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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: Rob Zelt <robzelt AT robzelt.com>
- To: Meredith Friedrick <friema16 AT gmail.com>
- Cc: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ocba] Newbee questions
- Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 15:32:21 +0000
Hi Meredith, My wife and I just started our first hives last year and still very much consider ourselves in the newbee category. We found that by inspecting on a regular basis it really help us better understand our hives. One of the keys to this was not just looking at the hives, but keeping some good notes from each inspection and then being able to go back and compare the changes since the last inspection and over time. As new bee keepers I think it's often hard to simply look into a hive and know what you should be looking at. Being able to go back and compare thinks like how drawn out certain frames were and what the makeup each frames contents were (% pollen, nectar, brood state) helped us better visualize the changes that were taking place. We've gone through a few iterations of how to best keep these notes and visualize the results, but simply jotting down some details of each frame as you go through each inspection provides a wealth of information. One other thing we did which has been great is to add one of the hive scales from Apiara which lets us see weight changes over time and activity patterns. It's been a fun adventure and we're still constantly learning from our observations. Rob From: Chris and Lisa Laudeman Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2015 11:14 AM To: Meredith Friedrick Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org Hi Meredith, I expect you saw Randall's response to your note. As always, he has very good information well presented. He's a great resource (Thanks Randall!). I would just echo his sentiments: You're learning. Look as often as you would like. You won't kill 100 bees, but if you did, that's not too many when you have 30,000 or 40,000 more. If you want to look "minimally" you can go right for the brood frames and look for eggs/larvae. That's another thing to learn to spot, i.e. where the brood cluster is. That's also where you're more likely to find the queen. Bright sunlight helps with seeing eggs. I also need my reading glasses. If you find larvae in the earliest days of development, open cells nearby usually have eggs present. You can then check a couple of frames for honey and pollen stores. All the while looking for things like deformed wings or odd brood patterns. I regularly observe entrance activity. You eventually get a good feel for how much traffic you should see in addition to behaviors like Randall mentioned. You'll usually see bees tussling in little groups if there are robbers. When foragers are bringing in pollen, you can be sure that those ones are not robbing, and the pollen is needed for rearing brood. So, it's reassuring to see lot's of pollen foragers coming in. You can (maybe should) regularly check the weight of the hive. Just gently lift the back. Eventually you get a feel for how heavy or relatively heavy the hive is. Then one day in late summer or mid-winter, you lift the hive and notice how very light it is. It sounds like your hive is doing fine. I'd be happy to come up and have a peek with you. Send a note back to me, and we can see what the weather and our schedules look like and figure something out. Take care, Chris On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Meredith Friedrick <friema16 AT gmail.com> wrote:
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Re: [ocba] Newbee questions,
Randall Austin, 06/01/2015
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Message not available
- Re: [ocba] Newbee questions, James Latimer, 06/01/2015
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Message not available
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: [ocba] Newbee questions, Chris and Lisa Laudeman, 06/03/2015
- Re: [ocba] Newbee questions, Rob Zelt, 06/04/2015
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