Last year we ended with 70 pounds of honey and two very healthy hives. We did our best to keep both hives alive, treating them for mites in the fall and making certain we left enough honey for their own source of food over winter. We supplemented with sugar as well.
Despite these efforts – we did lose one of our hives, the “Red Hive.” We were a little surprised as it was sudden and our stronger hive. They had plenty of food left, had been treated for mites a few weeks before. There was still capped brood in the hive so we suspected either pesticides or our mite treatment didn’t take. We did manage to keep our remaining “White Hive” alive through the winter and they started to get very active a few weeks ago.
Along with this one thriving hive we decided to set-up two more hives for a total of three. This time instead of installing nucleus colonies we purchased packaged bees. Packages essentially a wood and wire crate with 3 pounds of bees plus a queen included. The advantage to this is we could get species-specific bees and a marked queen for easy identification.
We picked up our bees on April 27th and installed them in the hives that afternoon. We had good weather and the installation went well. Four days later we inspected and the queens had made their way out into the hive and had started laying eggs.
One of the other differences this year is we are trying a new type of hive, a horizontal Langstroth hive. The nice thing about this type of hive is that it’s like having two deep boxes side by side making it easier to inspect. The concept for the bees is that it more similarly represents a hive in the wild (think hollow logs). We used our friends at Bespoke Bee Supply for the hive. They are made locally in Portland Oregon and are some of the nicest people we have met. Interestingly enough – our surviving “white hive” is our vertical Langstroth we purchased from them last year.
As for the bees… The “white hive” is our surviving Northwest blended species of bees. They are going strong and we have good capped brood and many queen cells (they might swarm if we are unlucky). We’ve never found the queen – she is very hard to locate.
The former “red hive” is now populated by Carniolan bees. These are easy to tend to – but can be aggressive if the hive is disturbed. They are more apt to gather nectar on cooler and overcast days and can produce more honey than other species.
Our new horizontal hive is populated by Italian bees. These are the most common bee’s kept in the US and are very relaxed. We rarely need to use smoke when inspecting the hive.
Click Here for a video of the installation.
Challenges moving forward this year are keeping the two new hives healthy and hopefully harvesting honey if they produce as well as our bees last year did. The “white hive” may also swarm, our last two inspections showed a high number of queen cells which indicate a possibility of a swarm. We are considering adding a fourth hive and splitting if we can locate the queen.
We hope for a good honey harvest again this year (we are out of last years).