.....they are very gentle and are my best workers so far....I got them from Keohen in California and I love them

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You have to stop and smell the roses......but please watch out for my bees.

[djuniorfan8]

Silly question here. How do the bees swarm if the queen has been clipped? (wings are clipped right?) If they seem to want to swarm even after you've added more boxes, couldn't you just split them and buy a second queen for the Now new colony? My Great Uncle says If the seem to want to swarm, get a blanket on the ground. Dump a large portion of the colony out on the blanket, but keeping the queen in the hive on a brood frame. Place the hive a few feet from the now dumped colony and allow them to fly or crawl back in. While their doing this you can scrap any queen cells off the frames. He says this tends to get the swarming idea out of their system. Kinda like an artifical swarm.

[Michael Bush]

>Silly question here. How do the bees swarm if the queen has been clipped? (wings are clipped right?)

First they will try to leave with the clipped queen. She, of course, will end up on the ground and can't fly. They will eventually go back in the hive and she, if she can, will climb back in also. Probably the next day they will try it again. After a two or three days of this one of the virgin swarm queens will leave with a swarm. Even if you destroy all the swarm cells and the queen is clipped, they will sometimes swarm without a queen if they can't get one to go with them.

>If they seem to want to swarm even after you've added more boxes, couldn't you just split them and buy a second queen for the Now new colony?

Why buy a new queen? They already have wonderful capped queen cells?

>My Great Uncle says If the seem to want to swarm, get a blanket on the ground. Dump a large portion of the colony out on the blanket, but keeping the queen in the hive on a brood frame. Place the hive a few feet from the now dumped colony and allow them to fly or crawl back in. While their doing this you can scrap any queen cells off the frames. He says this tends to get the swarming idea out of their system. Kinda like an artifical swarm.

I might work sometimes. I tend to break them up into three or four hives with a swarm cell in each and then in a few weeks, if you don't want that many hives, you can recombine them.