Big Day Saturday

[Pond Creek Farm]

I got a great phone call this evening.  A very experienced beekeepr that I bought some of my bees from called to tell me that he is having a few folks out to a couple of his beeyards this weekend to teach and answer questions.  He told us to bring our gear along with a hive tool and smoker.  I simply cannot wait!  I learn a great deal from reading and from our bees, but to see fifty hives in an afternoon on a guided tour while working them is a real treat.  What made it even better is that my 11 year old says he really wants to suit up and come.  It makes me glad I bought him a full set of his own gear this spring.  Cole will be the photographer and we plan to capture as much as we can on disc so that we can look at it and learn more when we get home.

[Jim134]

Have a good time and post some pix.


          BEE HAPPY Jim 134  :)

[KONASDAD]

seeing mutiple hives is great. Thats why i joined a club. I now see about 200 hives a year instead of just my few. Also get to see different brands of equipment, styles of beekeeping etc. Sometimes ven disease or laying workers etc Enjoy!

[Pond Creek Farm]

My son and I went to one of the beekeepr's yards this afternoon, and we really enjoyed ourselves.  It really wasn't an event where I could get any good pictures, so I cannot show you all what it was like.  We learned a few very interesting things, one of which was that in the Ozarks, two deeps is not necessary.  Apparently one deep with a full medium is sufficient for winter.  I still think I'll keep the two deeps as brrod chambers, however, since I am not as likely to pay as close attention as he would for sufficiency of winter stores.  Furthermore, losing one hive is a much larger portion of my apiary than his.  Being a hoobiest, I can afford to tie up the equipment since I use comparatively little of it.  We learned how to identify potentially queenless hives as well solutions for the problem.(re-queening is not always the answer, so we learned to combine on the fly).   

Seeing so many hives made me want to come home and compare ours to what we had just seen.  I think we are faring well alothough I did see something rather interesting.  The bees in one of my hives are making a free hanging comb from the top bars of several of the PF-100 plastic frames. They have created a bee space between the foundation and the comb but attached the whole mess to the top bar.  It makes for a very fat frame too.  Is this something I should attempt to address?  I would rather not as I saw many cells of brood on these hives.