Hello, I’m Branickii Buckwheat and as many of you on discord have asked to see photos of my beehive, I will be posting in here from time to time. I ALSO POST FRESH BEE HIVE PICS IN #DONATOR-GENERAL ONCE A WEEK COUGH COUGH 
This is my third year keeping honey bees, so feel free to ask questions or request hive photos unrelated to erp, and I will do my best to get requested photos.
For my first two seasons, I kept a hive full of Italian honey bees before they absconded (everyone left instead of swarming). Now I have a hive of Saskatraz bees, which are Can*dian honeybees bred for their genetics to have longer legs 
to be resistant to varroa mites.
Anyway, lets get started and show off how the season started this year. I got my bees on April 15th in the mail. Yeah, a delivery guy had to walk up my long ass driveway with 10,000 bees in his hands. More on that later.
https://i.imgur.com/fZWIuOu.jpg
Here is the bee area as I was planting over a hundred flowers in front of it, alongside weeding. The hive is not yet assembled in this one.
Now all the flowers have been planted. They’ll grow in to look nice later. On the right, that black wire-y looking thing is the hive stand made of rebar, with its legs inside of tuna cans.
The tuna cans sound weird, but actually serve an important purpose! They’ll be holding used motor oil to prevent Argentinian ants and other pests like hive beetles from getting into the hive easily.
Next I chuck the bottom board onto the hive stand. The lighter bleached part is where the bees will land.
Looking from the back, you can now see the entrance reducer at the front, that tiny little rectangle. When the bees are first introduced, they are not a strong hive at all, so the smaller entrance lets them defend their home more easily.
After that are these fancy metal stick things with an over hanging lip. These are new and didn’t get installed last year. They function to further be a pain-in-the-butt to intruders trying to get in.
You can see the lip here, somewhat.
Next goes on the 10 frame “Deep” box, which will function as the initial home for the bees when they are installed. This type of box is where the queen will basically hang out forever, laying tons of eggs and being fed and cared for by her sim–, her caregivers. Winter stores will be in here too, I usually leave it pretty much alone for the queen.
For comparison, here is a “Honey Super” or “Super” box on top of the Deep, which is where all the honey I’ll steal will come from. The Queen almost never goes in here, especially when she has two Deeps to work with later on.
- The deep can get as heavy as 120Lb / ~55Kg
- Super tops out around 80Lb / ~35Kg
- Heavy as fuck when full basically, and low to the ground
This black frame is a Feeder Frame, which will hold a gallon of 1:1 sugar water mix that the bees will go through quickly. This sugar syrup is so that the bees can draw new honey comb and also have something to eat since they’re starting from nearly scratch. You can notice a bunch of divots and pockmarks in the wood on the right, those are from wax moth larvae. More on that later.
What goes on top of the deep is this Inner Cover. In my area, due to the heat, they are really only used for the first Deep until a second is added. Some people do use them year round and put insulation on top however. Donate to the patreon.
Almost done assembling most of the hive! Inner Cover in place now. I also added my frame holder on the side.
Bam, theres the lid / outer cover on top now, with a super frame on the side for looks.
Now the waiting game for the bees to arrive!
Here we are! Your pop trivia of the day is this:
10,000 bees = 3Lbs / 1.4Kg
This is called a bee bus, and now they’re here to get a number one victo–, here to get into their new home! This one is made of plastic, but my previous was made of wood. This one got delivered to my doorstep by a very nervous delivery man whom I’ll quote
man I was talkin to another driver, we never seen this before! They was buzzing all day, it was weird but cool
I am intermittently misting the bees through the plastic bars with sugar syrup now, because they are probably pretty hungry from their time in the mail! This also acts to help calm them down since they’ll clean themselves and eat, rather than be hangry.
The next step now is to donate to the patreon and also chuck the bees into the hive. I put a couple frames in, but left room because I am literally yeeting clumps of bees into the hive now. Literally. Like, shake the bee bus and hear “whoomp” as a mass of bees fall out into the box. You can see some silk from wax moth damage on the frame there.
I opened the bee bus and grabbed the queen in her queen cage here. This single bee is worth $41 without shipping. Queens usually range from $25 to $80 a piece, depending on insane breed.
She does not have any nurse bees so is probably a little hungry. She is not the queen the majority of the bees were born from either, so she is in this little cage so that she doesnt get beat to death by the bees that are used to their original queens. This one was born this year so she is very young.
There used to be a cork in the end of the cage, which I’ve replaced with a mini marshmallow as you can see. This is so that she spends more time being able to spread her pheremones through the hive, getting the workers used to her scent. The workers will take a few days to eat through the marshmallow to free her, and she will be fed through the mesh in the meanwhile.
The first thwump of bees, not really a big chunk of em yet.
I put the queen cage inbetween two frames now, so she can be freed after the honey bees are installed and you can support beestation on patreon. Notice two things.
- The mesh is facing between the frames, that way she can actually be fed through the mesh.
- These frames have wax on them already! These are frames from my previous hive with wax moth damage, and are mostly still good to go!
THWUMP
Majority of bees are in the hive now, and I’ve added the remaining frames. There is room for one more frame however.
The remaining bees that didn’t get shaken out of the bus are chilling. I’ve leaned the bus onto the bottom board near the entrance in the background, where they will all crawl into hive as they notice their sisters running in. Its like lemmings.
This is from sticking my phone into the bus a moment after.
Yes I was in a bee suit.
That takes care of delivery day and install! I will probably have a big ol’ reply showing the first inspection up in a bit.
Join the hive, become an Apid main with Martin Spes and I today!
Yes, I did decide to join beestation because I keep bees
Thats the reason people keep ants.
