Having just come back from my wife’s family for Thanksgiving I had some time to ponder the bees during the ride home. Specifically, what the crap am I going to do this year? I have decided to be a little less ambitious with the number of hives I would start with. Instead of three I would bring the number down to a respectable two. Beekeeping is much more of a financial investment than it used to be when I bought my first hives 9 years ago. Slow and steady is the phrase of the day. If things go well next year I can go crazy and buy three or four more. Plus the money tree is not yielding like it used to thanks to those scoundrels Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs.
With the overall number arrived upon I then began to set my sights on what bees to purchase. I have decided I will probably order my packages from BeeWeaver apiaries and purchase the Buckfast variety but then replace the queens with a VSH/Russian hybrid from another breeder. I have been reading more and more about the VSH variety and think this is probably that last great hope for our honeybees if they are ever going to survive the mites without the aid of chemicals requiring their own MSDS sheet.
BTW. A great resource for queens and queen breeding can be found here. Glenn Apiaries It really has some good information and also a section that lists queen sources for VSH queens. Found here. Sources
Or I may go the route of buying a nucs and replacing the queens. So far I am inclined to go with Bjorn Apiaries. They are relatively close by, so I could easily drive to their apiaries to pick them up. Starting with nucs is a good idea especially if your bees are starting out from scratch. Most nucs come with 4-5 frames of already pulled comb and a cluster of eggs already laid. This gives your hive the advantage of not having to start from nothing and an emerging population of worker bees to help with the establishment of the hive. If you are lucky you may even get a surplus that year but don’t count on it.
Equipment will be purchased in January and construction will last the whole month. I have to say I am getting pretty excited. I look foward to posting real time events instead of anecdotes from my past.
