Post by billfosburgh on Apr 29, 2015 23:44:08 GMT -5
my wife & i have been talking about getting bees maybe next year. well a patron at the library she works at came in and asked if he could put a couple hives on our place so she said sure. he said he was gonna split a hive and would give me a split if i got some hives & foundation. my dad had 30 hives when i was young and i helped him so i wasnt really new to bees but it has been 40yrs. ago.
well i remembered about 10 yr. ago a guy brought in a hive of bees across the road from me in the woods & just abandon them & never came back. i saw them last 3 yrs. ago when i was squirrel hunting. after the last 2 brutal winters i figured the had died out but i might go salvage the boxes. well they didnt die, there were 3 hive bodies chuck full of bees. hive stand and bottom board was rotted bad & the boxes were all crooked with big gaps but there were bees. so i took my 2 wheeled cart & walked the whole thing home. put them by my barn & watched them all week. gathered up some wooden ware and that sat. the guy that was gonna put bees here came & we tore into the hive. bottom box was terrible, the frames were rotted out & a big mass of comb. we found the queen in the top box. we decided to split it & make 3 hives since all boxes had a ton of brood. we took the top box with the queen and kept them together. thought we may find some queen cells but didnt so we made 2 more hives out of the other 2 boxes & gave them frames with new brood cells thinking they may make a queen. checked them a week later & 1 hive had 2 frames with queen cells so we took 1 of them and put in the other hive.thru all this there hasnt been 1 sting. they are gentle. i hope all goes well & queens hatch & mate. sure was not ready for my own bees yet but ready or not we got em
man the stuff my wife gets me into
well i remembered about 10 yr. ago a guy brought in a hive of bees across the road from me in the woods & just abandon them & never came back. i saw them last 3 yrs. ago when i was squirrel hunting. after the last 2 brutal winters i figured the had died out but i might go salvage the boxes. well they didnt die, there were 3 hive bodies chuck full of bees. hive stand and bottom board was rotted bad & the boxes were all crooked with big gaps but there were bees. so i took my 2 wheeled cart & walked the whole thing home. put them by my barn & watched them all week. gathered up some wooden ware and that sat. the guy that was gonna put bees here came & we tore into the hive. bottom box was terrible, the frames were rotted out & a big mass of comb. we found the queen in the top box. we decided to split it & make 3 hives since all boxes had a ton of brood. we took the top box with the queen and kept them together. thought we may find some queen cells but didnt so we made 2 more hives out of the other 2 boxes & gave them frames with new brood cells thinking they may make a queen. checked them a week later & 1 hive had 2 frames with queen cells so we took 1 of them and put in the other hive.thru all this there hasnt been 1 sting. they are gentle. i hope all goes well & queens hatch & mate. sure was not ready for my own bees yet but ready or not we got em
man the stuff my wife gets me into
