Hello, we are very new to beekeeping and to this site. I have been reading as a lurker for awhile and wanted to be able to post. So here I am. We are in the Thumb of Michigan and trying to learn all we can to be successfull beekeepers. We talked about starting a couple hives for about a year orso. Well we had a hive in a hollow of the maple tree in our front yard. Not the best way to start out but we did it. We ended up with 2 viable hives. Hive 1 consisted of comb, larvae, ect. From the tree rubber banded into frames. Well they made a new queen. Our hive 2 was after a week or so the queen emerged from the tree via screen cone and hubby spotted her. We got her in a queen catcher and into hive 2. Well within an hour we had about 5,000 bees in there with her. This hive is growing like gangbusters. Hive 1 is still week. Enough with that so as new beekeepers we sure learned a lot just going through this. But soooo much more to learn.