Introduction

While most of the activity on this blog will be routine journal posts and record keeping of my family's hobby apiary, I thought it would be a good to give some background to anyone else who stumbles across this blog.

For many years, my mother, my sister, and myself have been interested in raising bees. We had read books, gotten some equipment, and my sister had even attended a class. But, we never managed to bite the bullet and actually order some bees in all that time.

Last Fall, the State of Vermont made a grant program to encourage first time bee keepers. The news reached me via a Twitter post on the State's Twitter feed. After a quick phone call to my family, we had decided to try to take advantage of it and take the plunge. So, a few moments later I had sent off our application and, some time later, we found out that we were selected to participate in the program.

I then took a introduction to bee keeping class, it was required by the grant and no doubt a good idea anyways, with Bill Mares and Russ Aceto. It was informative, but I felt that the information would not sink in until I was actually working with the bees.

In early February, we placed our order for two 'nucs' with Carniolan queens. While waiting we had to prepare to receive our royal guests in May.

The site of the hives had already been decided as a old cellar hole next to my parent's house. It had the advantage of being protected on the North and West sides by the former walls of the cellar, but open on the East and South. The reason to site it at my parent's house rather than at either my sister's or my own was that my sister's is surrounded by forest and would likely have trouble with bears and I lived in the middle of of a city and it seemed wise not to experiment with bees near so many people.

We had to make a decision whether to buy all new equipment or make use of the used equipment (several hive bodies and shallow supers) that my mother and sister had stumbled across. In the end, we decided to use the used equipment to keep our costs down. Hopefully that decision wont sting us later *crosses fingers*. My mother and I also made trip to a supplier in Roxbury, Vermont to pick up the frames, foundation, suit, and other equipment we would need immediately when the nucs arrived. Additional frames, foundation, and supers would be picked up when I got the bees from Better Bee.

In late April, I noticed on the Better Bee website that they had posted a warning that due to adverse weather in the South, bee orders might be delayed. So, I told my family that the bees would likely not be coming early May as expected. However, in the evening of Friday, May 14th I got a call that there were two nucs with my name on them if I wanted to pick them up the next morning between 6:30 and 7:30 at Better Bee in Greenwich, NY. I hesitated for a moment since the timing was awkward, but since I had no guarantee that the next time would not be in the middle of the week I decided to go for it. So, I made the 2.5 hour trip down, got the bees and also managed to forget to actually pick up the remaining equipment that we needed, and drove the 3 hours back to my parent's place. Aftersome scrambling, the bees were made welcome to their new homes.

The next weekend I checked up on them and gave them a confectionary sugar dusting. More to test out the process than anything else. I then made contact with a beekeeper near my parent's who was willing to be a mentor. He also sugested that I plan on adding the second hive body to each hive as soon as possible. So, the weekend after that I added the additional hive bodies. One was a patched body, the other was a home made one that will likely be replaced when I can get more bodies, they were on back order. The bees had not expanded much beyond half of the combs in the first hive bodies, but since the season seemed to be getting off to a fast start (it had been a very warm May) and my wife and I would be out of state the next weekend, I decided it was best not to risk the bees swarming by not adding the new hive bodies.

The out of state trip that my wife and I took allowed us to stop at Better Bee, where I picked up most of the remaining items that we needed.

As I write this I am planning on visiting the bees this weekend as I visit my mother for her Birth Day. I suspect that the bees might be sullen as it is supposed to be a showery weekend.

In the future I will post my hive maintenance notes as work with the bees, as well as back post my notes from my earlier visits that I mentioned above.

I also hope that my co-apiarists will post as well in order to facilitate and document our communications regarding the hives.