Category: Apiary

Shortly after installing the 2 new packages on the right, one of the older hives in the left swarms.

Here is a view of the hives for Spring of 2021. You can see the active bees buzzing in front of the hives.

For the spring of 2021 I added this extension on the south side of the hive stand. The 2 hives there contain the packages I just purchased. In our bee class, we were looking at the effects of having our hives close to each other and we decided that the best practice is to separate…

Purchased these 2 packages of bees to start 2 more hives in 2021. These girls spent the night in my basement prior to being introduced into their new homes. Should you get packages or NUCs? If you have already built comb containing some pollen and nectar, you can start with a package. If you are…

As you can see in this picture, I have 2 hives strapped together and have insulated the outside with insulated boards from Home Depot. This is February 2021, inside the bees are already laying eggs and raising brood in preparation of the upcoming nectar-gathering season.

Feeding bees is important. In Maryland the nectar source is only available April through June. In order to survive the winter, bees require a source of carbohydrates. They may not have stored up enough in the during the spring, so in order to keep our bees healthy, we supplement their carbohydrate source so they can…

In the fall of 2020, after learning a lot from the meetings at Howard County Beekeepers Association, I decided to try something suggested by Alan Hayes. I had split both hives and then in the fall pushed them together. Each hive was still isolated to achieve independent weight measurements, and I made new outer covers…

For the summer of 2020, I planted a pollinator garden around the hive stand. The bees tended to ignore it, so it didn’t last.

Having been in electronics and instrumentation my whole life, I was interested in monitoring my hives electronically. This became more important as I started to travel more. I started using Broodminder devices to monitor weight of the hive and temperature of the brood area. It’s a little pricey to get started, but well worth it…

On May 23, 2020 I picked up the 2 NUCs from Master Beekeeper Jim Frazer and installed them in my apiary on the newly constructed stand. I will never miss having to wade across the creek to tend to the bees! A NUC is a Nucleus Colony of bees.

I needed a better system if I were to continue to raise bees. With the creek in the backyard that I had to cross anytime I wanted access to Alpha, I needed something that was more flood resistant than the simple saw horse setup. I needed to be able to stand on something secure to…

Sadly to say by late September, I discovered that Alpha had died off. I took the hive to Master Beekeeper Alan Hayes and he showed me the evidence of varroa mite, small hive beetle and wax moth infestation. In the future I became much more aware of the health of my hives.

Recieved 5th place in Howard County fair, and 1st place  in Maryland State fair.

Early in July we started to see the fruits of the hive. The honey frames were filling very quickly and we had to rush to get a second honey super on the hive. First jar of extracted honey June 10,2019.

On May 23 2019, a tornado touched down within a mile of here. I was at Home Depot at the time, and this is what I found when arriving home. Alpha was just fine. A tree limb did fall close to the entrance, but no damage!

The date was April 26, 2019 that my first hive Alpha arrived. Bill the beekeeper can be seen here pushing the hive across the creek to it’s new home. In 2019 I never thought that wading across the creek was too much work to get to the hive, but since then I am happy that…

Most hives are close to the ground with a stand like a pallet or cinder blocks. Because my creek does flood occasionally, I wanted to keep the hive above the height of the possible floodwaters. The two downsides to this location (which I didn’t recognize right away being a newbee) were wading across the creek…