Building my first Beehive!

[red maples]

yes it took me all of a few hours to make...

[red maples]

Don how's the bees doing??? I am up to I think 170lbs of honey and should be over 200lbs by mon. or tues. I took another box of honey off today and I could have taken 1 more but I just ran out of prepped frames!!! Its crazy how fast they are filling up frames with this good mix of rain and sun. looks like the honey is getting darker and stronger now!!! Change in flowers.

[DonMcJr]

Brad- My Packaged Hive has 2 full medium supers and I put a third on 2 weeks ago. I ordered an extractor and it's coming next week!

My other two hives I bought from a local guy that started them this year and he almost died cause he's allergic- one is just starting to store honey and the other is kinda weak but I think I atleast saved it for next year!

[heus]

Since I made 3 splits off of my original hive, I unfortunately wont have any honey for myself this year but thats ok. My goal is to successfully overwinter them and get excess honey next year.

[DonMcJr]

That's cool heus... Here's my latest videos from 8/15/2012...

I went into my two newer hives today. My Buckwheat should be blooming again in a week I plowed it and let it reseed for both the bees and the deer!...

Hive #1- is my 2nd Strongest hive. The drew out most of the 1st Super and started storing honey in it. I added a 2nd Super!



Hive #2 - The Hive that started it all! My package Hive has 2 Supers full of Honey and a 3rd super has been on it for almost 2 weeks now...I didn't go inside because I'm gonna Harvest the Honey in a week...



Hive #3 - is my weakest hive...I was feeding it and they are going big time in the bottom deep but hardly any comb drawn in the top deep. I added a frame of Brood and Eggs from hive #1 (same kinda Queen I think a Minnestoa Hygenic). Hoping for the best.

[red maples]

Awe-some. I think I am gonna invest in a spinner next year. I take off honey as I go through the season. I find when I try to take of too many honey supers at once they REALLY get pissedoff. Had a bit of a bad experience last year so I try to keep them with just one or 2 supers. It works for me. I have alot of frames with comb drawn out so the bees just have to fix and clean up whats there then fill it with honey and I try to only put new frames with just foundation on it in the bigger hives as they tend to draw it our really fast. I have 2 awe-some queen the other hive not so much. In the spring I will see what I have for hives and see how they over winter. I wanna get up to 4 hives for next year. thats why I wanna get a bigger electric spinner probably gonna cost me a grand but it will save me so much time!!! especially when I have multiple honey boxes to extract. I am also gonna try one of the comb honey boxes too. I just do foundation with no wire right now and bought a comb cutter but the plastic cassettes aren't easy to find since they came out with the full box kits. but I wanna try it.

[DonMcJr]

My Extractor comes Wednesday so soon ill have a video of Harvesting my 1 st honey!

I bought the advanced 9 frame radial Extractor from Brushy Mountain...hand crack but you can upgrade it to electric. With everything you need for the extracting process and a fume board, their "pleasant " smelling version or Bee Go and I think I ordered 100 one pound bottles and caps it was only close to $800...I'll let you know how I like it...they have videos on their site and their electric looks pretty nice!

[red maples]

Yes thats were I get Comb honey cassettes. I am still waiting on hte cassettes though actually got a lip balm kit too. so we'll see how that goes...something else to play with. I also made my first candles too came out pretty good!!!