Our First Beekeeping Video
Here is our first video of our beekeeping efforts! I do not have the abilities to color correct or anything yet but its a good place to start!
Little Blue House – First Beekeeping Video from Kellan Vincent on Vimeo.
Here is our first video of our beekeeping efforts! I do not have the abilities to color correct or anything yet but its a good place to start!
Little Blue House – First Beekeeping Video from Kellan Vincent on Vimeo.
July 12th, 2011 at 9:14 am
Hello! I am a friend of (and sorority sisters with) Beth Hines, and she posted your video on my facebook page to check out how you are doing with your bee hives! I have also just started two hives of my own, English Garden Hives with Italian honey bees. Are your hives top bar hives? Are they working well for you? I’m trying to get a feel for how others are doing this year, especially with the unusually cold temps and crazy weather events. What breed of bees do you have? I’m so glad she posted your video for me to view! I have some pictures of my hives on facebook, but no videos yet. Friend me if you would like to take a look! Great to meet you!
Liz Walker
July 13th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
First of all welcome to our blog and to beekeeping. It is a great hobby to be a part of. So by garden hive I assume you mean an 8 frame langstroth with medium supers? We have used both langstroth and top bar hives. We lost our langstroth this past winter due to cold and the hive going queenless. Our top bar is great. Its population was probably about 60-80k this spring. An immense amount of bees. It has been a rough season for all Beekeepers in this area due to the extreme cold (for us) this winter and a very severe drought. Coupled with the 100+ degree weather, it takes a bit of extra care to keep the bees happy. If you have any questions at all feel free to ask! We’ve seen most of everything now so we should be able to help.
July 13th, 2011 at 12:45 pm
One thing I forgot to mention: In this region it is very difficult to get purely Italian queens. You might start with them, but almost all feral colonies are Africanized in this area so as soon as the queen is superceded, you will most likely end up with a slightly Africanized gene pool. That being said, our top bar is relatively gentle overall but we could never get away with just a veil and gloves here!
July 14th, 2011 at 9:10 am
So have you acquired wild Italian bees by rescuing them? Or did you start with package Italian bees? How long have you been beekeeping? And last question, do you think the hybrid bees (between African and Italian let’s say) varies by region in the U.S., or is it pretty widespread at this point? Thanks for your help and your responses!
July 14th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Our first hive was a package from Bee Weaver here in Texas. They are actually a mite resistant hybrid and not usually considered purebred Italians. Our second hive was probably a mostly Africanized colony. I bought the bees from a beekeeper here looking to downsize. This is my second year of actually beekeeping but I have been interested for quite a bit longer than that. As far as hybridization, up north Carolinian, Russian and Italians are popular so generally you will get crosses of those depending on whats around. African colonies *typically* do not like extremely cold temperatures so they are less prevalent as you go North but that could change.