My hives

[backyard warrior]

I have 4 new packages i bought this past spring. I fed them all summer and now i have two full deeps and two medium supers completely filled with bees, brood, pollen, and honey in all the hives. They are all very strong and bearding on the hives. Lots of foraging going on. Not one of my queens that i got this year is the original queen with the package they all where supersueded.  I bought a queen from strachan apairies and im really impressed with the gentleness and the brood pattern. She has a few frames with the whole deep frame filled with brood.  I am hoping that since i havent taken any honey from them that they get threw the winter and boom in the spring so i can do some splits. I really enjoy the beekeeping. I am in the process of building a honey house so i need everything from the extractor to the decapping tank u name it honey pump etc. If you know anyone with equipment forsale let me know. I am looking for a 20 frame extractor at a minimum.  thanks for any help  Chris

[Michael Bach]

You can always keep an eye on craigslist.  That is were I got my uncapping tank and extractor.  I stole the pair for $100.

Your bees sound great.  Have you slipped in IPM boards if you have SBB's?  Make sure mite levels are low.  Even healthy hives can die in winter with mites.

I have 6 hives and 2 of them are carniolans from Strachan and I agree with the quality of the queens and bees.  I bought them as Nucs in June.  When I placed them in a 10 frame deep with 10 frame medium they capped 5 medium frames in a week!

The other hives are Italians and were from packages.  All 4 queens were less than average.  Two were superceded in the first 3 weeks and the other two took 4 weeks to start laying.  I found the queens but they were just walking around without doing anything.  The superceded hives are the strongest by far and the greatest honey producers.  The two package queens have been good as the season went on BUT they are the two hives that I am treating for varroa.  I should have re-queened but time will tell.

Mike