Sunday, May 9, 2010

Installing Bees




Apivia -- [ey-pi-vahy-uh, ey-pi-vee-uh] n. "Bee road" -- my journey with beekeeping.

Thus begins the record of my beekeeping adventure.

No, I'm not going to write like that all the time, but it seemed like an appropriate cliche to throw in the start of a new beekeeping blog (as if there aren't enough of them out there already).

I installed 2x 3-lb packages with Minnesota Hygienic queens. My wife immediately named them Meg and Jo, inadvertently giving me permission for at least 4 hives (I wonder how many characters are mentioned in Little Women...).

Meg's queen started laying right away, but I suspect Jo's queen flew away during the installation, and I had to introduce a new Hygienic queen a couple weeks later. All is well as last Sunday (May 9) when I inspected the hives, Meg had 7 frames with capped brood, and Jo had at least one frame with dozens of new eggs. Meg is significantly ahead of Jo, but they're both starting to draw out foundation in their second brood box so they're well on their way to making me some honey by Fall!

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