Queen finding

biggraham610 · July 05, 2015, 12:36:25 PM

Eric, are they built up enough to split? Then you could do a study. I'm like 10 framer, hate to waste a good queen, like you said, locals are the best in My opinion, but if she overwintered successfully, you would have her to breed out daughters to feral stock for a little diversity. If she didnt overwinter, you really just lost a couple frames of bees. Of course if the mother hive isn't strong enough to split, this is a moot point. . G

biggraham610 · July 05, 2015, 12:37:25 PM

You are quick 10 framer!! I was typing too slow. I agree. G

Eric Bosworth · July 06, 2015, 06:56:54 PM

I was actually planning that. I was thinking I would try Michael Palmer's overwinter nucs approach.

biggraham610 · July 07, 2015, 12:11:11 AM

I overwintered some singles last year that easily could have been compressed into nucs. We had a long cold winter for our climate, and they came thru fine. I am splitting, and making up some nucs with mated queens, and some with cells after the flow is over to get my hive count closer to my target. I dont foresee any problem here overwintering nucs, Michael Palmer has a great program. Also his climate is similar to yours. I think his lessons will serve you well. G

Eric Bosworth · July 07, 2015, 08:40:51 AM

Michael Palmer's climate is very similar if anything it is worse than here. He is a little further north.

Michael Bush · July 07, 2015, 08:43:23 AM

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesobservationhives.htm

Eric Bosworth · July 07, 2015, 08:52:58 AM

Quote from: Michael Bush on July 07, 2015, 08:43:23 AM
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesobservationhives.htm

I just need to convince my wife to let me have it in the living room...

Football928 · July 07, 2015, 10:42:40 AM

Quote from: Eric Bosworth on June 30, 2015, 03:24:50 PM
Quote from: sawdstmakr on June 30, 2015, 12:51:45 PM
Eric,
I had the same problem with my wife when I started building my observation hive. I kept hearing, "that's not going in my house"
make it look good, like a nice piece of furniture.
I first put it on the table at our farm house, with bees in it, for a big party we used to have every year. Again I heard the familiar phrase... On the way home from the farm, she asked where I wanted to put it. I put it on our closed in patio.
It was not long before she decided it was her hive. She takes every first time visitor out there to show it off. It is a great conversation piece.
She also started helping me work on the OH and now quite often helps me with my regular hives.
Don't give up.
Jim
Do you have pictures of yours? How many frames is it? I am trying to decide what I want when I build one. I know I only want one frame deep. From there however I am a bit fuzzy. I want it to be easy to take outside to work on it but I still want it big enough to be a decent size hive. I am figuring at least 4 frames. What I started building was 2'X4' (that was the size plexiglas I had.) I figuring I would use the extra space on the side to build some type of feeder. I will have to read your comment to my wife. Right now probably isn't the best time because she is pretty mad at me at the moment. I was thinking I could make a clock that would be on the outer cover so that it wouldn't look like a bee hive in the living room. Still trying to figure out the hinge issue however. If I had a closed in porch or patio that might be an option. Unfortunately I don't. I did have a nucleus colony on my deck for a while last summer that I was trying to rebuild after a bear attack. She didn't seem to mind that much. If that was ok then I might be able to put something else out there. My concern is the winter. I don't know how it would handle the winter short of taking the frames out and putting them in a nuc box... Perhaps adding a second story with some honey frames.

Could you take a nuc and just put a window on the side? or just get like a 8 or 10 frame and put the window on that also i have one question about nucs and or OH how do you prevent them from swarming.

Eric Bosworth · July 07, 2015, 11:16:05 AM

Quote from: Football928 on July 07, 2015, 10:42:40 AM
i have one question about nucs and or OH how do you prevent them from swarming.

It depends on your goals. If you want to keep expanding your apiary then you can keep a close eye on them and when they start to get ready to swarm split them into new boxes. The issue here is timing and with an OH you can watch them all the time so you can tell when to do it.

BeeMaster2 · July 07, 2015, 01:28:15 PM

"Could you take a nuc and just put a window on the side? or just get like a 8 or 10 frame and put the window on that also i have one question about nucs and or OH how do you prevent them from swarming."
Football,
You could do that but you will not be able to see much unless you used foundation less frames. Normally the outer frames do not have much activity until they are getting close to being ready to swarm. With foundation less, you would see them build each frame.
With my OH, I can see when they start getting runny and split them. I also like to bee able to watch the swarm progress and then we usually can hear them take off and catch them. Out of 6 swarms, we have only had 2 get away. My wife has heard them all the way in the main house when they take off.
We did try to split before they swarmed this year and then they kept swarming, 3 times, until I removed 10 queen cells. By then it was too late and the bugs took over.
Jim