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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Monday, April 25, 2011

Moving into a New House - Tower Place becomes Colony Square

Today I decided upon viewing another beard on Tower Place that circumstances had to change.  Tower Place had to move into a higher quality condo.  I began preparation for the move to Colony Square,

Colony Square is of course larger and (more importantly, cooler) than tiny Tower Place. (A small Atlanta joke).  Tower Place has a solid bottom board and offers little opportunity for ventilation.  So the move happened this morning.

First I prepared the hive. I took each box off and draped it to keep the bees peaceful. I opened the bottom box and moved the five frames to the deep I had prepared for them at Colony Square. There was good brood in the nuc - and I saw eggs and tiny c-shaped larvae.

In the top two boxes there was lots of honey and in box #2 of the three there were eggs and brood.

Since the 10 frames in the top two nuc boxes were pretty much used, I checkerboarded the honey frames with empty frames and set the hive up with two medium boxes atop the deep. It's more space than they currently need but we are in a nectar flow and I want them to keep working.

The goal of this move is to provide the hive with more ventilation.  You can see in the slides the screened bottom board topped with a slatted rack.  This gives the hive lots of room for air circulation and cuts down on the need to send bees outside to beard.

I'm having my sons-in-law save beer bottle caps for me to use to help this year with hive ventilation as well.  My friend/mentor in Virginia, Penny, has suggested using a bottle cap at each corner of the inner cover to lift the telescoping cover up just a little, providing more ventilation and avoiding the HUGE opening provided by proppng a stick in the back of the hive between the inner cover and the telescoping cover.

You can see the steps of the move in the slide show below. Also I opened the other hive, Lenox Pointe, and found beautiful eggs in that hive. It was doing well and I simply looked around a bit and then closed it up and went away.



I know, I know, I have a 10 frame top on an 8 frame hive.  I have a new 8 frame top but it isn't painted yet, so I'll trade out the top over the weekend.  Also I left the nuc box sitting in front of the hive box to allow the slower bees to catch on to the fact that the queen had up and moved to Colony Square.

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