Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Pollen has been Sighted! (AGAIN!)

Well, the bees are doing great! Today is their second day, and it was around 70 degrees F out. The bees were out and flying around. I saw at least a dozen of bees with bright orange pollen covered legs. I was outside for about 3 hours weeding and gardening around the hive. I planted white clover, wildflower seeds and a few bulbs I found left-over from last week's bulb planting. There were a TON of weeds, and I think I did a good job! I will have to weed again, because I didn't get the roots entirely. :-P I refilled the bee's water too, haven't seen any bees in it though... I also, right next to the hive, set some cinder blocks and stuck pieces of rock under them to make them level. I used a leveler thing, forgot the name at the moment! =D The stand that the bees were first put on, was very crooked. You could see it was crooked with your eyes. Not so good for foundation-less frames! Or any kind of frames in this case!
About the double-deep frames, instead of having to inspect 20 frames of brood, with Deep-double frames, you just have to inspect 10, large frames. I've decided to not use these, but I'm going to start transferring the bees to medium boxes, here's how I was thinking about doing it http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,14150.0.html.
I'm going to get 7 supers from a retired beekeeper. I'm going to get alot more stuff from him, he's selling alot of stuff for a very cheap price. Here are the basics: 1 hive body with 10 frames, 2 hive bodies with 6 frames, 7 medium supers with 10 frames, 1 medium super with 7 frames, 2 medium supers with no frames, 4 outer covers with metal cover, 1 outer cover without metal cover, 5 inner covers, 4 bottom boards, 2 queen excluders, 2 hive stands, 1 package of 10 new hive foundation plastic-base(?), 2 packages of 10 medium super foundation plastic-base(?), 29 frame top bars(new), 28 frame top bars(new), 10 end pairs hive body frames(new), 19 end pairs medium super frames (new), 1 embedder tool. And all this for $25!!! I'm probably going to trade some of this stuff in for a queen or perhaps a nuc from my supplier.
Tomarrow I'm going into the hive, to check out on their progress! I will have to (need to!) remember to take pictures! I'm just wondering how I'm going to take pictures with only one hand... I don't know if my frame holder I made will fit, since it was made to fit top bars not frames. Will figure this out tomarrow!
Have a nice night!
Kris

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