Hive Parts

This is a bottom Board. It helps to stabilize a hive and lets the bees pass through under the hive body.

This is a deep or standard hive body on the bottom board. All my hives have 2 hive bodies. The bottom one will be used to raise new bees and the upper will be used for food storage for the winter. The bees may also use the upper deep to raise more bees in the summer months.

This is showing a queen excluder over the top of the deep. The queen excluder keeps the queen from going any further up in the hive. If she gets into the honey supers above, she may lay eggs in the supers and could potentially cause a mess for the beekeeper in the fall when the supers have to come off.

This picture shows the honey super on the hive body. This is where beekeepers get the surplus honey that the bees bring in. There may be just one honey super or as many as the bees need. I do not go any higher than 4 because the have becomes too unstable after 3-4 supers. Each super may weigh up to 60 lbs when full.

This shows an inner cover placed on the hive. The inner cover helps with ventalation and it is also another access point for the bees to come and go.

Last but not least, the outer cover. This keeps pests, rain and snow out of the hive.

Double Nuc’s Part 1

We are trying something new. Over wintering 4-frame double nucleus colonies. We have been spending a lot of our free time researching the possibility of making this move and we have decided to do so. The addition of the double nucleus colonies to our apiaries will transition slowly over the next month. We have […]

Equiptment, inspections and yard clean-up

We assembled a lot of equipment that was sitting in the basement workshop over the past week. There are 8 more deeps assembled and 4 painted and ready for the bee yards. We also finished up all of the double nuc equipment. Over the next week, we have a couple hives that will need to […]

New Queens, more equiptment and more!

Saturday we went out to the Hartford yard and inspected the nuc’s so see if the queens had hatched from the cells. Two out of 3 had hatched and we were lucky enough to see a freshly hatched queen cruising the frames looking for other cells to destroy. Best guess, she was out no more […]