They look awesome in addition to functional.

I agree that horizontal hives with the longer frames would be a good idea - but right now each hive is interchangable with the others. If I build a layens hive, and it has issues, it will be more difficult to move bees from another hive over. Once you start down the langstroth path, it's hard to change.

I love peanut butter O’Henry candy bars. They are an ultimate guilty pleasure. But… has anyone ever bought one that wasn’t broken in 2 or 3 pieces? As far as I can tell, it’s supposed to be one bar - but it’s be yet to buy one like that. #mystery

Yes - our hives have weird names. This one got its name because it started strong in its first year, but underperformed. Our productive but aggressive hive got called Liza.

I know beekeeping isn’t cheap, but Broodminder temperature and humidity sensors gave me insight into the hives and we didn’t have to guess if a hive was dead, we could see. #bees #broodminder

I didn’t see any moisture problems but this year we have humidity as well as temp sensors. Over the winter, it showed humidity was under control.

Hopefully you have the right area. I’m in mostly farms with the odd small area of forest left. The one swarm we caught (and only by luck, the tree branch they picked was 50 ft high but their weight broke it in the night and it landed in our yard) was from our hives.

Several have said it’s fine in the summer too. I didn’t see any temperature issues myself. This is the temp chart for an insulated nuc for last summer and the bees kept it pretty reasonable.

Fudge. I had rabbits destroy several small bushes and most of my sunflowers last year too.

This is how I’ve been working to solve the winter problem. Roughly 2 inch insulation on sides and top but still using Langstroth frames. Didn’t do the bottom last year and that’s why I think 2/3 of the nucs didn’t make it. #bees #grownostr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqWkb4JZgos Speak of the devil - new bee barn 2.0 updates with Vino farms #grownostr #bees

https://void.cat/d/TBFrU6cfj599YNeqoNmW4c.webp

Cheat mostly. I've bought most of my queens and the source usually paints a colour coded dot, depending on the year of birth.

The swarm hive made it's own queen. They're larger than the workers with a much longer abdomen and it was harder to spot her. I got lucky with my first inspection as there aren't many workers. Come July, this will be almost impossible.

There's lots of good material on the youtubes, but find sources in your climate. I've asked dozens of questions on my local beekeeping club.

If you can find a mentor, or even someone a couple of years ahead that you can help with and get a little experience, that'll help take away fear of action.

Failing that, just do it. Start with two hives. There's no such thing as a cheap hobby and bees aren't, but you can do things like build your own hive bodies, or try things like to catch a swarm in your area.

Or Vino Farms on Youtube. He's built some pretty interesting insulated hives. He's in Mass I think but the design would work in colder climates. You have to commit to a non standard frame though and I don't have the ability to make as many frames as I'd need.

We're going into our 3rd year. Our winters are pretty good - but beekeeping can be done with the winters. Check out Etienne Tardif and North of 60 Beekeeping on youtube. He talks his techniques and there's lots to learn there.

I sometimes wish it was a little easier to point to why one lives and one doesn't, but so many confounding factors - but like was mentioned, it's never dull.

Going into winter, we had 6 hives and 3 nucs. One of the hives didn't make it, but I think the queen died last November and the survivors withered. Two of the nuc boxes didn't survive a cold snap in Feb - going to fix that flaw hopefully for next winter.

Happy Spring all! It’s warming up enough in Southern Ontario so we can get in hives. Our August swarm survived and we found the queen. #grownostr #bees