Step two starts in the spring, As I said I had lost the bee keepers e mail address who had helped me in the fall. Back on the internet I met many bee keepers some who were helpfull and some like
Mister Michel Bush that posted buy two books and search the actives for answers. One fellow in Missouri took me under his wing and told me to set my Christmas present hives up over that standing tree trunk and let the bees move up into it. Even sent me a frame of drawn comb to help with it.
Well one day in early May there were no more bees around that log or in the hive body.
Now I have equipment but no bees. again the fellow from Missouri came to the rescue with the phone number and address of a fellow here in Michigan that still had Nucs of bees to sell.
I called and found out he was about 2 1/2 hours away and we could buy a nuc still.
Made arrangements to go pick them up and brought them home and installed them in my hive bodies.
I had bought a book so I worked those bees during the summer from that book by John Vain. Fellow in Missouri disappeared too No more e mails nor snail address mail answers returned. He had told me he was not feeling well.
In the mean time I had found the E mail address of the fellow who had helped me in the fall. Kare had also read in the local news paper a bee keeping club had started up in our area. That nuc of bees didn't live thru my first attempt to over winter bees in Michigan.
I reserved 2 three pound packages of bees from a bee supply house in southern Michigan for a May pick up. I also continued to go to those bee meetings and learned thru them there was another near by club we joined and went to meetings then joined the south east Michigan beekeepers club.(semba.org). Also learned the bees in the original tree had most likely came from a bee keeper about 3/4 of a mile from us, who's health was failing but tried to pass on all his knowledge to me. He came and did the first inspection with me and said my bees were sick with some thing so would call some people he know and see if there was some thing we could do. Called me the next morning and told me to kill those bees, burn the frames and he would give me a colony of bees and a swarm he had just caught. No one knew what was wrong with the bees so didn't want to chance spreading it. He gave me that swarm and colony and another member gave me 3 more. I went into winter with 5 colonies. Billy was sick and in the hospital and had his wife call me and ask me if I wanted to buy a out yard of his that had 7 colonies. From there I learned how to make splits and from Billy again in the 2 short months before his death learned how to raise queens..
I love catching swarms also.
Al
