For some reason I thought that the queen needed to be related to her bees and started out with bees from her mother's hive.
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Have you named them all yet?
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Intrigued...I like the "bee words" like "apiary"...I'm simple like that...Serious question: Is "honey" the point?...I like honey...and cake...
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Does the colony/hive eventually grow or outgrow their home?
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Kudos, Vin. This is a fascinating thread!
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Vin,
Very cool, best of luck. When you expect to have a surplus of honey?
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I'll keep reading this thread so long as the puns keep coming :-)
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Honestly, Grace & I were just looking for a low key hobby. Honey bees have always seemed interesting to me. The dynamic of the hive is fascinating. Add to it that it's an environmentally friendly endeavor. Honey bees are responsible for pollinating something like 70% of our food, and the bees are dying off for some reason. No more bees = way less food. If I can't have proper breakfast due to food shortages, you know that's going to be an issue, so I'm doing my very small part. The honey comes third. I'm actually most apprehensive about that piece of it. A healthy hive in ideal weather conditions can produce 120+ lbs of honey in a season. For perspective, a twelve ounce water bottle holds about a pound of honey. I don't have a strong desire to fill nearly a gross of bottles then figure out what the hell to do with them all. (On the plus side, honey does not go bad. It will crystallize when cold, but returns to it's gooey goodness when warmed.) In my reading, I came across a passage indicating people don't leave the hobby because of the bees, they leave because of the honey. So the short answer to your question, "is honey the point?" - I'd say no, at least for now.

The hive definitely grows! I started with about 10,00 bees. (Actually 9,874 but I think I miscounted a few.) It takes 21 days to produce new worker bees, and the amount of hive growth depends on a number of factors: supply of resources - nectar, pollen, water and is there room to grow? If we have a poor spring (wet/cold) and flowers bloom late, the hive won't grow as quickly. But if resources are in abundance, the colony will grow in size. If I'm doing things correctly, I'll be monitoring this and adding a second box of frames to accommodate the growth. A typical two-box hive ultimately supports 40,000 - 50,000 bees. And if they continue to grow the colony, that's when you can potentially have them swarm; not in a horror movie kind of way, but literally the queen takes half the colony and swarms out to find new digs. The other half of the colony remains behind, and having lost their queen, the workers create a new one.


With a brand new hive, it wouldn't be uncommon not to get much honey this year because the bees need to draw out all the comb for the new hive and fill their stores first. If we have a nice spring and a temperate summer, maybe we could see some excess late in the summer, but the key for us is making sure the bees are well stocked and fortified with a strong, healthy hive heading into the late fall because it's not unusual for beekeepers to lose 50% of their hives over the winter. That's fine, I guess, if you have 10+ hives. I just have one, so the bees eat first -- I can wait on the honey.



I am brand new to this and really just parroting back what I THINK know from the reading & research I've done as well as the 7-week bee class I attended. Yesterday was my first time do any of the stuff you see in the photos. Again, I THINK I'm doing things correctly, but if there are seasoned beekeepers here, it would be cool to hear from them.
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You should just bring the hive inside for the winter so you don't lose 50%. :-)
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Holy crap Vin, that is all very cool! What are you going to name you honey farm and can we look forward to some of your honey in an upcoming troop support auction? :-)
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This link takes you to a short video of how the bees get into the hive. If you have the sound on, you'll here Grace say:

"There Go the Bees!"
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Very cool!
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Great video, yet all I can picture is Tom running toward the woods in a sleeveless shirt and flip flops. :-)


A stream or body of water Tom, look for a stream or body of water!!!!
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https://youtu.be/mUR14_ry1Zo

They're ripping my flesh off! Your firearms are useless against them!
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Working title is "V'zzz & G'zzz Bees" :-)

My daughter's boyfriend is working on a logo
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don't know if I want any Gizzz bees
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Better than Bee gizzz
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Right away I pictured a muscular bee, with a cigar in the corner of his mouth, facing 3/4s, flexing with a tat for Grace and your family on the bicep... funny i can actually picture it heh
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:-) :-)
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Or I could just herf wearing Vin's hood and gloves. :-)
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