Another intro.

[K. Szegi]

Hi all! Another new bee addict here. Have been lurking in the background and soaking up all the great information since starting with the bees this spring. Finally decided I just had to say Hi and Thanks for all the great stuff on the forum. Started with 2 nucs in March, another 2 in April. The girls went gung-ho - or at least I think they did - and am now up to 7 hives and ready to make another! And this they managed to do with my green horn interference and errors! :rolleyes: Should actually be up to over 9 hives now but couldn't give up on a problem hive of laying workers. Could've probably made at least three more splits with all the frames I've thrown at them trying to get a new queen in it. Ah well, live and learn and finally took some advice seen here and dumped the bees yesterday. The other six hives are all strong - story and half plus a full honey super ....... and am thinking with our mild winters that I will be able to make splits at least once more this year. Does that sound feasible or am I asking for trouble?

[Jeffzhear]

Welcome K and enjoy. As for making an new split this time of year. I just made up NUCS here in both PA and NY this past few weeks. If that is any indication, I would think you could. Hoping someone from down in your neck of the woods chimes in!

[tecumseh]

typically in most areas of the country you can effectively make increases as long as you have drones in the hive and are not in a dearth (feeding of course should allow you to make increase even in a dearth). I would assume??? at this time of year (at your location) there is not much going on in the way of bloom or hive activity????

the other part of you question that would require more information is how are you producing/acquiring queens?

[K. Szegi]

Thanks for the welcome and the input!

I was assuming that we'd be in a dearth around here right now too but the bees are telling me different. We have a considerable amount of ligustrum and bottlebrush here on the property .... not sure what else would be around. Loads of pollen coming in to all the hives and they're all still drawing and filling comb with nectar .... and the queens are all still laying like mad things ... and nobody is hitting any of their food stores and I haven't had to feed. So..... guess dearth is not an issue yet.

As for how I've been acquiring my new queens ..... have been letting the bees do their thing. Used a pretty mature cell out of my hive #1 to start the most recent split (that hive had just replaced a failing queen - actually saw what I believe was a brand new hatched queen piping when I took some frames out of it) and have also just moved frames with fresh eggs into the split and let them make their own cell and hatch it out. Beginners luck I guess, both ways worked very well. Or at least worked well for everything but the laying worker hive ..... :mad:

So, as far as additional increases yet this year I would like to avoid buying new queens. Its not the money issue so much as my happiness with the stock that I have. They seem to be friendly (I've only been stung twice and that was during miserable weather ..... though I will say the carnies seem to have it out for my husband :D), good work ethic, showing hygienic behavior etc ...... if it ain't broke don't fix it kinda thing?!