Hello all -
 
It was about a year ago that I started preparing myself for this adventure,
which is really just now beginning;  an adventure which reached a wonderful
high point this last Saturday, with the gushing of that liquid gold from
my extractor.
 
I had decided, almost without thinking, that beekeeping would be an
interesting avocation which could supply me with the large quantities
of honey I use in my other avocation, brewing - beer and mead.  I had
no illusions that this would be to save money.  The purpose was to have
the rawest, freshest possible honey, and to have some fun along the way.
I have succeeded.
 
I had no real mentor;  I knew a beekeeper, from whom I'd been buying my
honey, but he lived a long distance away.  I later found beekeepers who
lived closer, but initially I had nobody to "show me the ropes".  I say
this primarily to encourage others who may have reservations - you can learn
everything you need to know without help if you have to.
 
I started by gathering information.  This list, of course, is rich in
information.  I went to the library and read every book they had on bees.
My beekeeper friend gave me a few back issues of "American Bee Journal" and
"Bee Culture", the two primary American bee magazines.  I subscribed to "Bee
Culture", but both magazines are a great source of information - especially
the advertisements.  Armed with these contacts, I ordered five or six
catalogs.  Some were bare-bones plain, but some were quite informative.
By far, the best catalog I have seen (for beginners, anyway) is the one
from Brushy Mountain.  No affiliation, yadda yadda, of any products I'll
mention here.  I strongly encourage any of you to check it out for yourself.
 
I started looking in the want ads for an extractor - by this time I had
realized that a new extractor was beyond my finances, so I hoped to find
a retiring beekeeper.  I soon did, and picked up a monstrous 32-frame
stainless steel extractor, in pretty good shape, for $400.  Considering
that a much smaller hand-cranked model is nearly that price when new, I
was very happy.  If you are thinking about starting with bees, my advice
is to watch the want ads and wait for a good deal - you might get lucky,
like I did.
 
I considered trying to find my hive parts used also, and decided against it.
In spite of the cost, I wanted new woodenware and frames, mainly for two
reasons:  fear of disease, and because I wanted to try the plastic frames.
I had heard both good and bad about the Pierco one-piece frame & foundation;
but most of the bad stuff I heard was from people who tried to use the
plastic and the wooden types together - people who used Pierco exclusively
seemed very pleased.  Well, now I am one of those who is very pleased.  My
bees seem to love the stuff, and they were not reluctant at all to draw it
out into comb.  I love the ease of use and durability of it.  I would
especially recommend it for the beginner, as it is one less thing to worry
about.
 
So, last winter I ordered all the gear, except a smoker and a bee suit (I
only ordered a hat and veil).  This turned out to be a mistake, as I'll
explain shortly.  If you're wanting to start with bees next Spring, you
should order your woodenware in the Winter so you have plenty of time to
put it together and paint it.  Also, don't wait until Spring to order
package bees - you don't know what the demand may be like in Spring, so
place your order early - like December.  I'm not kidding.  I ordered two
3-pound packages from Calvert in Georgia, to arrive the first week of April.
I have been very satisfied with the bees from Calvert, but there is one thing
they could have done better.  The package bees came with no instructions.  I
figured that wasn't a big deal, since I had read in several books how to
install a package, except for one thing - no one had ever explained how the
queen cage was secured inside.
 
To back up just a bit...  I was ready for my bees arrival.  I got a telephone
call about 8:30 Saturday morning the first week of April, from the post office.
"Um - we open at 9:00, and we'd REALLY appreciate it if you'd be here then to
pick up your package".  The caller sounded a little nervous (nervous postal
workers tend to make me nervous too ;-).  At the PO, once they knew which
package I was there for, I was escorted to the front of the line.  I got
quite a lot of attention carrying out my BUZZing package with the strong
breeze coming from it!
 
