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Alaska Bee Keeping

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yukonjeff:
Greetings from western Alaska  62.0856 N.  163.7294 W.
I am located on the Yukon river south of Nome in a small native fishing village of 800 mostly Yupik Eskimo.

This is my second year attempt at bee keeping ,last year I flew in one four lb package with a Russian Hybrid. my first contact with a bee keeper was treatment free and didn't feed,so that kind of set down the wrong path from the get go, it ended up swarming, laying worker, mites, I made all the mistakes and then some. They didn't make any honey and did not make it through the long winter.

I hived two more packages April 8th flown in from Cali,to Anchorage, to Saint Marys AK, where I  picked them up on my Honda Atv in a cardboard box 15 miles away, at around 30 degrees. they are Carni queens and doing great so far.



We are now into spring and they have a lot of cat Willow pollen.



And these Alder have pollen dropping.



And nectar from blue berry flowers.



And Cranberry.



Labrador Tea Blooming



Bees were sucking nectar from these today, not sure what they are.



These are blooming again not sure.





And I have Brown bears around, had one in the front yard the other day,still working on my bear fence, the ground is frozen and cant drive post yet.



Well if you all don't mind I will update this from time to time and ask a few questions from you knowledgeable beekeeps,and happy to answer any you might have as well.

Thanks in advance.

Nugget Shooter:
Welcome and great photos and looking forward to updates  :yes: Bears can sure make a mess of things and I hope you are able to get a fence installed soon.

Lburou:
Thanks for this thread Jeff!  How many hours of daylight do you have now?    :)

yukonjeff:
Thanks Nugget Shooter, I am hoping the frost goes out soon so I can drive poles.

And Lburou, sunrise is 5:45 am and sunset is 11:55 pm ,we are gaining light fast now till the solstice.

I did an inspection today of the weaker hive since we are on a flow its doing real good and has four frames of capped brood now and three frames of honey/nectar, I saw a queen cup and thought it might be a good time to add a second deep since we are on a heavy flow at the moment and they are getting honey bound fast, they filled all the drawn comb,and just had a couple of undrawn frames on one side.

I only put one frame of capped brood and a frame of honey as bait up in the second undrawn deep, I hope they can draw comb now rather than swarm like my bees did last year at this time.

Should I have taken down the queen cup ? its on a frame of nectar, why not on a brood frame ? I couldn't tell if a egg was in it. I didn't look real good for swarm cells, I might check again soon.

CBT:
It's Normal to have emergency queen cells on the side of the frame. All is well if their empty.

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