Story of a first-year beekeeper
One winter day while driving through a downtown neighborhood I spotted a beehive in someone's backyard, with my interest peaked I started researching beekeeping, I studied long and hard, and thought that, if I had some bees around, those cucumber blooms would finally produce .My first two hives were purchased on eBay, and I eagerly awaited their arrival, It was exciting to open up the box and smell the new wood, and beeswax frames waiting to be assembled. Everything was built and painted with pride, I even ordered everyone in the family a beekeepers suit!
I ordered a couple of packages of bees from Craigslist, from a fellow that was driving down to Georgia to pick them up in April. A package is just 3 lbs of bees in a box, with a brand new laying queen in a cage, with no frames of comb, brood or honey included. I enrolled in a bee school an hour away and attended every Saturday for 6 weeks.
When April came, I drove over to the fellow's house and picked out my two packages of buzzing bees. When I got them home and installed into the brand new hives, I received the first of 68 stings on the year, but thought it nothing more than a mosquito bite, what a rush to shake 10,000 bees out of a box! I was hooked right then and there. I installed the first queen cage wrong, with the screen side sandwiched in between the frames, which reduces airflow and discovered that the hive went queenless a few days later, and with the advice of my bee school teacher I combined it with the other hive.
I wanted more bees because it only took 15 minutes a week to work on one hive, so I ordered two nucleus colonies, which are basically one half of a fully functioning hive, complete with comb, honey, and brood. I had to drive over an hour to get them and got them home not long before dark, I marveled at the weight of the honey laden frames, and the large numbers of bees. The new additions raised my weekly bee time to about 30 minutes, and that simply would not do! Bee fever had ahold of me now so I called all over town, but could not find any more bees for sale. I ran across an ad on Craigslist.com and got my hands on the last nuc within 100 miles! When I got it home and inspected it, I learned it was basically just a package thrown in on some empty drawn comb, with an old queen, lesson learned, only buy from reputable dealers sanctioned by the state beekeepers association.
So I'm at five hives now, and that still wasn't enough, it's time the gloves come off, and the jacket too! It was just too hot, and I was becoming immune to the stings. I ordered 3 Saskatraz queens from Olivarez honey bees in California and a helmet/veil from Mann Lake.com, I had read about the different kinds of bees available and decided upon Saskatraz, it’s supposed to be a “Super Bee” it overwinters well, and is known to be gentle, and is resistant to the deadly Varroa mite . I had read that the hardest part of beekeeping is getting them through the winter, surely if a Saskatraz bee can make it in Canada, it can make it in North Carolina's mild winters.I made splits with those 3 queens and increased my Apiary to 8 hives.
Sometime after that, I was called upon to cut out a colony that had moved into the walls of a house, and boy ol boy I was in it now, I built a homemade bee vac and commenced to capturing those bees, I rubber banded the combs into frames as I'd seen on Youtube, and read about on Beesource.com and brought it home. At first, I thought it was queenless but later learned a queen will only lay if there are enough resources and bees to rear the brood. I discovered eggs a week later, but she was an old Queen and never laid many eggs, I ended up combining them with the nuc I purchased from the less than reputable source, and gave them a new Saskatraz queen, after nursing it all summer, it finally took off. As an experiment I left the old queen with the returning foragers in the old location, and she swarmed away, this became the first swarm that I captured, but I couldn’t get them to stay, they swarmed away again for good, I learned to cage the queen for a week, and add open brood with them next time.
As the summer rolled on, I bought 3 more Saskatraz queens and started new colonies with those. I experimented with queen cells, and mating nucs, but didn’t have much luck during the dearth of Summer, I think I’ll have better luck next Spring when the honey flow is on, and the bees are less prone to rob. I captured my first Queen and marked it, and I saw a virgin queen hatch. I learned that a hive of Italians usually tries to supersede a Russian queen ( Saskatraz ) You just have to keep culling out the queen cells, but a few got away from me and produced some nice solid black ¼ Saskatraz /NC queens.
In the late summer, I ordered 3 more Saskatraz Queens and made 3 more splits. I fed all my bees heavily all summer with 1:1 sugar syrup, and they rewarded me with 14 boxes of drawn comb, which can be placed on the hives next year for honey collection.
Most new beekeepers fail to realize the dangers of the varroa mite, It's a challenge to keep their population in check, if you don't they will overrun the bees and cause viruses that will kill the whole colony, most bees do not make it in the wild, meaning most of the bees you see came from a beekeeper.
I don't expect to lose any colonies this winter, I plan to have loads of honey next year, and expand my apiary to around 25 hives. I would call this first year a success, I’ve obtained my NCSBA certified beekeeper certification, and can’t wait till Spring! Till then I’ll be working on growing my Youtube channel , and building new equipment.
See the story unfold at Backyard Bees NC, The world needs more Beekeepers!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BackyardBeesNC
