I don’t think that anyone should expect to get rich on their hive. I’ve been carefully adding up the expenses of starting a hive. I wound up costing me over $350 each, so far, for my hives. I can expect each colony to last 2, maybe 3, years on the average and that the woodware and other tools could last 10 years. Spreading out the costs of a hive over 10 years with regular new queens, packages and foundation, plus the ongoing expense of sugar, medicine and honey jars I think it may cost as much as $200 a year to run a hive.

I can expect about 25 pounds of honey on the low average and maybe 50 pounds if my hives do well. Some hives might do better, but on the average I will guess 35 pounds as an average for all hives. At $5 a pound that’s only about $165 per hive. Most of it will go as Christmas presents to friends and neighbors.

A good hive might split from time to time and I could sell a nuc every other year for about $80.

I am thinking about teaching a local class on beekeeping that I could charge $10 for an hour from each student. I might make $40 a hive this way.

All in all I might make $245 a year and that is optimistic.

So if I make $45 a year net profit I will be doing well. In reality I don’t expect to do that well. I can hope to break even. I can hope for a bumper honey crop, but that would be offset by the statistic that 1/3 of all hives die over the winter.

You don’t raise bees for the money.

Near where I put my Honey Bee hives there is a dead tree. As I go to inspect the hives I pass the tree and I notice that it is full of a small bee that looks a little like a honey bee and I wondered what they were.

I discovered that the bees that were living in the rotted tree were Leaf Cutter bees.

Leaf cutter bees have a very mild sting. They live in rotted wood. They do not produce honey. They do not live in colonies with a queen. They are a very important pollinating insect. They do not damage the wood of houses.

They cut leaves from some plants in order to make little nests where they keep pollen. The cuts generally are cosmetic and don’t damage plants.

Leaf Cutter Bees are a very good thing and you should not try to get rid of them if you are lucky enough to have some living nearby.

Sunday was the tenth day after I received my nucs and I decided that I would inspect the hives.

Up to now the bees have been taking as much sugar water as I could give them. The top feeders took a total of 2 gallons for the two hives in the ten days and the front feeders lasted a day or two before they had to be refilled. The weather was generally cool in the 50s during the day and dropping down to the low 40s at night.

Saturday and Sunday went into the high 80s and it was hot. The bees seemed upset and many were hanging around outside the hive in clusters, cooling off I think.

I had made a 2-1/2 inch super for the plastic feeders and placed the telescoping top on that. I read where I wasn’t supposed to use the top board with the feeder. I decided that there was not enough circulation on a hot day so I put the top board on top of my mini-super and I think that in the warmer weather they will get better air circulation this way. Note: I took the top board out again because a few bees were able to find their way into the top feeder reservoir and drown.

When I take off the top I can see the bees crowding up to feed at the top feeder. This is encouraging. If they are taking in calories, it means that it is being converted to comb and brood and even honey. When I watch the front of the hives I can see bees that are heavy laden with pollen arriving every few seconds. I think the hive is doing well.

I did, however, want to peek inside. This is my first beekeeping experience and I can’t just ignore the bees. I want to learn what is happening.

I fired up the smoker – rule 1 with smokers is that a very little bit of fuel goes a long way. You only want a few puffs so why load up the smoker? I put some newspaper in lit and dropped in too much fuel and in a minute of puffing I had a good stream of smoke.

I puffed a little smoke at the hive entrance and then lifted the feeder and puffed a little into the hive. I was amazed at how the bees settled down. They had previously seemed to challenge me a little as lifted and banged around the hive, but they just seemed to calm down and cluster in the hive. I only used a few puffs for the whole process. It took about five minutes before the bees recovered.

I lifted some frames at either end. I had three new frames to the west and two to the east, with the five nuc frames in the center. The nuc frames were full of bees and I did not try to lift them. I did not want to damage the hive or upset the bees. The three frames to the west did not seem to have much activity other than some new comb on the side next to the nuc frame. The two frames on the other side had some light color comb drawn out on the side opposite the nuc frames and the other side had some new comb also. The end frame had some comb on the inside. The second hive was the same.

