New BEEginnings

So after a bit of a rest from blogging I have 3 updates for you.

Firstly I am no longer keeping bees in Jersey City. Unfortunately Lynn, my bee buddy developed a severe allergy and the bees had to be removed from her yard. The bees have moved to Connecticut, which is too far for me to have a regular involvement in their well being. Moving them was a fun experience and I plan to write about that in a future blog post.

However, my friend Denise has decided to keep bees on her property upstate and I am helping her set up her "bee farm" This gives me the opportunity to have bees again this year. So hence the name of this post,

But, the most exciting news is that the bees from last year have survived the winter, and have been seen flying on Saturday when the weather was warm enough for them to leave the hive. Having looked after them last year it was so rewarding to know that they survived.

So my new project is somewhat different to last year. This is no longer urban beekeeping, this is very much a countryside project, which brings new opportunities and new challenges. A very interesting new challenge is that of using an electric fence to keep out the bears, not usually a problem in Jersey City. In addition this is very much a team effort with Denise coordinating and hosting 7 hives. That's a lot of building work, but there are 5 of us involved all with different skills.

I am the only one with any experience, but as limited as that is, I was able to help plan what we needed to buy to set ourselves up, and help on teaching how to build the hives. So Saturday found Denise, Kassidy and I in Hudson Valley Bee Supply for our first purchases.  A quick call out to Jorik and the team at Hudson Valley Bee Supply, Jorik was very helpful, he was very happy to talk through our options and I learnt some new tips and techniques.

I had planned to do a similar set up to last year using all medium boxes, but Denise is buying 2 nucs, so we needed at least one deep box each to accommodate them. For the rest of the hives we decided to go for the 8 frame medium boxes, they are much easier to manage than the 10 frames. The nuc will be Russian bees, which is also new for me, last year we had Italian bees which we will also be using for the rest of the hives this year. So this is what we needed for 4 hives.



And, in case you were wondering, it is possible to fit  the parts to build 4 hives in a Jaguar. Thanks to the team there for loading up the car for us.



Once we got back to Denise's the car was unloaded, by the others, ( still no ACL in the right knee) and we set about building the supers. After a quick tutorial from me, Kassidy, Christian ( Kassidy's brother) and Denise all set about building boxes. I then left for a party in the city.

What a team, by early Sunday afternoon all 20 supers were built and there then followed a teaching session on how to build a frame.  I was in the city, so You Tube proved invaluable to help explain things it is quite difficult to describe over the phone.

We still have a lot of preparation work to do for the arrival of the bees, estimated to be tax day, but we made a good start this weekend.

Many thanks to Denise for involving me on this project and for providing me a home for bee's this year. I am looking forward to some exciting times ahead, seeing how the Russian bees compare to the Italian bees, having bees in a rural setting, managing an electric fence and, not least of all, what colour to paint my hive.

I am thinking pink !