While I know everyone is doing it, and I've come across some really great blogs on beekeeping I felt like I wanted a place to record my journey into my bee's.
So after many years of procrastination I took the plunge and have started my apiary. I'm beginning with two hives while I'd like to start with more beekeeping was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be. Instead of starting with the standard layout of 2 deeps and mediums for honey supers I've decided to run a bit of an experiment to figure out what works the best for me in my area.
In my first hive I'm running the standard 2 deeps, and will use mediums for honey supers. On this hive I'm also using small cell foundation in the frames, and my honey supers will also have foundation. On the second hive I'm going to use only mediums and for foundation I've got some small cell foundation for the mediums but I'd really like to see how the bee's do without foundation.
On the note of foundation versus no foundation there is so much debate and it doesn't matter who you ask you always wind up with a different answer. Everything I've read said that when you start it's easiest to switch between the different layouts. So I figured do a bit of both and see what works out the best.
I'm also trying to keep in mind the health of my bee's so I figured going a more natural route with small cell foundation and foundation-less should help keep my mites down. I'm also using a screened bottom board for pest management.
I have two outstanding decisions/alterations to figure out in my beekeeping. One is top entrances vs bottom entrances or utilizing both. I've read good things about both and since our weather has been so insane lately I think it will be a good idea to get added to my hives. The other thing I've debated over is frame spacing and using a narrow frame space as recommended by Michael Bush's frame width. This one is a bit more of a pain to implement and may be something that is done next year when I finally get to split a hive.
Tomorrow I finally get to go get my Nuc's two 5 frame nucs. I've been waiting very impatiently for tomorrow to get here so I'll have lots of pictures for tomorrow's post.
To wrap up the majority of my equipment came from a few of the common suppliers:
- Dadant (because they are only a 2 hour drive from me)
- Mann Lake
- Brushy Mountain
- Ultra Breeze Suits (Excellent Bee Suit)
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