I'm a Beekeeper Again!!!

Hooray! I picked up my bees today! Bruno at Cave Hollow Bee Farm has a nice setup behind his house, and gave me lots of great advice to help keep this round of bees alive!
So I now have two Italian hives and one Russian hive. The Russians are the hive in the middle.
I also managed to get my first two stings of the year! I was walking past one of Bruno's hives and got popped in the left arm below the wrist. Then, as we were installing the nucs in my boxes, I got popped in the ear! I was pretty sure that I wasn't wearing anything smelly, but they were not happy with me being there!

The kids came to help me, along with Jeremy Keisler. Here's a shot of Owen with the new hives:

So now I need to spend more time with them this summer. I have purchased some Beetle Eaters for the small hive beetle problem I had. Hopefully they will work, and I won't loose the bees this year!

Nuc 'em!!

Well, now that I have three completely empty hives, complete with drawn comb, I need to decide what to do next.
I believe that this year I am going to go the nuc route. If you are not familiar with what a nuc is, then check out Wikipedia's definition here.

My normal bee supplier does not deal in nucs, so I have found a gentleman in Marietta, GA that does. His name is Bruno Frazier, and he runs Cave Hollow Bee Farm. I'm going to order three nucs from him, but I'm going to mix it up this year: I have ordered 2 Italian nucs, and one Russian. I have heard great things about Russians and their abilities to resist or at least tolerate varroa mites. They also are high honey producers, which should help them survive the winter.

Take a moment and read this comparison between Russians and Italians:
Russians v. Italians

Once I get my nucs installed, I shall be putting some AJ's Beetle Eaters in them. These are a new device which has been developed in Australia to control SHB populations. They use no chemicals, and are cheap and easy! I've seen the different homemade traps, but I think this method may work easier for me.