The Power of People - Preparing for the Bees

I have a lot of information to share about my adventure of preparing for my bees. Here is the first bit of information, gathered this past Monday:

Tonight was the March meeting for the Lady Beekeepers  of Arkansas. They usually meet on the first Monday at Whole Foods, but tonight is a special annual event with food and labor. All the ladies got together with their new equipment and we basically had an assembly party. I learned a lot more than just how to put together a frame. Some things I learned seem very vital and yet have been left out of all my previous research. But let's take a step back for a moment.

Per advice from the president of the Lady Beekeepers I ordered a particular hive kit. It's called the All Medium kit. Basically, there are 3 sizes of beehive boxes - brood boxes, medium supers, and small supers. Super just means it is a box that goes on top of the brood box where the queen does all her laying. But due to the ridiculous weight involved in wax and honey, the bigger the box, the less likely

I will be able to maneuver the hive pieces by myself. So the goal is to avoid the brood boxes and go for all supers. This also makes all the frames inside the hive the same size, instead of a different frame for each piece. I will find a diagram to make this more easy to understand, but basically you are saving money and your back. I picked up this kit direct from the vendor at the Arkansas Beekeepers Association Conference on Saturday. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to open the boxes and inspect the contents while the vendor was there, so I am naturally missing a vital piece - the foundation on which the bees build their comb! I have contacted them about this, but have not heard any feedback yet.

While playing, I mean working hard to assemble the frames tonight I learned some other important and useful info. One is that I can still assemble the frames even though the foundation isn't here yet. Two, is that I should have ordered brads and wire so I could add a horizontal wire to the foundation to keep it from sagging in the summer heat. And three, is that once I do have that foundation, I better keep it in a refrigerator or a box of moth crystals until it goes in the hive or I will get an infestation of wax moths.

So far, I have now built the hive boxes and assembled 20 frames, minus the foundation. More work to come. Stay tuned...

Here is a size diagram from someone else's blog: