Bee-tastic!

Started my first hive this year - a cypress kenyan hive or top bar hive.  Ordered the Italian bees and queens from Rossman Apiaries in Georgia.  These are smaller and supposedly gentler bees - less aggressive.  I was very worried that I had killed the queen when I uncrated the hive but had to wait three weeks to find out if the hive was alive and well.  So on one of the hottest days this year I suited up in my beekeeping outfit ( a raincoat, heavy corduroy pants, long sleeve white t-shirt) and my elbow length gloves and baseball cap with beekeeper veil and took my hive tool and smoker and went to find out if the hive lived or not.  The result photos provided by family friend, Nikki, are below and I am happy to report a healthy hive with honey and babies and wax being produced on multiple bars.  They did it!

Bees are less aggressive toward a beekeeper in light colors.
Note the pants tucked into my heavy duty work boots.

Smoke is from cotton seed lint, bellow the smoke a bit away from the opening so as to not burn the bees.

Because I am a busy-bee-body, I purchased the top bar hive with the window so I could keep an eye on them without disrupting them.  Looking for problems with mites, no honeycomb, no bees - just to name a few problems. The bottom of the hive can be opened in the summer to increase ventilation and has a small wire covering that protects it from other varmits coming into the hive.

I love it.  Honey, honeycomb and bees.  The hive was empty when I uncrated the bees into it.  The only thing I did was take some bee balm mint and rub it on the top bars.

I moved the divider bar back to give them more room and inserted more top bars for them to begin honeycomb production.  Everything looks as it should.  By end of July or early August I should be able to take make a light harvest from this first year of capped honeycomb and leave the rest for them to winter-over.  Next year I should be able to make multiple harvests and I am considering a second hive and new queens.

This is one happy hive and beekeeper!