I did not get pictures as I did this alone. I should have brought the camera along and taken some pictures myself, but I did not want to drag this out. I only wanted a quick look.

I quickly covered the hive and after inspecting both I had the problem of putting out the smoker fuel. I had to scatter it in the driveway, where Erica couldn’t stand the smell and poured water on it. It was mostly dry a few hours later.

I will not open up the hives again for a while, except to pour sugar water into the top feeder, which does not seem to bother the bees.

When my bee package comes I want to remove a few frames from each of the nuc hives. I hope that I can put some honey in brood into the new hive with the package bees so they have some reserves and a head start on brood. The new package will be Carniolan bees and my nucs were both Italians. I don’t think there is an issue with Italian brood being raised by the Carniolan bees. The Italians will live with them for 45 days and die, but in the mean time they will be helping the colony to get established.

Placing the new hive will be an issue. I want it to be situated away from the two Italian hives. The two hives are about 40 feet apart. I did not want to have an apiary arrangement with all the hives together. I don’t want the bees to spend all their time robbing each other and I want them separated a little in case one colony gets sick. I want the Carniolan hive to be 40 feet, at least from the two Italian hives so the Italians won’t be as inclined towards robbing them. The geometry is a problem, especially since Erica does not want the bees near the paths. She wants them well off into the parts of the property where we don’t walk much. I want them away from the neighbors. I don’t want anyone to complain about the bees. I have more than an acre of land and my neighbor to the south is a mostly untended cemetery that is about an acre and a half. There should be room for the bees without having to put them near the living neighbor’s border

I finished assembling my five supers and started painting them. I’ll paint them all this week if the weather is nice after work. I ordered a case of one piece plastic frames – I am through nailing together frames and putting in foundation. I ordered queen excluders. I may not use them for a while, though, as the colonies are doing well so far and I don’t want to crowd them.

This was the first weekend where every plant in the neighborhood seems to be blooming. It was warm enough for the bees to really start working. I figure in less than three weeks the new brood will start emerging and the population of the hive will start doubling. If I don’t have enough room for them to expand then they might swarm. I figure the hive body and the first super will be for brood. I need to buy some more supers for honey, but that will not be until June.

Going into the future the colonies might increase in numbers and show good strength. It is just as likely that they might suffer and not do well and die over the winter. My goal is to get a few very strong colonies and split them going into the fall. I would buy Jersey Girl Queens from a local source and next year I could to sell a couple of hives through an ad in Craigslist. This would at least move me towards prosperity. I could sell the complete hive with the extras for about $350. That would be about $100 profit. They sometimes go much higher on eBay, so I might research this.

I bought 5 unassembled medium supers on eBay from seller rbm82557.

They arrived from Georgia in record time and they went together quickly and without trouble. I did get a board upside down and had to disassemble part of a box, but that was totally my fault. The supers are actually much better than the eBay description would lead you to believe. My only criticism is that the sawed edges could have used a quick sanding to get rid of the rough edges and a few splinters. It didn’t take long for me to do it myself, though.

From the description:

Five medium supers (6 5/8 deep) 10 frame shipped unassembled. These are commercial grade which has knots but they are solid knots. Extra care is taken so the knots will not be in joints. I assemble my supers with glue and screws as shown in the picture. These have rabbet joints.

I have not bought any frames or foundation and I am looking for the one piece plastic frames. I nailed together 40 wood frames and put the foundation in and I am never doing that again.

I am being cautiously optimistic. It has been very cold here and I am worried about my bees. They’ve been shipped in a bouncy truck, uprooted and placed in a strange place and then had a curious beekeeper peeking at them.

This weekend it will be in the high 70s and I will be able to inspect the hives for the first time. I want to pull some frames to see if the queen is laying eggs and to see if they are raising any comb on the empty frames that I put in the hive. This will be the first time that I will use the smoker.

