I put down some patio blocks and I assembled the frames and foundation for my hives. I positioned them in the back half of my property which is mostly woods. I tried to position them where the neighbors will have trouble seeing them, but there are no leaves on the trees and bushes so if they wanted to they could spot them.

It was cold today and I put the foundation in the frames outside. By the time I finished the first six, the wax was brittle so I had to bring it back inside. I ruined one foundation.

The nucs will come with five frames each so I only needed five frames for each hive. I will pick up the package that I bought in May. I have until then to paint the last hive and assemble ten more frames.

The bee guy arrives with my nucs on Monday.

This is the hive I’ve named Martha:

This one is Ethel:

I took a few minutes to unpack the two hives that I received from Brushy Mountain. It took me about 8 minutes to glue and nail one of the hives. I will paint it the first coat of dark brown camouflage tonight (I don’t want the neighbors to know I am raising bees just yet.

The frames won’t be so easy.

Brushy Mountain only sent me enough nails for one hive and 10 frames. I have to find out where I can get those nice thin nails they use for frames. By the time I email them and go through the process of getting $3 worth of nails the bees will already be here.

I just checked with UPS tracking and they said that my hive kits are on the truck and will be delivered today.

I ordered two hive kits from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. They are in North Carolina so the shipping is steep, but they had the cheapest total price on the complete hive (Top, bottom, hive box and frames).

The scary part was that I ordered them on March 18, which I thought would give me plenty of time to assemble and paint them. It took three weeks for them to get the stuff to me, though. I will try not to order my beekeeping supplies during the Spring beekeeping rush again.

My first batch of bees arrive on Monday. This gives me 6 days to assemble and paint a hive. The first hive that I bought is already painted. I will then have three weeks before I get my package for the third hive.

I went a little crazy on this, getting three colonies, but I am afraid that if I got just one then it would die. This way I can still have 66% failure rate and still have one hive.

I am now looking for scrap lumber, the kind that comes in large packing crates, in order to make some supers. If I can find the cheap lumber, then my friend Skip and I will make some sawdust with the possibility for producing a few supers. I decided not to buy the supers until I have a living prospering hive. In a month I will know if I will have a hive that will make me enough honey to justify a super.

Quite by accident I picked up a copy of Scientific American and there was an article on bees. It was about Colony Collapse Disorder and it was written by two of the main investigators into this tragedy. It has some very good in-depth discussions of the problems that beekeepers are experiencing and is well worth the read.

The web page has part of the article and quite a bit more information.

Scientific American: The Buzz on Bees: In-Depth Reports