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Thread: Beekeeping in Calgary and area

  1. #1
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    Default Beekeeping in Calgary and area

    I started researching honey bee's and Beekeeping about two months ago and had decided 1 month ago to go ahead and register with the province, the local beekeeping association, begin talking to neighbors, and ordered the hive, bee nucleus, and tools etc.
    So far everyone appears to be on board, particularly the older neighbors with small gardens/flowers etc, with the others being ok with the new tenants in my backyard once I had informed them about the bee's behavior and how I intend on managing them.
    Taking the local beekeeping class is the next thing on my list as well as ordering the mite treatment and some more hive parts for a swarm trap as I want to try to catch a swarm early spring for my second hive, I know I've read a story about some guy in Evergreen with 60 hives in his backyard, but I've also read more recently that the province only allows a certain number of hives on a urban property based on the lot size and the "most" hives you can have is nowhere near 60 lol, since my lot is small I am restricted to two.
    The hives I've ordered are the Apimaye insulated beehives and plan on keeping them in a single brood box versus double as I intend on being in there on a weekly basis and based off of what I have researched a single will be easier to monitor/inspect and will winter fine assuming everything else is in order, I've ordered a Saskatraz bee nucleus which I've read good things about in how they handle our climate.

    Anyone else into hobby beekeeping? Urban/Suburban?

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    some good info in this thread I started a few years ago. I haven't actually done it yet, but it is still in the back of my mind as I love honey.

    https://forums.beyond.ca/threads/398...ought-about-it
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  3. #3
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    Picked up the Apimaye equipment
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    Painted the hive stand legs "Obsidian" and "Diamond" today. Purchased 10 deep frames of drawn comb from another beekeeper, she was downsizing from 4 hives to 2 as she extracted roughly 1000lbs of honey and was having trouble selling it all so it seems that I will likely stick to two hives and see what happens as we are both within Calgary and the city is generally warmer than rural areas meaning the bees will be more active sooner and for a longer period of time.
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  5. #5
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    Update;

    -Ordered up the 5 frame nucleus colony from a company based out of Edmonton, the pick up location was at the Balzac community hall, there was about 25 other people there to pick up a nuc which were being transported on a flat deck truck that had about 50-60 nucs on it, threw my nuc in the back of the Jeep and drove back to south Calgary.

    -Set the nuc up near its new home and moved the colony into the hive 3 days later
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    -Observed supersedure(replacement queen) cells had been made by the bees when I moved the frames to the hive but read this is normal behavior for them(practice basically)

    -The bees continued to make supersedure cells and I decided to take advantage of this by taking 3 frames of brood and resources that had a capped supersedure cell on it and moved them into the 2nd hive, the next inspection a queen had emerged from the cell and had gone on her mating flight, about a week later I performed another inspection and was able to determine that the queen had successfully mated and returned to the hive due to the presence of new eggs in the cells. The new queen:
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    -Issues with the queen in hive right disappearing(original hive) and I was forced to move a frame of brood from hive left into hive right to prevent them from developing a laying worker situation, I ended up having to purchase a new queen from a local beekeeping store as there was not enough time left in the year for them to raise a new queen.
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  6. #6
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    -As fall began I decided to extract the honey accumulated by hive right, from about 8 capped deep frames I extracted 17liters of honey
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    Hive right bearding in the summer
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    Almost lost hive left's queen, noticed 15-20bees on top of the cinder block next to the hive, she had fallen from a frame I was inspecting
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    -I removed the honey supers in late fall from both hives, freezing the remaining frames and treated both hives with formic acid.

    -Once the treatment was finished I began feeding them sugar syrup again to beef up their food stores, because I am managing them using the single brood box method I will be feeding them raw sugar throughout winter.

    -Both colonies are currently alive
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    Last edited by MrFaust; 12-27-2020 at 07:45 PM.

  7. #7
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    Edit: wrong account, seems this one has been compromised as well
    Last edited by StreetRacerX; 03-27-2021 at 12:38 PM.

  8. #8
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    Both hives have made it this far, we aren't finished with winter yet, took this opportunity to give them both pollen patties to help with brood production, there's pros and cons to doing this as early as I have so we'll see what happens.

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