Are you going to either of the summer clinics - the one in Brenham or the one in Conroe?
Good to meet some of my Texas beekeepers. Maybe we will meet at a clinic or something. Do you belong to an association?
The Travis County beekeeper Association is the on that holds its meetings closest to me. I have not been able to attend my first meeting yet, but I plan too in the future.
Donāt worry about me Dale. I will most certainly get over being mad and Iāll be fine. However, I am worried about how long it will take you to learn not to be so condescending and passive aggressive. Good luck.
with that.
I am so looking forward to that day, too, but mine has been lost in the stratosphere for three weeks now, and so have four more of us in Texas. I would be more patient, but we are very close to honey flow here, and I badly need some info. If I am not going to get them soon, I will have to make other arrangements, and even that has to be ordered. Martin says we will have a new tracking number this week. I hope itās a real one instead of the hypothetical one that I already have. Fingers crossed.
If you can make it to one of the clinics, I can highly recommend them. I usually hate big group activities, but the one I went to in Conroe was so well organized, the classes were very interesting, and they even had vendors there. It was a nice experience. I live in La Porte, but have another home in Fort Davis. The Chihuahuan desert honey I have tried was the sweetest, lightest honey I have ever tried. It was almost white. I am thinking of putting a hive out there, too.
Do you belong to a local association or go to any of the clinics? Have you had bees very long?
Whelp, it seems to me that roughly, spring can be calculated by zip code. Flow may or may not be shipping to zip codes where spring has started, but this is a suggestion for them. Maybe they should start shipping to locations where the honey flow is starting first, and not by when someone placed their order.
With that said, I now have two full frames of nectar, honey, and pollen in Wake Forest, NC, and not to mention the 6 frames mixed with brood and all the above.
It would have been nice to add the Flow Frames on top of the brood box, but now I have a second brood box hanging with tung oil on it, which is destine for the hive to keep the bees happy. My take on it is that when the Flow Frames arrive, the two brood boxes will be better than one. And who knows, if they piss around long enough, maybe Iāll be splitting my hive into two colonies.
Seeing Iām a newbee, Iām impatiently using my time to learn more about beekeeping, and trying to be productive. This is a note to remind Flow Iām still here.
Order number #4822
Steve D
I donāt plan on doing any honey harvesting in either of my hivesā first year. Virtually everything Iāve read, watched, or listened to recommended against it.
My primary goal is to learn more, strengthen my hives and successfully get them through the winter.
Frankly, my Flow frames will go completely unused this year (barring an unusually huge flow).
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New to bees. Donāt belong to an association, lots of questions to a local beekeeper. Been watching tons of videos, reading lots of web information and a couple books. Definitely seems that the number of different opinions is in direct relationship to the number of people you ask.
More like an exponential relationship. Ask 3 beekeepers a question and you get 5 different answers . 
But I respect all the answers as they all will be helpful in their own wayā¦ I cherry pick what I think will suit me.
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That got me tickled April!! You do have a gift for words. I would be fascinated to know your background!! With no condescension or passive aggressive intentions I do hope the next post from you will be the joy of the frames being delivered to fully compensate for the agony of your wait. THEN pics of bees crawling all over those frames. THEN a big smile as you harvest that honey. Which, by the way, sounds fantastic in your area! Almost white. That sounds amazing!! Fingers crossed!!
Me too. I joined the local beekeeping club, and it has been very interesting. They also say that everyone does things differently. There are people that medicate their bees and feed them constantly, and there are those that donāt do either. We have one guy that doesnāt buy bees, he only collects swarms. He keeps them in top bar hives. He does not intervene in the health of the hive. If they die, they die. But after a couple of years of this, he has a race of bees that are locally adapted, and make TONS of honey. Probably partially africanized. Then there is the guy who sells a race of bees developed by LSU to be resistant to varroa mite. Then there is the guy in Arizona that keeps nothing BUT africanized bees. He says they never get sick, they kill varroa mites, and produce way more honey than European bees. There is a guy from Greece who sells hives that are made of plastic and the pieces buckle together. I kind of liked that idea because you can disinfect the boxes if you need to. What the bees think, I donāt know. They come in colors and you donāt have to paint them. So many choices . . . .
Good idea, Steve. Finally an intelligent and constructive Plan B. My club is supposed to have a hive building clinic and I was going to get some extra boxes that way, but I donāt know when that will be, so I may just go ahead and order some.
Yeah, when I saw all the bloom, and my two outside frames were getting built out, that was when I decided I needed to react, so I ordered a brood box from Beethinking.com to keep everything a standard size. Itās hanging now with itās second coat of tung oil on it, and Iāve taken the measurements so I can build my own. I discovered the Beethinking boxes are 1/4" wider that what is sold in the stores here, so there is a slight difference in box size. I ordered a top hive feeder from BrushyMountainBeeFarm.com and it also was 1/4" narrower. It would be nice to see the Flow Frames in their Flow Box to see if that 1/4" is needed for bee space, or if I could shrink the boxes a 1/4", but that question will have to be answered later.
In the meantime, a cedar deep costs @$47 from Beethinking. A 1x10 8ā cedar board cost $19.26 here in North Carolina. I can make two (2) deeps out of one board and have a box for @$10. Itās not rocket science to figure out that the dado blade for my table saw will be paid for very quickly that is needed to make the box dovetails.
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Must be nice to be handy! Thanks for the heads up about the size differences. I will get on it today: ) Yeah, everything is blooming here too. All my citrus, the blackberries, and the tallow trees are starting. Excellent suggestion to pay attention to honey flow by location. We are zone 9b. Our place in the mountains is zone 7b. Big difference.
The other person I know in our predicament is Erica Anderson. She ordered two hives . I donāt know her order numbers but told her to contact you.
How do you do that then? A Langstroth box is 20" by 14" for an 8-Frame. So for a box you need (2 x 20) + (2 x 14) = 68 inches of wood, which is 5ā 8 inches. So if you had 8 foot planks, you might be able to get 4 boxes out of 3 planks, but I am having trouble visualizing how you get 2 out of one plankā¦ 
Donāt mind me, all this wood working stuff is a real struggle for my brain, just ask @bussoā¦ 
DOLP!! I added wrong. Now you burst my bubble. 
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Just to help re-inflate your bubble, I drew it all out. You could cut six 14" lengths from one 8 foot board, then four 20" lengths and one 14" from each of two other boardsā¦ You would then have the parts for 4 boxes from 3x $19.26 = $57.78 = $14.45 per box. About one third of the price of Bee Thinking. However, you already have a table saw and dado thingy. I donāt, so if I wanted to do this, I would need to spend $200 on the saw, then I would need a router table to cut the rebates (rabbets), so that would be another $200. Plus I have zero wood working expertise, so i would need 2 or 3 extra planks to mess up. OK, Bee Thinking is cheaper for me.
But you have the satisfaction of making your own stuff, and I love that feeling. So rewarding. 