At the beginning of 2017 I have five hives. Two in the garden, and three at an out apiary at a local golf club. A naming convention is required so I can keep records effectively and know what’s going on with each hive. To keep it simple (at least at the beginning), it will start off with the apiaries being ‘Garden’ and ‘Windlesham’, respectively. The Flow hives will be Flow 1 and Flow 2. The National hives will be National 1, 2, 3. The queens should probably also be tracked so good performing lineage can be taken advantage of, so from now I’ll have Q1,2,3 etc. The current queens are in hives, but the naming will not be linked to hives. That leaves us with.
Garden – Flow 1 – Q1
Garden – National 1 – Q2
Windlesham – National 2 – Q3
Windlesham – National 3 – Q4
Windlesham – National 4 – Q5
For expansion requirements I have an additional Langstroth hive which will become Flow 2, and an additional National hive. All of the National hives will be used with traditional supers, of which I have about 10. The Langstroth hives will be flow supered for the main harvest, but for anything near Oil Seed Rape (OSR) (none of mine right now), or heather (all of mine right now), the Flow supers will be replaced with regular supers to avoid complications with thick set honey.
Hive records will be kept with each hive, and additional notes will be made here.
