G'day, everyone. I'm new to bee keeping, so I hope to learn more here if you don't mind. I've been registered with the state government for a few months, but my first bees turned on Saturday just gone. I ordered two packages but one of the queens was DOA, so it turned out to be a steeper learning curve right from the start.
Because my property where I keep the bees is 3 hours' drive away from where I live when I'm working, simply ordering a new queen was out of the question, so I ended up combining the two colonies.
Today was my first inspection and I'm thrilled to say that everything's working out just fine so far. The queen is out of her cage, she's active (I pulled the frames and had a decent look for her) and she's laying. Man, those eggs are darn small, not to mention hard to see!
It's almost Summer here, so I'm hoping to get a bit of honey before Winter rolls around, but I'm more interested in increasing the amount of bee hives that I have. I don't have a mentor to help me along, but I've watched hundreds of hours of videos on Youtube and I've read three different books on bee keeping so far. I'm learning as I go along and while I made some mistakes a few weeks ago (moving and splitting some abandoned hives on my Dad's place), I'm getting better.
I copped about a dozen stings when I moved Dad's hives and another dozen when I split one of them, but working with my own bees, I haven't had any stings yet.
I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions in the future, so thanks in advance for your answers, experience and advice. :bee: