This thread is a repository for bee keepers or those interested.
A couple of years ago, a couple of friends an my brother started puttering with honey bees. I didn't buy off because, well, I've never been a big fan of bees or getting stung by them. Last summer I tagged along a couple of times to check their hives and to remove honey bees from a house, public building and an old garage.
I realized at the end of the summer when I was helping them process some, that it's actually pretty interesting, and fits into my expanding "grow my own" logic. I'm not full blown hippy but I see a lot of logic in the self sustaining food thing and I'm doing some of that too.
That said, this thread is about bees, honey bees, bee keeping and bee fighting war stories.
I'm taking the leap and plan to get 2-3 hives this spring and maybe build some bee swarm traps to make it cheaper or to make a few bucks.
Join me and I'll share the real life lessons of an ameture bee keeper. I'm sure I'm going to learn some things the hard way.
I checked the hives with new queens last night.
1. the queen that flew to the moon, stayed there because she didn't come back. That's $35 oops and now they don't have a queen, so I'll have to solve that.
2. I did see a queen in one of my queen cell splits so that was a nice find.
3. the second purchased queen that wasn't quite released the other day, was still in the queen cage and it was full to capacity with workers. I don't know what to make of it, but there were a ton of bees on the cage. I ended up pulling the staple on the screen to let her out and it looked like the bees balled up on her. I couldn't tell if they were just so starved for a queen they were excited to see her, or if there is indeed another queen in there and they were trying to kill her. I puffed some smoke on them and they got off of her and I saw her run down into the box. I'll check again in a few days and see if she lived and is laying or if I wasted another queen.
I'm picking up 6 nuc(boxes with 5 frames that include a laying queen and some resources) that I'll install Wednesday. Maybe I'll take some video clips of that stuff so people can see it if they want to. [Reply]
I purchased some more Nucs and picked those up and got them into the yards Monday.
The "mean bees" seem to be a little nicer...not nice, but nicer since my treatment with formic pro. It's nasty stuff. I'm still watching and trying to figure out what to do with those hives.
I got a swarm Friday that was about 25 feet up a tree. It was pretty sketchy and I had to climb a ladder that wasn't quite tall enough, hand saw the limb, finish breaking it off without shaking the bees off the branch and carry them down the ladder to shake them into the box. All was going to plan, until the branch broke loose...and the ladder slipped and I was standing on a ladder that had 1 leg hanging on 1 branch, and my right arm was holding a branch with 15-20k bees. After pondering my options I decided to risk letting them ride to the ground and land on me if I lawn-darted myself onto the concrete. It was near a post office and a small crowd gathered and was videoing the event. The ladder wiggled a lot, but I managed to get to the ground without the ladder kicking out and shook them into a box without incident. Only me and the person who does my laundry know how close that was to disaster. Someone sent me a video of that, and while it's not perfect, my girls are making a "dumb ways to die" tik tak from that video. appropriate.
Last night, i got a call about 7:15. I was half an hour away but there was a large swarm in a tree at a rental property with a person allergic to bees living there. I hauled ass(the total speed limit officer) and got home, gathered a box and Mrs Iowanian and went to town to get them.
This closing chapter is where you wish there was a video....
It turned out they were 12-14' in the air, not 6-7'....it was close to dark. They were in a maple tree, so I was able to get a branch, pull it down, grab a higher branch, pull it down repeat. The plan was to grab the branch with the bees, cut it off and then do what I do. The plan worked great, right up until I had grabbed the final branch below the one with the bees and it broke off, sling shotting the branch and shaking off a large amount of bees into the air. I wasn't in a suit and I'd say it would be fair to suggest that 500-1000 landed on me. They weren't happy and I ended up getting 10-15 stings on my forehead and forearms and legs. I'll confess, I didn't keep my cool on that and danced around like a girl afraid of a snake. It could have been a lot worse.
After that, I put on my suit, had the Mrs put on a suit and went through the process again, cut the branch and shook a huge swarm into a box and took it to the quarantine yard just before dark.
I'm not sure of the total number I have now, but we're nearing 30 for sure. I do have honey supers on 4-5 hives and will add more later in the week. We're making honey now boys and girls. [Reply]
I did my splits about three weeks ago. Did the walking method and moved two brood frames, the queen, and a few nectar frames to the nuc boxes and will let the old hives make a new queen. I opened them up ten days later and there were 35 queen cells in one hive and 11 in the other. I smashed all but 5 in each hive to spare the new queen from exerting too much energy hunting down and killing the others. So far so good. I'm opening them up next week to place some Formic Pro pads for varroa even though I didn't see any. I've found it's better to treat, mites or no mites, than risk it. Put the first supers on the original hives last week and will add another deep to each of the new hives I installed the nucs into two weeks ago. [Reply]
A guy showed me a trick I'm going to start using now that you mention queen cells.
Drill a 1" hole in a 2x4 and make a 3 1/2" mark.
Cut a 3.5x3.5 square of 1/8th hardware cloth.
Lay the square over the hole, punch it through with a dowel rod.
It makes a mesh "cup" that you can put over those cells..and if you get in there when they emerge, you can save some of those virgin queens before they get killed. pull them, mark them, add them to a small nuc for a "reserve" queen. I'm going to start doing this, but didn't see any cells when I went through hives yesterday.
I wish you were closer...I'd love to have a frame of that many cells. that's awesome.
This is the first year I've used formic pro and I'm putting it on every single swarm I catch. My hives and the nucs I'm buying have been treated. The way it smells, I feel like I'm putting a nuclear waste patty in the hives, and the bees react like you just showed them a photo of their mama naked...they hate it. [Reply]
I got a call last night that there was a bee swarm on the local HS baseball field. I went and got it this morning, super simple.
