Hello from Millbeezhoney

[millbeezhoney]

FIRST , i am asking everyone to please forgive my grahmer as i didnt have much schoolin and not real handy with this computer stuff but learnin.and am disabled/challenged with osteo arthritis,degenerative disc disease and maybe lupus and take a lot of pain meds, so my typing wont allways be very good, clumsilly typing with one finger and slow going,

am aproaching my 4th season beekeeping. i know that i have several dead hive again this year. yesterrday it was sunny and 41 degrees out and the russian bees was out flying in the snow, looked pretty neat, i imagine they were cleaning out the dead bees but, a vigorous hive, i noticed last year, when it was realy hot in the evenings that the italians were all resting on the porch while the russians were still hard at it, just seams like they work more and handle the weather better.
i have 16 hives, and guessing at least half are dead, some of the dead colonies were pretty week and low population,light weifgt, i tried feeding them but it just wasnt enough, i have a 5/8ths hole drilled in the tops super for ventalation just above the handle, inner covers, i had no mentors , other trhan helping a cripple beekeeper when i was a kid, but was to young to realy learn much, so, with a little luck, and some friends like ya,ll, am hoping to get all 16 back into production this year, i bought a book about queen rearing and a cloak board and misc stuff, am going to try my hand at grafting but thinking id still be better off purchasing queens again this year untill i know i can successfully graft them, just cannot afford to gamble. so the goal is to get some population going before the honey flow.
my goal is either 200 hives, in which i only have come to expect a 50% servival rate so if i can keep at least 100 hivesalive, it could bee enough income to bee self supportive, looks like tons n tons of great info in these pages that i wished i had at the start, thankyou folks in advance for putting up with me..

[jrbbees]

Good to have you.
Yes, it sound like you find it better to buy queens this year.
But you should be aware of the thread done by oldtimer about a way yo raise queens. You want to wait and do this after you have afew hives that are strong enough to produce drones for mating.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249478

Good luck

[Bsweet]

Welcome and glad to have you here. I thought this forum was about beekeeping not spelling and grammer so don't you worry about it. Ask away, learn with the rest of us and toss in your knowledge when ever. Jim

[Specialkayme]

Welcome to the site!

[millbeezhoney]

see there, i feels welcomed allready.
the first year i started with two italian hives, pckgs, one of them realy bolted, best hive to date, this is the queens 4th year, that is, if she hadnt replaced herself, i try not to monkey with that hive to much, i look for capped brood pattern, swap the two deeps and clean/scrape off the bottom board, i took a few frames frm that hive last year and made a few starts, but i think i screwed up and did this to late in the season, resulting in death, but, this helps me leaern, thou it breaks my heart, then last year i bought 10 3 pounders, with russian hybreds, those still look pretty good but am sure some have die d, id realy like to avoid all medications, but from the dvd i watched, thinking that with packages, and importing any kind of disease, i elected to treat the packages only, then if they servive after that, they should be good to go, my secondf year, i ordered 5 italian pakges, and ended up parting with two of them for my brother, all his bees died, i ended up with one of three that lived, that one that lived is pretty amazing hive too, but for italiand, they are pretty agressive, when we swapped the top n bottom box and scraped the bottom boards last spring, this hivve, the 2nd servivor hive, it had a full box of bees, and in both deep supers, while my first hive only had about a coffee can full, am thinking that hive 1 and 2, would be my best mother hives, if these russians pull through, there should be plenty of drones. after all the failed packages, i have decided that id best to produce 100% of my own stock, hoping for a great season.

[AmericasBeekeeper]

Welcome, I admire your determination!

[Mtn. Bee]

Welcome!

[dragonfly]

Millbeezhoney- welcome to Beesource.

[millbeezhoney]

thank ya'll for the warm welcome, i can surely see that im still a beginner, i went out yesterday, illinois, above 50, sunny, pulled the lids off of them all to get a death toll and see what was alive and how well, ended up pretty heart broken, but am getting used to finding dead bees, out of the 16, i have only 7 left, my hive#2 dead, that was one of the better ones, kind of agressive but, whatyado.so im back here to stay, got a lot a learnin to do in a short time, am going to post my questions in other places on the forums. wishinng everyone success