If you are in need of supers then this eBay dealer is a good bet. I don’t know if he does this regularly and when he’ll have some more ready. I would contact him through eBay. The price was right and after shipping it came to about $10 a box. The major beekeeping houses sell theirs for less, but after you add on shipping it is considerably more.

Supers from rbm82557 on eBay

I got my nucs last Thursday and my hives are doing well. I watched them yesterday. It was warm and hundreds of bees were returning from their foraging with legs full of pollen, some yellow and some red. The yellow are from forsythia and the red is from a blooming magnolia tree.

Here are the two stacked nucs as I received them, just before I moved the bees into the hives. They are plastic corrugated board folded up to take five deep frames.

I hosed out the empty nucs and put five frames in one of them. I bought some bee pheromone on eBay. I now have the nuc over at my brother’s house in a secluded corner. The odds are 100 to one against me catching a swarm, but I have the nuc and the pheromone only costs $2. The nectar flow has started and if any colony within a mile or so of this swarms, I might just catch it.

I went out this morning around 7:45 to see if I still had bees. I brought some more sugar water to will the feeders. They did not drink much syrup.

The hives were quiet with no bees hanging around front. I peeked inside (I know you aren’t supposed to do that) and there were still lots of bees. I am worried that they are not recovering from their trip or else they are leaving the hive and what I saw were a few stragglers.

I will check again this evening and refrain from looking inside.

Update:
The bees were out and active. There were bees coming in with large bags full of pollen and there were bees doing dances on the hive’s stoop. The forsythia are in bloom and a clump near the hives had many of the girls checking it out. The temperature was about 45 this morning so I guess that they stayed in and slept late.

Neil Gaiman’s colonies died over the winter so he is starting up again this spring with 7 new hives. They are being painted in an interesting way. Gaiman, who is writing a two part Batman for DC comics has a bat-hive.

Neil Gaiman’s Journal: To the Bat Hive, Bee Wonder! and other stories

About 9am the bee guy called sayying he was in New Jersey and had a Box truck so he couldn’t use the parkway. I sent him to Fort Lee and up Rt. 9w. It took him about an hour and a half to get to West Nyack from Saddle Brook. He said he had almost 50 nucs to deliver.

About 10:20 I got a call and had to go meet him. He had already received one ticket and was afraid he was going to get more. I had to ride down into town and get the nucs. It was no place to check them other than they held live bees. They were calm so I am guessing that there was a queen.

I drove them back, put on my white hoodie and moved the bees from the nuc to the hive. All went well until I had some trouble with the frames. They were all glued together funny so I had to pry them apart. This upset the hive. One of the bees in the “Connie” hive decided that my eyebrow was threatening so it gave me a sting. The sting was very mild and did not turn red or swell at all.

I got them all packed away with some sugar water in the feeders and went off to work. I hope that they are still there when I get back.

I had to $5 each for the cardboard nuc boxes. I will clean them out and put some frames in them and some phemerone. I’ll leave them at some friend’s houses and see if I can catch a swarm in one of them – not likely in this area, but still possible.

Here I am putting the frames from a nuc into a “Connie”.

I initially ordered a bee “package” that was scheduled to arrive in May in New York. I just got word that due to the weather in Georgia, the package bees will be delayed another week. I’ve got the bee blues.

If it wasn’t for bad bee luck I’d have no bee luck at all.

Bee guy from Rhode Island said that it snowed over the weekend and he is way behind. He will still has more than 50 Nucs to deliver. There were a lot of no-shows on Easter Sunday due to the holiday and he hopes that they will be picking up their nucs during the next week.

He’ll be here on Wednesday or Thursday, but he’s not sure.

I suspect that he has extra nucs and I wondering if I should get another one. It means another $80 for an additional hive, though. Brushy Mountain is sold out of much of their woodware stock. I don’t know where I would get another hive unless I built it myself.