I went to work for a couple of hours, phone rang with a swarm in town...left to go get my stuff and while I was loading it, 2 more calls came in.
The second was about 15' above the ground on an oak limb that was probably a foot around, so it couldn't be shaken. I had purchased a telescoping pole, and cut the top off of a 5 gallon water cooler jug, duct taped it on there and used it to scoop the bees off the swarm and dump them into a box. After about 3 tries I had about 75% of the bees, but they weren't happy with my method. within half an hour-45 minutes, the rest of the bees had joined them in the box.
The third was a simple shake into a box.
The last one is about 30' up a cedar tree at a local cemetery. I considered some sketchy ideas including climbing the tree and cutting the limb, extending a ladder and trying to use the bee pole mentioned above, but it was so bushy around them I didn't think it would work. I decided to bait a deep super with some old comb(and 7 new) and some lemon grass oil and put it on a taller headstone a few yards away. When I left, there were already quite a few bees exploring it, so I'm hoping to go back later and find them all in a box, so I can duct tape the entrance and get them out of there before memorial day traffic.
banger of a day, and only 1 sting....on the buttock.
Oh, and the mean bees I collected a couple of weeks ago....definitely still the devil and soon those queens are gonna DIE between my thumb and finger. I hate those bees. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Iowanian:
Today has been a banger.
I got a call last night that there was a bee swarm on the local HS baseball field. I went and got it this morning, super simple.
I went to work for a couple of hours, phone rang with a swarm in town...left to go get my stuff and while I was loading it, 2 more calls came in.
The second was about 15' above the ground on an oak limb that was probably a foot around, so it couldn't be shaken. I had purchased a telescoping pole, and cut the top off of a 5 gallon water cooler jug, duct taped it on there and used it to scoop the bees off the swarm and dump them into a box. After about 3 tries I had about 75% of the bees, but they weren't happy with my method. within half an hour-45 minutes, the rest of the bees had joined them in the box.
The third was a simple shake into a box.
The last one is about 30' up a cedar tree at a local cemetery. I considered some sketchy ideas including climbing the tree and cutting the limb, extending a ladder and trying to use the bee pole mentioned above, but it was so bushy around them I didn't think it would work. I decided to bait a deep super with some old comb(and 7 new) and some lemon grass oil and put it on a taller headstone a few yards away. When I left, there were already quite a few bees exploring it, so I'm hoping to go back later and find them all in a box, so I can duct tape the entrance and get them out of there before memorial day traffic.
banger of a day, and only 1 sting....on the buttock.
Oh, and the mean bees I collected a couple of weeks ago....definitely still the devil and soon those queens are gonna DIE between my thumb and finger. I hate those bees.
We're having a drought this year that seems to be slowing down production pretty badly right now.
Overall, my bees are healthy and doing ok, but I think I'm seeing a trend. The hives I treated with Formic Pro are really slowed down from where they were performing. I've heard from another place that they see a slow down in production and say it's very hard on queens. I'm not certain how much I'll use it, outside of high mite loads this fall. Not sure.
The 2 hives that had been super mean, seem to have calmed down and they're definitely making honey now. I'm still skeptical of their behavior but 2 trips in a row to check them, they haven't tried to make me die.
I'm exploring a couple of new products to make, and I purchased some propalis traps. I think that will sell for a good value and it's a way to get a sellable product out of hives that might not produce enough honey to pay their rent this year.
Hopefully a good rain comes soon and kicks the honey flow back into gear or it's going to be yet again, another learning year. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Iowanian:
We're having a drought this year that seems to be slowing down production pretty badly right now.
Overall, my bees are healthy and doing ok, but I think I'm seeing a trend. The hives I treated with Formic Pro are really slowed down from where they were performing. I've heard from another place that they see a slow down in production and say it's very hard on queens. I'm not certain how much I'll use it, outside of high mite loads this fall. Not sure.
The 2 hives that had been super mean, seem to have calmed down and they're definitely making honey now. I'm still skeptical of their behavior but 2 trips in a row to check them, they haven't tried to make me die.
I'm exploring a couple of new products to make, and I purchased some propalis traps. I think that will sell for a good value and it's a way to get a sellable product out of hives that might not produce enough honey to pay their rent this year.
Hopefully a good rain comes soon and kicks the honey flow back into gear or it's going to be yet again, another learning year.
The drought is in your part of the world? I knew it was dry further north but I didn’t realize it was down there.
You know I’m firmly in the fuck drought camp. [Reply]
If your bees are at all dependent on clover fields, they're fucked this year. It's been absolutely terrible and if it doesn't rain soon, there won't be a second cutting bloom.
The drought monitor map is a good 2-3 weeks behind on how fast we're drying out. The silage corn was rolling at 10 am this morning. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ghak99:
If your bees are at all dependent on clover fields, they're fucked this year. It's been absolutely terrible and if it doesn't rain soon, there won't be a second cutting bloom.
The drought monitor map is a good 2-3 weeks behind on how fast we're drying out. The silage corn was rolling at 10 am this morning.
Originally Posted by Tylerthigpen!1!:
Down there? Does Iowanian not live in....Iowa?
He lives in Iowa. The part of the drought I've read about is in the northern cornbelt. I wouldn't call where he lives the northern cornbelt.
There is a pretty big ass are of the highest producing ground in the nation that is in a substantial drought. And it (probably - I can't ever remember when they tassel) getting crunch time for corn. Beans are salvageable yet, but we all play the farming game, but the cornbelt drives the boat. [Reply]
