Bee Update

While we're having these massive rainstorms and a late spring, I thought I'd give an update on the bee hive plan. After reading more about bees and going to a few great bee classes offered by the UC Davis Agriculture Extension, I've found it is increasingly more difficult to keep bees. Varroa Mites will be a major concern, as well as numerous negative environmental factors such as local pesticide use and California buckeye growth in the area (our state tree is poisonous to bees). 

With these considerations in mind, I've decided to look further than my local bait hives for obtaining a colony. First, I broke down and bought a Nuc of bees. A Nuc, short for nucleus, is an already established five-frame set of bees. This means that the bees will have already built out the comb, the queen will have already laid her eggs (brood), and have a strong egg laying pattern. All this is important because female worker bees only have a 21 day life cycle and thus there needs to always be a strong crop of replacements ready to take over.

Second, I bought a 4lb. package of bees (with a Russian queen potentially more resistant to Varroa Mites). The big downside of a package of bees is that the bees are not familiar with the queen, since they were only recently placed with one another, and the bees haven't begun to build out any honey comb. As a result, the bees will then have to start from scratch once they are placed into the hive. However, since I'll have the Nuc, there will be ways to equalize the weaker hive with the stronger one, by either giving brood cells (a whole frame) to the weaker hive or by switching the hives' location so the bees from the strong hive mistakenly fly into the weaker hive with their pollen/nectar/water stores. I'll also be able to compare the two hives giving me more information about each of their strengths and weaknesses.

And then there's always the possibility of snagging a feral (wild) colony with the bait hives. Once the good weather returns and the bees go into swarming season, we'll see if they choose my hives as a home. I give it a 75% chance. A couple of weeks ago before the storms came in the bees were all over the hives, so they've scoped the area out and know of its existence, and will go back -- or so the theory goes.