I checked my hives yesterday. The early warm weather and early pollen production has got the hives way ahead of schedule on brood production. The bees have turned a lot of nectar into brood food in the past couple of weeks. I have some hives that would starve with a week of cold or rainy weather, because they already have so many bees in the hives. In addition to brood being fed, nurse bees consume a large amount of pollen and nectar to make Royal Jelly. Running low on food now will impact the field bees that gather nectar when the main flow busts loose. I'm going to put syrup on the hives tomorrow that don't have a full super of honey above the brood chamber.

Another heads up for beekeepers. The government passed a veterinary feed directive at the beginning of the year. The vfd requires a prescription from a veterinarian for medicated feed/mineral for food animals. This also includes oxytetracycline powder mixed in the water for poultry. As we have found out, apparently beekeepers use the oxytetracycline as well for mite infestations. You can no longer just buy the meds from the store, you will have to get a script from your vet first.

I've never heard of anyone using Oxytet for mite treatments. There's no way that would be effective. It's probably used to treat foul brood. I've never used Oxytet or any antibiotics in my hives and don't plan to.

Maybe it was foul brood lol. I have learned more about bees in the last 2 months and it all runs together. Just trying to give you a heads up since there is a hurdle to jump through now.

I've always been interested in starting a hive, but have absolutely no experience. A friend bought his bees and hive from Weavers in Cullman. He used the hive dimensions to build two more hives and just bought the inserts (not sure what they are called)

its fun for sure... we got one last year and lost it during the winter. we were planning on getting them this year so we started early and learned alot. brother and i will be buying four hives( i reckon thats what you call it) in a few weeks..

bebo, I didn't know anything about them when I started. Now I've learned a whole lot of things not to do, and a few things to do. If/when you start, get 2 hives, that way you'll have something to compare to. Starting out, you won't know what's right or what things are supposed to look like, but you'll be able to tell better with 2 hives.

Also, if possible buy locally produced nucs instead of packages.

The pollinators offered a couple of hives to me, but there seems to be a lot of problems associated with them. I'll leave it to the professionals, and just get 6 or 8 cases of honey in the bottles from them.

Thanks for the tip Fur. I've been feeding syrup on both hives for a couple of weeks now. I spent too much time this weekend squirrel hunting and I still have to swap the two brood supers on the Arkansas hive. I'm pretty certain we are going to have that cold snap that we are both worried about.

You don't have to be perfect to get a hive of bees going. Go online and look for the Keith Delaplane YouTube videos from UGA. They are helpful. He can show you how to at least get a package of bees up and going. Like Fur said, a nuc is a mini 5 frame hive that you buy and transfer to a full size hive later.