Hello from the Binghamton, NY area!

[Qortni]

Hello, fellow beekeepers!

I just wanted to make a little introduction here:
My name is Qortni, and my husband and I were inspired by his cousin to start beekeeping. We're into our second whole month of keeping bees and have been really, really excited to soak up the vast amounts of information about these fascinating little creatures. We're located in upstate New York, in the countryside near Binghamton. We purchased our packaged bees thru the neighbor of my husband's cousin who lived in Maryland at the time. They got started in my husband's cousin's hive in early spring, and we moved the bees from Maryland to New York - hive and all. So, ours got an early start compared to the rest of this area.

Our set-up consists (so far) of two hive bodies, one honey super, and a wooden top feeder with wooden bar floats. Our bees have been SO busy and expanding SO rapidly, that we went out and bought some extra frames/foundation for our deeps, and a second super with frames/foundation. We've been doing inspections about once a week. Since it's been unusually hot for the past week, we've been shading the set-up with a piece of thick drywall, have the top propped open, and took away the entrance reducer away altogether. You can imagine our panic the first time we saw them bearding in the evening! It looked sort of like a swarm, but we hadn't seen any swarm cells during our inspections. After a few minutes of reading bee forums, we were relieved to find they were just "hanging out on the porch!"

Just the other day we read about "washboarding" and coincidentally, when we went out to check on the hive, there they were, rocking back and forth!

My husband has some awesome bee mojo and is very calm around them, altho he's been stung 4 times so far. I have less-than-spectacular bee mojo, but I've only been stung once. I'm a little nervous around them, but I'm working on that. I don my bee-veil and gloves whenever we work them, but I'm not very afraid to get close to observe them. My husband goes out barefoot, in shorts, short sleeves, and only wears a veil when they're getting testy. We didn't use a smoker at first, but after seeing another local beekeeper making modest use of his, and seeing how the bees react, we decided to start using one, too. We don't use much smoke, but it's nice to have handy. Especially when the girls start headbutting us!

We look forward to learning from - and interacting with - other beekeepers on this forum - and we've already signed up for a local beekeeping picnic!
Cheers!
~ Qortni.

[Riggs]

Welcome!

[Francus]

Welcome!

And gettting the right amount of smoke is a skill I am still learning :)

[AllenF]

Welcome to the forum.

[annette]

Welcome Qortni to the forum. I used to live in Binghamton, New York, but that was many, many years ago. Very pretty place to live.

Have fun with your new adventure and post any questions you may have because you will get lots of help here. I started beekeeping in 2006 all by myself without any help except what I read in books. After doing this for 2 years, I finally found this forum and have really learned so much.

Stay in touch
Annette

[mikecva]

Welcome to the forum.   :cheer:

Ask any question you like. We are here to help each other care for our bees.

You might need to watch out for those of us who are not sewn together right or have been testing our own meed. :cheer: :buttkick:

Might I suggest you keep a journal, if you are not already doing that. It will help you more next year in adjustiog your care.  -Mike

[Qortni]

Thanks so much for the warm welcome, guys and gals!

Annette - Yes! A very beautiful area indeed. And the people are rather friendly, too!

mikecva - Oh yes, I forgot to mention we do keep a "journal" of sorts on the computer. I think it will be a big help in the future, as long as we can remember to update it, hehe

Cheers, everyone!