Spring has finally sprung here in Upstate New York. We have had a few days that have been over 70 degrees and then a few days with some snow.
Typical weather here for this time of year.
So normally over the winter what I have been doing to keep up with beekeeping and part of the reason that I started this hobby was doing some of the woodwork myself. A simple hive is just a box with a simple rabbet along two ends of the box for the frames to sit in. I have been building all of my own boxes since I started.
For the most part I cut all of the box joints by hand and then tune them up with chisel. I have gotten pretty decent at this, and am going to keep on working on getting better. The nice thing is the bees don't mind if I have a gap in a box they just fill it in for me.
Unfortunately we have had about 50% loss of the bees this year, which leaves me with two hives currently. I am pretty sure that I am partly to blame. I need to get better at understanding a little more about hive health as I continue on with this. The bees had enough honey in the hives but it appears that they died from other causes. I am guessing mite loads that were too high going into the Winter. So I have to get better and monitoring them throughout the Summer and verify where the load is so when I treat I have a better idea what the count should drop to. Regardless I am not planning on buying more bees this year, so I have been working on plans to raise my own queens and build additional hives as we head into the Fall.
I am excited that we are getting to a point were I will be able to visit the bees more frequently in a way that I can see how they are doing.
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