The Savannah Loop Bee Hives

Prologue

There are a couple of reasons I wanted to move my bees to the MCC campus:

Number one, it looks like the farm land across the street from my residence is being prepared for potatoes. Lots of agriculture is hard on bees but potato farming is especially hard because of the amount of insecticide that is used to combat the potato bugs. And if you couple this with the fact that potatoes have a flower that attracts the bees this is an especially bad combination.

Number 2, I like teaching and I thought this would be a great opportunity to allow people to view the hives from a safe distance and keep up with their progress throughout the summer on the blog.

Thursday May 5

Today I brought out the eight foot pallet and two of the three hives that had died over the winter. I set up the hive stands, the bottom boards, two deep brood supers per hive, an inner cover and an outer cover.  

Friday May 6

Today I set up the third hive exactly like the first two except I set this one up on a reconditioned antique feed scale so that I can track the honey flow this summer.  By periodically weighing the hive, and tracking it's weight, we can determine when the flow of nectar peaks and ebbs.  I will also weigh the hive at the end of the season to see how may pounds of honey the bees have produced.