Hi all,
I think I mainly lurked here (under a different name) when we last kept bees in British Columbia, Canada. It was not too long after my father stopped beekeeping when varroa came up our way. He had kept his bees anti-biotic and treatment free, and he wasn't about to start treating for varroa. There was little info on what to do at the time, and he lost most of his bees ...
My beekeeping background goes way back to Germany where I remember watching bees come and go out of skeps as a child. Then my dad built these new-fangled Langstroth hives, and watching the bees became more interesting, because I could watch the bees on the landing board. Both my mom and dad were beekeepers and started up beekeeping again in Canada some time after they settled in BC. Canada.
At any rate, we inherited my parent's beekeeping equipment when we started to keep bees some time around 2005 or so ... don't remember exactly when. I lost our three hives one winter through sheer greediness and stupidity. We had had a good fall flow, and I took some honey off and failed to feed the bees. That my father died that winter probably wasn't a really good excuse, but I suspect it did contribute to my neglect. I felt *so* bad when I saw the corpses of my poor little bees stuck in their cells, with no stores at all left ... I think that was after 4 or 5 years ...
In the meantime we moved to Texas, and now that we are settled, the beekeeping genes are speaking up again. But after a lull of over 10 years *and* a totally different climate, I'm having to learn all over again. The first hurdle was gardening here: I was excited to live in a zone with a *long* gardening season. Ha! Was I mistaken! We have two *short* seasons here - a spring season and a fall season. So I'm guessing that there'll be a long lull between honey flows as well. *If* we have flows, *if* it rains.
On top of that, it seems that bees cost 4 times as much from what I remember. But maybe I just got a really good deal for 2 hives from the local bee inspector in BC because he really liked my parents? I dunno ..
Anyhoo .. I'm so thankful for this forum. I would love to know if there's anyone else here from the Texas Hill Country.
I'm aiming for treatment free, chemical-free bees. Michael Bush gave me hope that this is possible, and I see that many of the bees offered now are supposedly VSH strains, but it's a little confusing when the instructions include how to treat for varroa 3 times a year!
I've been looking into how to get 3 hives started. I'm thinking of getting one BeeWeaver Nuc and a couple of cheaper Italian packages for about the same price as the Nuc. Still seems a big investment...
I understand that here in Texas, SHB are more of a problem than varroa? Maybe I should start with beetle traps from the get-go? (Planning on screened bottom boards. Had those in BC already, with a sliding tray beneath.)