Wow!  Excellent productive day!  

Making me gaze longingly toward my little building full of woodenware.

Welcome to beekeeping!  Keep us updated on your progress.

On the last page, Medicmandan posted photos of his hive. They were too small to get detail, so I'm hosting them on Fototime and posting them here so y'all can see and help him make decisions.

He had some questions in his original post

Here are the larger photos of Medicmandan's hive:























If you need a bigger view of anything, let me know. I resized the pics a little smaller to save bandwidth.

Thank you.

Those 6-12 bees were the only ones in the cells.  There was plenty of honey in both boxes.  Maybe a cold snap prevented them from moving to it?

The lack of dead bees is still puzzling me.  If they starved, where did the rest go?

I though that might be nosema as well but it is only in that one spot.  The pics I have seen show it more widespread throughout the box.

We did a count in September and he said it was low enough I wouldn't need to treat.  We also had a very warm fall.  It didn't drop below 50 until mid-November so maybe that contributed to a growing mite population.  I will be sure to treat this year.  I'm ordering a vaporizer off of ebay and will treat with oxalic acid.

Someone else mentioned I should switch to a screened bottom board.  I bought from a local bee supply place and they recommended the solid bottom board.  There seem to be as many opinions on setups and processes as there are beekeepers.

Lessons learned for this year.  I will be more aggressive with mite treatments.  I have found a few better ways to insulate the hive as well.  Hopefully with the drawn foundation and honey/pollen stores I can provide the new package they will get off to a strong start.

Everybody's bees doing okay?

We've had a severe cold snap here.  Down to 18 at night, and that's after a very warm middle-to-end of last month.

Yo yo is normal for us in Kentucky, but that's a hard freeze after most people's bees (around here) have likely started brood production.

For me, treatment free means no treatment with common pesticides like mite strips that so regularly got put into hives and left for a year (against usage directions, I should say right here, for sake of beginners, and which are a significant part of the survivability issues we are having right now I believe.)  I do consider OA a "treatment."

I do not consider powdered sugar to be a treatment.

I do not consider the dead ancestors (or the not-dead ancestors) of the honey-producing bees to be a factor in whether my "current" bees are treatment free or not, *technically."  However those ancestors do play a role, and here's why:

I think you cannot please these people, because mostly they don't know what they're asking for.

*I* however believe I do know what they're asking for.  They're asking for bees that can survive without treatment because they HAVE survived to this point without treatment.  Those people are not going to get that.  At least not right away, because not enough established beekeepers have been taking the treatment free route.

I have friends who have successful, long-running apiaries which have been completely treatment-free for more than ten years now.

My most successful friend at this "treatment free" thing  went into it knowing he would take his losses, and selecting for the genetics that could survive without the treatment.  His attitude is "if they can't survive, then they don't fit my program."

It has worked for him.  He's been smart and done it carefully and managed his bees intensively and well.  He built slowly, with genetics that could survive, which is more in line with the way nature would have selected the bees, and to me, this is the only truly treatment free methodology.  

It is also our only hope for the long-term future IMO, because when you look at the bigger picture, nothing else makes any logical sense.  There is nothing else presently available that we KNOW is truly sustainable over the long term.  kind of like bringing in an appealing new species and spreading the seed all over seemed like such a good idea, and now we will be fighting Kudzu and Johnsongrass and their ilk  for the rest of our lives, and we may well lose biologically important habitat because of it.

Do I believe the planet is adaptable?  

Yes. I do. It's part of my fundamental belief system.  Do I believe the mindsets of most current day methodologies is short-sighted?  Yes. I do. And I believe we may pay for that down the road.

But back to the no-treatment thing.... most beekeepers are not willing to go through that, take those losses and be in it for the long-term survival of bees and beekeeping.

I won't either,when I get my next bees.  I'll try to walk the best line I can between avoiding the big bad chemicals that we already know build resistant pests, and keeping my bees alive.

Wow, this turned into a rant, and I didn't mean for it to.

Basically the "I want treatment free bees" people...I don't think they know what they are asking for, and even if they did, it's not out there.  Not enough of it, anyhow.

Good advice, and Hanz, it is VERY hard to see Varroa on your bees.  Yes, sometimes I'll catch a glimpse of a mite.  But the count will cost you very little, and I would do that.  Whether you decide to treat or not, knowing the condition of your bees is of great value to you.

That was my buddy's take on it--the one who doesn't treat.  Said he was losing same number of bees whether he treated or not, and decided to go for no treatments.  For anyone who has thousands of hives and is feeding a lot of families with that business, the decision would be much harder.

I can certainly say I'd like to not ingest pesticides along with my honey, but honestly that's not my main reason for interest in hygenic bees and genetics that can better withstand mites and disease.  My interest is more esoteric.  It's about the viability of bee populations in a world where we're breeding immune viruses, bacteria and bugs.

That's great to hear!   Good news for your planning last fall.

 I'm sorry.  It is really hard to look in there and see them all that way, knowing they were just trying to survive.

Well, some big boxes arrived this past weekend.


So I unpacked them.



(and yes, I know the bottom is not on the bottom)

My nuc is coming from Georgia the morning of April 14th.

I'm getting the hive in place this coming weekend, and will be ready to go.

I'm a bit nervous about it. This is new territory for me.

Congratulations!  

Let me just say, at this point, from all descriptions you have a relatively small, and very gentle hive.

That's a good thing.

However when you open a big, active hive, there can be 30-60,000 bees flying around your head and body like a buzzing cyclone.  It's intimidating as all hell.

If I had not gone to the bee yards of my mentors a few times and suited up and "helped" them work their bees, I would have been freaking out a little when the time came to install my own package.

The number of flying bees (and angry bees) is always low when installing a package.  But for a first timer, that can still seem pretty damn intense.

@Fish223  Just move slow and remember..they can't get to you...and focus on the objective.

You can hold them for a few days and feed in the packages (I mean hold them in a temperature controlled environment like an insulated building or garage)  but of course that means losses.  What is your long-range forecast looking like?