Top Bar Hive Inspection- 1wk with the new colony

       One week ago today I installed my first package of bees into my handmade top bar hive, and I am here to tell you that things are going GREAT! Before beginning this adventure I made sure to read all the beekeeping books at my local library, as well as I did a fair amount of Google University studying on the subject.  All my research really got me excited about bees, they are so intelligent and their colony structure is so complex, I knew this was going to become an obsession, and I was correct. It has only been 7 days since I introduced my bees to their new home, and I have thought about them wondering how things were going at least 789,564 times a day, lol. Despite my desire to go look at them frequently, I have refrained. It is advised to not open your hive too much or the bees will begin to get annoyed and either start to sting, or potentially relocate all together, and I certainly do not want that to happen. Also, the timing of when you open the hive needs to be planned as well. Try to open your hive during the day when the workers are out of the hive collecting honey, and choose a day when the weather

is warm and sunny. Opening your hive on a chilly or rainy day will surely only get your bees angry with you. 

        Today was a nice day, mid 70's and sunny, perfect conditions for opening the hive. I had my trusty side kick with me, my dad, and we were really excited to see what we had in the hive. Before heading up to the hive, which is located a good distance from the house and sits nicely near the garden, we dawned our protective gear. Some beekeepers say that they never use any protection and that they have never been stung. My thoughts on that, good for them! Me however, I always air on the side of caution. I am new to beekeeping, and to be honest, the idea of thousands of bees swarming around me in the event I do something to make them angry makes me very anxious, so to prevent me from having any anxiety when approaching the hive, I always will have on my leather gloves with arm shields, and my beekeepers coat with protective hood. I also always where pants and closed shoes. My dad however only heads to the hive wearing his protective hat, and one time his gloves, and 

he prefers to wear shorts. In his words " I'm not afraid of getting stung". So you make your own judgement call based on how comfortable you are around your bees. They can sense the changes in your hormones, and if you are anxious with a lot of adrenaline going, they will pick up on that and potentially feel threatened by that. So unless your cool as a cucumber, suit up! 
      Also before heading to the hive I always grab the smoker. Smoking your bees before opening the hive sends them into survival mode. The scent of burning wood makes the bees think that the woods are on fire, in which case their survival mode tells them to eat as much honey as the can as quickly as they can so that if they have to leave their home they will have food for the journey. So by sending a few puffs of smoke near their entrance it helps to keep the bees on the combs working instead of flying around you inspecting your every move. The only other thing I take up to the hive is a horse hair brush to gently move bees if needed. 
      After we smoked the bees gently for a few minutes, I began opening the hive. I decided to easiest and most non-disturbing way to see what was going on was to remove some top bars from the back section which is still closed off to the bees at the moment. ( from the first blog post you will remember I only gave them 10 top bars of hive to work with. The reason for this is to keep their living space relatively small at first so that they feel it is a safe place and easy to defend. The bigger the hive at first, the more anxious they will feel about having to defend it, so start small. ) After I removed those extra bars, I simply slid the divider back and exposed that glorious comb, as pictured above. We have a total of 5 top bars with comb on them. The combs are around 9 inches wide and roughly 9 inches long at the lowest point. I am so impressed with how much they have accomplished in only 7 days, just amazing. 
     There were a few things we needed to accomplish when opening the hive today, besides just wanting to look at them:) We needed to make sure that the queen was roaming around and had been released from her cage. I was able to see her on the 4th frame deep. She was busy scurrying about. Aside from just visually confirming that she was in there, I also needed to look at the comb to check for signs of larvae, which I was also able to find. There were many cells showing signs of future life, as well as many cells being filled with beautiful amber honey! I'm only a beginner beekeeper, but after comparing my research of what a new hive should be doing to what my hive is doing, I would say were are right on track. After confirming queen and larvae, we closed the hive up pretty quickly so the bees could get back to work without worrying what I was up to.  
       Next weekend I will open the hive again with the goals of checking to see how many top bars have comb on them out of the 10 they have. Right now they have built on 5 of 10 top bars, if next weekend they have built on at least 7 of the ten top bars, I will pull the divider out and give them access to the remaining 12 top bars in the hive. I will also continue to monitor the comb for signs of larvae and keep my eye out for any developing queen cells, which could be a sign of potential trouble ( queen cells are large larvae cells that they make to hang on the outside of the comb, in which they rear new queens. If they are making queen cells it can indicate that my current queen is not producing, or that they are rebelling against her, or worse yet, that they are preparing to swarm and leave behind a new queen and only a few workers...that would be bad.) 
     Thats all for this week...till next time. 

Beginning the Beekeeping Journey

 Maybee Someday...I will be a beekeeper!     

       After weeks of prep work building a hive, and researching all that we could about bees, they finally arrived. Our bees traveled from New York to their new home in Missouri. I was like a kid on Christmas morning waiting in line at the Post Office for my bees, Grinning from ear to ear and probably making an obnoxious amount of little squeals ( which I did uncontrollably, I was not trying to be obnoxious). I nervously inspected my package of bees, and was slightly concerned that many of them were laying on the bottom and were likely dead after the 4 day journey. I sprayed them down with a 1:1 mixture of sugar and water, and within minutes many of the bees that had been on the bottom of the box were now moving around and showing signs of life. Wooohoo. Now that I knew my bees had survived the journey, it was time to get them into their hive. 

      For my first hive I decided to do a top bar hive, which my wonderful husband made for me without a pattern and for under $100, so I am pleased with how easily this hive can be created. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the design, and the fact that it really allowed for the bees to do what they do best, build beautiful combs and make honey. The bees do not need plastic frames of fake comb for them to work from, they know what they are doing, and so I will let them do just that. And by no means am I bashing beekeepers who use box hives or any other style hive, this is just what intrigued me the most. In fact, when we expand our bee population on the farm, we will likely go with a Langswith style hive to allow for greater honey production. 

       The hive is nestled into the corner of our opening for the garden and our sorghum cover crop area along the treeline, and about 100 yards away they have access to the pond. Seems like a pretty good place to be for a bee! We waited for the rain to clear up today, and then dumped the girls in around noon. We had good cloud cover so it wasn't too hot, and the wind was relatively low. My research suggested that a cool day with little wind is the best time to install a package, so we lucked out. We placed the queen 6 top bar frames deep and left them a total of 10 top bars wide to start (The queen cage came with 4 drones inside to help tend to the queen during transit. We pulled the cork on the bottom of the queen cage to expose the candy plug, and soon the girls will eat through that and release their queen, I hope) The remainder of the hive is blocked for now. Its a good idea to keep their initial living space somewhat small so they do not feel overwhelmed defending it. Once they become established and start producing comb, we will pull the divider and place a queen excluder and allow them full range of the hive, which is about 3 feet in total length,, with a total of 25 top bars. 

      The install took about 30 minutes total, including the time to get the hive leveled and smoker set up. Everything went smoothly. My dad was there to help with the install and to snap some pics, I am excited to have his help on this project. My dad can do and make anything, so he is just the right kinda guy to do projects with, plus he is pretty awesome just to be around, so win win.  Now we just have to wait, make sure the feeder stays full and in three days we will check to make sure the queen has been released, and to make sure they have started to build comb.I am really excited to see where the beekeeping journey will take us. Maybee someday we will have some honey and beeswax goods to sell, or just have a kick ass garden from our amazing bees doing what they do best!!!Thank for reading.  #savethebees #newbeekeeper #buildingalegacy #maybeesomeday  

Sincerely,

Julia