Dee Martinez

Wow! 😃  Thank you, Tony! 🙏 Yes, the link did work.

Would you mind explaining your nuc setup a little bit more? Aren’t nucs a lot thinner than supers? Are there special supers that fit over a nuc?

At what point do you move the colony into a standard deep?

Lastly, would you mind my asking what zone you’re in? How do you insulate and have you found that insulating leads to condensation?

This is my current set-up. The super is on just to house the 1:1 sugar mix I’m feeding them to get them to draw comb. I installed them on 5/18 and so far they’ve drawn out about 6 or 7 frames. It’s mostly brood and pollen at this point, with a little bit of capped honey. I don’t know if this is a normal rate of growth, but I’m anxious to get their numbers up before winter. Judging by what I’ve heard and read, it would be great to go into winter with two full deeps. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts and would appreciate any feedback.

Unfortunately, I’m still battling them. I have, however, managed to eliminate them (for now) on the plants I sprayed religiously on a daily basis with a spray bottle containing a squirt of dish soap, three dropper fulls of neem oil, and the rest water. I also cleared away all of the vegetation growing around them, sprayed the ground with the same mixture, mulched them with about three inches of mulch, sprayed the mulch, and then sprayed everything daily until I saw no signs of sawfly larvae on the plants.

Since I have not yet had the time to do this with all of the plants and therefore some are still infested, I am still spraying the “clean” plants weekly, in case the sawfly from the infested plants decide to lay eggs on them.

Good luck with your plants - it’s been a tough battle, but one I’m finally winning!

Tony Hillel wrote:That's good.   If possible, take the drive and go pick them up if it's a reasonable distance away.   You will have better success and very few dead bees if you can get them housed within a few hours.

Do you have nuc boxes for them?  Small colonies do better in smaller spaces.    Took me awhile to figure this out.  My splits that are housed in a nuc box with supers on top regularly outperform ones put in a full size box.   I think they like the chimney configuration, but whatever the case, the proof is in the results.

I made some of the Coates nucs out of 1/2" plywood, and they are great in the summer, but I like a full 3/4" plywood nuc wrapped in insulation in the winter and springtime when temps can still drop at night.

I hope your hives are very successful.

Thank you. 😊  No, I don’t have Nuc boxes, but will read up on them.

Tony Hillel wrote:I recommend that you go on the Beesource forum and ask who is local to you and buy from them.    Sometimes, a beek has to make a split to prevent swarming, and will give the bees away if you have a hive to put them in.

But local bees are often the best, as long as they are good-tempered bees.

Thank you, Tony. I bought bees from a company in my state and should be receiving them in about 2 months.

Hans Quistorff wrote:If you simply wont the bees for pollination rather than getting into honey production consider solitary bees.   These are shipped in there dormant state when they are less apt to suffer shipping loss.
Two types are available.  Mason bees which start working in early spring before honey bees become effective pollinators and leaf cutter bees that pollinate during hot summer weather.  
Both are available from Crown Bees which is local to me here in Washington State.
They have the materials and instructions on their site and are good mentors for solitary bee pollination.
Another alternative is bumble bees that take very little maintenance.   webpage Natupol Bumblebee Hives.
For honey bees it is best to join a local group.  Search for apiarist near me.  Directory

Thank you for the information. I have plenty of pollinators on my land, including mason bees and bumblebees, but I would like to keep bees for honey and wax. Thank you for the link to the apiaries. I will check to see if there are any nearby.

Michael Cox wrote:Impossible to answer this without more information:

Where are you?
What do you require from your bees?
What is your beekeeping experience, and what equipment will you be using?

Shipping bees is always problematic - especially across climate zones. People routinely ship packages from the warmer southern states of the US, who thrive for a season but don't do well over winter.

Personally I would advise that you approach beekeeper local to you, and see if someone will sell you a nucleus colony - rather than a package. You can also look into getting bees from stock with a known heritage of varroa resistance.

I am in Zone 5A (N.W. Illinois) and am a complete novice to beekeeping. I don’t know anyone in my area who keeps bees, but what you say makes sense. Thank you.

I would like to purchase honey bees now for delivery in the spring, but have read several complaints about bees arriving dead from a lot of these companies. Have you had any positive experiences buying bees from a particular company? I’d love to hear any suggestions.

Thank you.

I first noticed them yesterday evening on my currants and gooseberry plants and handpicked as many as I could before the sun went down. I did the same this evening, but they are completely infested. I picked over 300 off of just one plant! Interestingly, the gooseberry least affected by them had a baby snake in it - I'm guessing it been eating them as I only had to pick two or three larvae off that bush. I'm going to try mulching with rhubarb leaves as I read someone suggested on this site. I also read that they drop to the ground and pupate in the ground beneath the plant so one way to help prevent reinfestation is to cultivate the ground beneath the plants in the fall and winter in order to expose the pupae to cold and birds, but I read there can be up to three or four cycles of them every year. That's a lot of damage! Has anyone had any luck getting rid of these things?

Hi, Daniel.

You sound great. I don't mention children in my post because mine is grown (22). Unfortunately, by the time I get to that point in my next serious relationship where it would make sense to consider children, it will be too risky and/or difficult for me to conceive/carry a biological child. I wish you the best of luck finding your special someone, though.

-Dee

Hi, Roberto.

Thank you for writing, but I'm looking for someone much closer to my age (5 years either way would be ideal). I read your post and am sorry to hear about your wife. I hope she is being treated well. 😕 I wish you luck in your endeavors in southern Tejas.

-Dee