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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Smith <psmith AT leaptec.com>
  • To: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] A Tale of 3 Nucs
  • Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 12:45:45 +0000

Back in April I started up 3 brand new hives from nucs purchased at Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. This was a big deal for me, as last year I had moved up to live on Grandfather Mountain and sold all my hives and equipment back in Hillsborough. I wanted to post this as an example of how little control we beekeepers have over our colonies. Despite our best efforts, the ladies will do what they need to do with or without our help.

 

 

Colony #1 (left) never really got off the ground. The queen just never got into the swing of laying in the normal prolific way and this was of course immediately recognized by the colony. They proceeded the process of raising a new queen immediately and the poorly performing one was doomed. I chose not to intervene, I could have re-queened with a purchased laying queen, but just watched as they did the job themselves. The colony was slow to grow, as this process took over a month, but luckily the nectar flow starts late up here in the mountains, and they developed into a strongly foraging colony just about mid-flow. They will produce little surplus honey this year but with a bit of luck go into the winter very strong.

 

Colony #2 (middle) and #3 (right) both got off to a great start and were very strong coming into the nectar flow (I fed them all continuously up till that point). I was placing undrawn supers onto both of them every few weeks. Then colony #3 decided it was time to swarm! Great for the bees, (their way of reproducing) but a bit of a disaster for the keeper (no honey). There is nothing much you can do once a hive decides to swarm and sure enough, despite providing the best possible environment for them to thrive, off they went, leaving a much reduced colony behind. This will also build up nicely for winter, but again, no surplus honey this year.

 

Which leaves me with one producing colony - #2. At the time this picture was taken, all supers but the top one were full of capped honey. And not only this, all the supers started out as bare foundation (they had to draw the comb before they could store the honey). I'm quite impressed by their productivity and optimistic for the future, provided I can keep the bears away with my small electrified fence. 

 



  • [ocba] A Tale of 3 Nucs, Peter Smith, 08/03/2016

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