Hello from Germany

[Gary]

Hello,
 I am a soldier serving in the Army here in Germany. I am originally from West Long Branch NJ. My grandfather was in the Navy stationed at Lakehurst (he landed dirigibles amoung other things) no not the Hindenburg. John I read about this forum a few years ago when I was looking into bee keeping for reasons unknown I passed it up. Now I have revisited it because it was posted on Beesource. I read about your father on your home page, needless to say I felt a connection ( I don't know what else to say I recently buried mine, of all dates 11 Sept 03 ironic huh seams like yesterday). Anyway you must think I'm a crack pot by now: I'm not, my secure e-mail addy is gary.piantanida at us.army.mil if you wish to confirm.
   I live here in Germany where I will retire soon. I am 41 I have 5 hives all TBH I love to build them. My wife Sylvia is German and I have two children Antony 2 and Michelle 4.  I plan to increase and run a bee bussiness here in beautiful Bavaria.
  I have to attend a school at FT Lenoard Wood MS and will be comming home to see the family after that, I will be in the area end of June beginning of July.
  My web site is new and has a lot of general info on TBH hives and some cool pics I am working on changing the information to my own experiences as I build them. This is my third year in beekeeping and the second with my own hives.

[Miss Chick-a-BEE]

So good to have you here Gary. John's off on a vacation in his RV, but when he gets home and checks in on the forum, I'm sure he'll really enjoy writing to you.

I experimented a little with top bars, and found it was a wonderful alternative. My top bars were very crude though, and a little difficult to keep spaced right. I just recently took out the last of my top bars and harvested the honey from them. In their place I put medium foundationless frames. One of my hives is designed with some of the concepts of the top bar hives. It has one long hive for the brood that holds I think 24 frames. The foundation runs parallel to the entrance, and I can add two regular sized hive boxes on top of it from front to back. I've seen that the queen likes to build the brood mostly from the front, so I take advantage of that by adding boxes to the front when I want more brood. I let her fill up as far back in the long brood box as she will, then put the box on the front, also taking advantage of the fact that the queen likes to go up in building brood. After the queen has filled the equivalent of three brood boxes of bees, I add honey supers to the back. It's my largest and fastest growing hive. A large hive can be very tricky though.

Once again..... good to have you here.

Beth

[Horns Pure Honey]

It is great to have you here Gary. Beth is right, John and his wife are on another trip but should be back soon. He always loves to see new members, esp. ones with sim. to himself, lol. Hope to see lots of posts from ya and ask any questions you need. bye

[FrogPond]

Greetings! I joined recently and find this group helpful and quick to offer suggestions. Enjoy your time here - your family sounds wonderful. Good luck with the bees!

[SherryL]

Welcome Gary!  Great website, I really enjoyed your pics.  Loved the ones of the honey house too.  I've seen those before, but only from the outside.  Very interesting concept.  Hope you decide to hang around the boards here now.

sherry