New member here, from Canada (Toronto area)

[GabrielP]

Hello beekeepers, I am a new member here. Not new to beekeeping, I have learned it from my father, who still keeps bees back home in Romania. I started beekeeping in Canada in 2011 with a friend - we got 6 nucs, then we bought 4 more in 2012 and split the hives over the summer, but lost most of them over the winter. We parted our ways and besides 2 of the 4 hives left, I got 10 more nucs and again, I split the hives over the summer. I hope to have a better winter than the last one to be able to grow my numbers  to 40 next summer. After that, I plan to split 20 hives each year (and keep the rest for production) until I reach a good number to allow me to live off of beekeeping. I use 8 frame boxes, all with medium size frames. I build everything from 1"x8" x 6' knotty pine boards and 3/8" plywood in my home garage. I write about my beekeeping adventures on my blog, including pictures (when I don't forget to take a few...), feel free to check it out (read from the bottom up).
Although I know a lot about bees and beekeeping, there are things done different in this continent and I am here to learn, but I can also give advice from time to time.
Cheers!
Gabriel.

[danno]

welcome
one question are you a hockey fan

[tefer2]

Welcome to the forum Gab.

[OldMech]

Awesome! Looking forward to a link to that blog!

[Brother Dave]

Welcome


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[Moots]

Awesome! Looking forward to a link to that blog!

OM,
If you click on GabrielP's name to the left of his post, it will open his Profile....there he has a link to his Blog.

Gabriel,
Gave your blog a quick peek....I'm looking forward to checking it out closer when time allows...I loved all the pics. 

Quick question, I also run all 8 frame medium equipment and have been quite pleased with my decision to go that route.  However, there is one big disadvantage....cost of equipment.  As someone that hopes to do this commercially, how much hesitation did that factor give you in deciding to go in that direction?

[Joe D]

Welcome to the forum, Gabriel.  Good luck to you and your bees.




Joe

[OldMech]

Thanks Moots!
  LIKE the shed! Well done! WHo needs a house?  Great getaway when the wife has it in for you!
  interested in the ideas of the bottle necks/top entrance??   What purpose do they serve?

[GabrielP]

Thanks for the welcome guys! Glad you found the link to my blog, I tried to follow the rules and post it where it's supposed to be. Now, I'll try to answer the questions in a single reply...

Since I don't have help to lift the deep boxes, I had to switch to smaller boxes that I can handle myself without braking my back. True, it adds more work to handle the honey frames and also more money to buy the frames and the foundation. But I think this system is more flexible. Smaller boxes and frames allow the bees to accept them easier and I can expand more gradually. I can also work with smaller units (think of mating nucs for example) and if I pull out a frame with capped brood from a hive it doesn't make too much impact on the next month's population. I should have gone for shallow frames, but foundation for them is harder to find and they bring in even more work to get the honey. My father says he has the best hive development in the small frame hives, and he has 4 sizes: full, deep, medium and shallow. He tried them all, different box sizes, horizontal, vertical, 20 frames, 12 frames, 10 frames, 8 frames, 5 frames. Best hive setup (for him) is 8 frame boxes, shallow frames, 8 boxes per hive. I chose to work with medium frames, 6 boxes per hive standard, more if needed.

The bottle neck at the top entrance allows the bees to fend off robbers easier. It is a good defense for a small hive, since the robbers hate to go through the tunnel to get in the hive. They are also good for the mating nucs, since the queen can't wander off on the front of the hive just to get attacked by the neighboring bees.
But I just found out they might not be good for wintering, since they get cold and the humidity that comes out from the hive freezes on them. I was thinking that the bees will not want to go out through that entrance because of the ice, but, on a warm day, the ice could melt, providing them with some water they could use to take the fondant. So, who knows? For now, I'll let them on to see what's happening. If the ice does not melt in a warm day, then I'll leave the cap in but unscrew the bottle necks.

I am waiting for some parts to arrive (hopefully this week) then I plan to install 5 automated bottom heaters in the weaker hives. I don't have enough energy stored in the 2 car batteries to use heaters for all the hives, but I'll experiment to see if it makes a difference, as my father says it does. I also want to install temp/humidity sensors in the meshed hole that I have in my inner cover, just under the insulation, to test what combination of hive entrances will give the highest temp with the lowest humidity. I believe that having 2 entrances open (bottom and top) allows too much heat to escape and the bees need more food to keep warm (also producing more humidity). Again, my father winters his bees with only one entrance, situated at 2/3 from the bottom. So, I'll have an Arduino log in temp and humidity in 4 hives plus outside, keep the high and low for each day during the whole winter. The readings will also tell me when the queen will resume laying, to be able to add a pollen patty to the fondant.  I wish I could have these sensors in all the hives, just to see how they are behaving over the winter, which are dying and so on. Every 2 weeks I'll go and upload the log to my computer until I can order a GSM shield to have it send text messages to my phone. I want to trace a graph of the data collected and I'll post the results here and on my blog.

Cheers!

[GSF]

Welcome!