Winter Hive Maintenance - Removing feeding buckets and battling ants in December.

Winter Hive Maintenance - Removing feeding buckets and battling #ants in December. Opening the #beehives in mid-December to remove #feeding buckets and top boxes. #Ants are still a problem on beehive three. I am looking for a new approach to fight ants in the winter.
The first beehive inspection of 2020. Who knew it would be in the middle of January. It is an unusual 65F today and the bees are all doing well. All hives have ample stores and the bees are bringing in pollen from somewhere?? Maybe it is some mid-winter dandelion. The hive heaters are working surprisingly well and will be put to the test in the upcoming weeks as the cold front rolls in this week and is promising 20F temps. All four colonies are packed with young bees and the queens are laying up a storm. On average there are five full frames of capped brood in each box and even some capped drone cells. Please don't swarm in January bees.

Have you ever wondered how to start beekeeping, or setting up a beehive or making sugar syrup or pollen patties to feed your bees? Starting a beehive or starting beekeeping is easier than you think. Beginning beekeeping is a fun and interesting hobby which will provide a needed service to the community by pollinating flowers and gardens as well as provide excess honey to your friends and family. So if you are a beginning beekeeper I will share what I have learned, I just started beekeeping myself.
To get started beekeeping you need to get a starter beehive from a beekeeping supplier or online beekeeping resources. You can install a package of bees into a new beehive or you can install a NUC or nuc which is a nucleus beehive which contains more than just the three pounds of bees you get with a bee package . Get a small nuc hive to install which contains upward of five frames of bees that have already become accustomed to their queen. When installing a package of bees you will have to spend some time introducing your queen into the hive and hope that the bees don't reject your queen. Installing a nuc is the easiest way to start beekeeping or to start a new beehive especially if you are new to beekeeping and have never been around bees before.

The nuc installation is pretty straight forward and easy to do. When installing the nuc all you have to do is remove the frames from the nuc and install them directly to your beehive. I started beekeeping by installing a nuc into my hive after buying a flow hive the season before. After I bought the flowhive I spent several weeks building the flowhive. After building the flow hive I waxed the flow frames even though they say you don't have to wax your flow frames I found the bees liked the flow frames after I waxed them and the bees took to the waxed frames more readily than I think the bees would have taken to the flow frames if I had not waxed the flow frames prior to installing the flow frames into my flow hive and copy of the flow hive I built.
After installing your bees into the flow hive from the nuc or installing your bees into the flow hive from your package of bees you will need to feed the bees. You can feed your bees with sugar syrup in either a one-to-one (1 to 1 syrup) mixture or a two-to-one (2 to 1 syrup) mixture. The bees will need to be fed for the first couple of weeks while the bees collect their own nectar. Feeding bees usually happens in the spring and the fall but you can feed your bees all year round if you feel you need to feed your bees that often. Your bees will gladly accept a one-to-one or two-to-one 1:1 mixture or 2:1 mixture of sugar syrup. If you are using a flow hive or a standard Langstroth hive you will still need to feed your bees after installing the bees from a nuc or a package of bees. The bees just need a helping hand to get started.
You will also need to check you bees for parasites and diseases which can cause your beehive colony to collapse. Colony collapse has been happening for years which is another reason I started beekeeping. I started beekeeping to pollinate my garden and to get honey but colony collapse was in the news constantly and I decided I would do my part to not just start colony collapse but I would add to the bee population so the colony collapse disorder wouldn't wipe out honeybees and pollination as we know it.
Honeybees have been an important part of our ecosystem for millions of years and have been pollinating our crops and fruit trees forever. So if you are a gardener or just someone beginning beekeeping I think this channel will give you some helpful information and well as let you avoid the mistakes I made after starting beekeeping. Varroa mites are also a big concern to beekeepers and I will show you how to treat for varroa when it is necessary because varroa mites can also cause your colony to collapse and cause you to lose all of your bees over-winter.

#flowhive #beekeeping #how-to