Bee hive components are often times referred to as “furniture”. Starting off, Christ the King’s apiary will house two colonies of bees that we we will receive some time in early March. These bees will come as two distinct small over-wintered colonies. We will house them initially in a single “deep” hive body with a hive top feeder above.
Inside the deep hive body there will be 10 wooden frames that contain a beeswax covered plastic foundation that the bees will use to build beeswax comb on both side of. The process building comb is called drawing out. A plastic foundation that has wax comb on it is said to be drawn out.
The bees we receive will come with five frames of drawn comb. On three of the frames, the bees will have deposited their “brood” or baby bees. The other frames will be covered with resources (pollen, nectar or Honey). Each colony will start off with approximately 6000 bees.