Year one has about eight moments that matter and a great deal of leaving them alone
in between. Put in the day your bees arrive and here's the rest of it, dated.
—
Your first year
You are probably not harvesting honey this year, and that's not a failure. A first-year
colony spends the whole season building the comb and the population it needs to survive winter.
Everything they make is theirs. A package that draws two full boxes and goes into November heavy
has had an excellent year. Taking honey off a first-year hive in most of the country is how
beginners lose their bees in February and conclude beekeeping is hard.
The single most common first-year mistake is opening the hive too often. Every inspection
sets them back — comb gets broken, brood gets chilled, and there's a real chance of rolling the
queen. Once every week to ten days is plenty in spring, and less than that once they're
established. If you want to watch bees, sit beside the entrance; you'll learn more from ten
minutes there than from another trip through the brood nest.
Mites will surprise you. New beekeepers reliably assume a brand-new colony is clean.
Packages come with mites, nucs come with mites, and a first-year colony that never gets checked
is the classic dead-out in a beginner's second spring. Wash them, don't guess.