[countrydirt]

Good morning all. I am so happy to find this place. I'm an old forum user and find places like reddit to be maddening.

Anyway, I am just getting started with bee keeping. I hived up my first package of bees on Saturday and spent the day Sunday helping my mentor make up 12-14 splits for nucs later in May. I'm a high school agriculture teacher on the extreme backside of my career (5 years to go, but who's counting?) and really like the thought of learning enough to teach my students about the importance of bees - I believe agriculture in pretty well dependent upon pollinators, so it's not really a reach. Quite a few of my students' families already have bees with one family up in the commercial realm of thousands of colonies scattered around the area.

 

[Gray Goose]

Welcome Troy,

Hope you find enlightening details here sprinkled about.
Ask the mentor Why as often as How.

good luck

GG

 

[WaverlyBees]

Welcome aboard, Troy.

 

[Litsinger]

Welcome to Beesource, Troy.

I imagine with your agriculture background and wise decision to work with an experienced mentor you will be well on your way to succeeding in apiculture.

I will look forward to reading about how your year develops and your contributions to the forum.

Best of luck to you this year.

Russ

 

[countrydirt]

Thanks for the welcome. I did a pretty thorough inspection today and saw plenty of eggs, larvae developing and some capped brood (I think) We were pretty excited to see the queen today and everybody looked vigorous. Today was the first day my wife has spent any time around the bees other than sitting in a chair by the hive and watching them come and go, so it was fun to get her involved as well. I'll be picking up a nuc this week from my mentor and will be interested to compare the local raised nuc with the package shipped in from somewhere else. We have a couple of mulberry trees getting ready to bloom as well as some other ornamental trees ready to start flowering as well. We planted quite a few flowers - lavendar, salvia, etc, for some long term pollinator actions, but it may be a while before we see much flowering action there. But, the alfalfa field across the road and the one behind the neighborhood will be blooming soon, so I hope I can stop feeding 1:1.

 

[countrydirt]

I'm waiting for it to warm up today to install a nuc I helped my mentor build several weeks ago. He said the colony looked very healthy and the queen was going gangbusters. Its been a cool and misty morning, so waiting for the sun to break through and warm up to at least 60 before I put them in the hive. I have the frame feeder ready to go and about half a gallon of 1:1 ready to go. My package hive took right to the frame feeder I put in yesterday (previous to that I had an entrance feeder inside of a medium box on top of the deep) I got tired of filling the pint jar every day, so this ought to help.