I put the cage in a dark room, and brushed thick sugar water on the screen
until they stopped lapping it up.  I took all my stuff out to the bee site
and donned my hat, veil, and gloves, and set to work.  I first drenched the
bees with warm water, which seemed to upset them somewhat, but only for a few
seconds.  Then I pried off the wooden shingle and pulled out the syrup can.
I had expected the queen cage to be attached somehow to the can, and when it
wasn't, I didn't quite know what to do.  Bees were beginning to pour out, so
I started dumping them in the hive.  When I had most of them out, I finally
realized where the queen was.  Maybe you old-timers all know this, but for
the benefit of you newbies, the queen cage (at least on my package) is
attached to the outside of the main cage with a piece of string.  What you
want to do is, take out the syrup can, then very quickly grab that string,
fish out the suspended queen cage, and slap that shingle back on - quick!
You might kill a few bees - don't worry.  Once you have the main cage
re-sealed, you can take your time preparing the queen cage.  Find the end
of the queen cage which has the white candy in it, and extract the cork plug
from that end (not the other end!).  Needle-nose pliers work well for this.
Put the queen cage in the hive, and then re-open the main cage, and dump in
the bees.  Then, as best you can, close up the hive.  That's what I did on
my second attempt.  The first hive didn't go so smoothly.  The bees were
crawling everywhere (since they were looking for the queen), and I had a
hard time getting the cork plug out, because there were bees all over the
cage.  As it turned out, I didn't get the whole cork plug out - half of
it broke off.
 
A few days later, I opened the hives to make sure the queens were released.
Hive #2 (where I did it right) was doing fine, the queen was not in the cage,
and they had taken a lot of sugar syrup from the baggie feeder.  The other
hive seemed angry.  I knew there might be a problem with the cork plug not
being completely removed, but when I tried to grab the queen cage, it slipped
down between the frames to the bottom of the box.  I tried to take out a
couple of frames so I could retrieve the cage, but when I started doing
that, the bees got really pissed and started attacking me.  Now, remember
that I still didn't have a smoker or a full bee suit yet- I had to abandon
the queen cage and hope for the best.  I got twenty or thirty stings, I'd
guess - mostly through my shirt and on my ankles.
 
I found a good "bee suit" at an Army surplus store - it's a set of coveralls,
gold-colored, made of a light, slippery nylon material.  It works great, it's
fairly cool, and it only cost $20.  The smoker came mail-order.  So, I
re-opened the angry hive - this was one week after the installation.  I got
the queen cage out, and sure enough, she was still in there.  I pulled out
the remainder of the cork and - you guessed it - she took flight.  I tried
to catch her but lost her in the cloud of angry bees.  I _thought_ I saw her
re-enter the hive a few minutes later, but it could have been a big drone I
saw.
 
So, hopeful that she had returned home, I closed up the hive.  One week
later, it was clear she was gone - no brood.  Either she never returned,
or perhaps she returned and was killed by the bees;  I'll never know.  So,
I did the only thing I thought might work - I took a frame of brood from
my good hive and installed it in the queenless one.  Sure enough, after a
week, there were at least three queen cells on that frame.  By the way,
I've never been able to see eggs yet, even when I know they must be there.
Small larvae are the closest I've come.
 
So, I checked later that the queens had hatched out (I saw the empty Q cells).
Then, about ten days after hatching, I saw some new brood - hooray!  The
mating flight must have been a success.  However, this hive has never been
anywhere near as strong as the other hive - I got no surplus from the weak
hive at all, even though they were 'only' about a month behind.  They seem
to be doing fine;  just not as populous as the other.
 
So, they've been busy all summer.  I gave them syrup for a month or so, then
started supering the strong hive.  I gave them both three medium depth boxes
for themselves, and the strong hive got 4 additional boxes above the queen
excluder.  They packed two supers solid with honey, and filled part of a
third.  Thanks to this list, I learned how to operate my old extractor, and
all went smoothly.
 
I used the Hackler punch to uncap, and was very pleased with how it
worked.  Allen is correct, it gets clogged with wax quickly - you must
keep a pot of boiling hot water handy to clean it after each frame.  I
haven't used an uncapping knife or scratcher, so I can't say it's any better
than those, but it worked well for me.  I liked the fact that I could just
hold the frame over the extractor, run the punch over the surface, and load
it - no cappings to deal with, no tank needed.
 
I got about five gallons of delicious honey - more than I expected.  This
weekend I'll install Apistan strips and grease patties, and I'll feed
Fumadil-B in sugar syrup when that arrives (mail-order), to prepare them
for Winter.
 
I'm sorry if anyone is upset by the length of this post, but my hope is that
this rambling may help someone out there to avoid at least some of my
mistakes.  All in all, it's been a great experience so far!
 
Thanks to all for your encouragement and support,
Brian Myers
Norman, OK,  central USA
First year, two hives (so far)