okay, so i didnt respond to the "first time bee keepers shopping list" forum i started because...
2 days ago my girlfriends dad and i drove 2 hours, bought one complete hive that already made it through winter, full of bees. and another complete hive with frames full of comb. also, we bought extra supers with frames, hive tools, 2 bee suites, a brand new smoker, a ton of odds and ends, a couple capping knifes (heated and not heated) a wax collector, a really nice 3 frame extractor, a box of bear jars, and a bunch of other stuff, all for 450 bucks from a farmer getting out of the hobby. him and his wife were a fantastic help, a great couple and we have established a good relationship with them, which i am thankful for. very helpful and VERY informative...
so, now since we have an established hive, we have a whole set of new questions!!
Established hive questions:
currently the hive is set up as follows:
a base
bottom board (also has some real fancy metal mouse guard)
2 deeps
"spacer" (a 1 inch tall spacer with 3, 1 inch holes drilled in the front of it)
an insulated cover
an outer cover
questions for the established hive would be(e):
should we feed the bees at all? (we got 4 feeders)
what sort of things should we be mindful of?
any suggestions?
we have another complete hive thats empty, but the frames are full of comb. question for it would be:
we are ordering bees this weekend...
we just ad the bees to the deep, as per the usual method?
feed and raise as per usual?
any other suggestions?
we are excited, we already have bees, and are hoping that assuming we dont run into any issues, will have at least one producing hive! also, we are excited to start new bees and experience that as well. i think we lucked out and got the best of both worlds. we are also excited we got everything we need to extract!
thanks for all of the help. you guys have been invaluable in our quest to start a couple healthy colonies!