Anyone keep Bees?

From what I remember from helping my dad with his bees, color is dependent on what is flowering at the time, and, what they are working. Remember, honey bee's work about a three mile radius. So, It's good to know what is flowering at different times of the year, and, what types of flowers you have within the 3 mile radius. Dark honey usually comes from a big mix of flowering plants and or trees. Usually the darker honey is made earlier in the spring. You basically rob the hive at different times of the year. Early honey you will get the darker honey, later on if you have Sour Wood tree's you rob the hive after those blooms start to wilt and fall. Same goes for locust and so on. Different areas will produce different honeys. I once seen some from the swamps in Lumberton NC, that was a purplish tent to it. I am sure you have heard of people taking honey to help with alergies . If that's what you do, then the earlier honey is best as most peoples alergies act up in the spring, so the mix of flowers is best to build up the antibodies.
 
upnover said:
I once seen some from the swamps in Lumberton NC, that was a purplish tent to it.
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And can confirm that kudzu (blooms generally hidden _under_ leaves) will cause reddish color w/ slight CHERRY flavor.

From what I've been told (locals & coworkers)... aside from very slight/nearly undetectable differences in color/"flavor", Sourwood's main benefit is that it keeps the honey from crystalizing over time...

We're not quite ready now, but planning to build a couple swarm boxes & top bar hive(s) in hopes of attracting some locals next spring...
 
Caver Dave said:
And can confirm that kudzu (blooms generally hidden _under_ leaves) will cause reddish color w/ slight CHERRY flavor.

From what I've been told (locals & coworkers)... aside from very slight/nearly undetectable differences in color/"flavor", Sourwood's main benefit is that it keeps the honey from crystalizing over time...

We're not quite ready now, but planning to build a couple swarm boxes & top bar hive(s) in hopes of attracting some locals next spring...
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generaly , the bees won't be attracted to a box. You have to catch the swarm and put them in the box. I have saw my dad take a box to a swarm, take his bare hand and being very easy, move the bees around until he found the queen. He would scoop her up, put her in the new hive, and the other bees in the swarm would go into where she was.
 
upnover said:
generaly , the bees won't be attracted to a box. You have to catch the swarm and put them in the box. I have saw my dad take a box to a swarm, take his bare hand and being very easy, move the bees around until he found the queen. He would scoop her up, put her in the new hive, and the other bees in the swarm would go into where she was.
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Little dose of sprayed sugar water helps too.
 
McCracken said:
Just put the feeder on my hive today. From what the locals say, now is the time.
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Summer dearth. Our hives are weak from late swarms. Plus my wife loves spending money in the kitchen. We have been feeding for over a month once a week. Now under advice of a local master keeper she is going to twice a week.

At this rate this hobby is surpassing money spent on four wheel drives in a long while.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
Summer dearth. Our hives are weak from late swarms. Plus my wife loves spending money in the kitchen. We have been feeding for over a month once a week. Now under advice of a local master keeper she is going to twice a week.

At this rate this hobby is surpassing money spent on four wheel drives in a long while.
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Find a local bakery that uses fondant and see if they will give you the old stuff. I use it in winter to feed bees but they could eat it now as well
 
Loganwayne said:
Find a local bakery that uses fondant and see if they will give you the old stuff. I use it in winter to feed bees but they could eat it now as well
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do you feed it strait, or dilute/mix it in a liquid/water?
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
do you feed it strait, or dilute/mix it in a liquid/water?
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My wife being a cake Nazi hates fondant. The other half of that is getting clear non colored stuff......and what else is in it? I worked for a place that made High Fructose corn syrup. Many folks used certain grades of that stuff. After working at that facility I hate consuming so much of that in things I eat. I won't feed it to bees.
 
We kept bees for several years at home and at work. You can get a swarm to come to a box if you use pheromone. It's always better to catch a swarm hanging on a limb, spray them with sugar water, and gently clip or saw the limb off then give it a quick shake over the hive box. Don't forget to put a queen excluder between the bottom board and the hive body to keep the queen in the hive. We caught swarms in the swanky part of town and the queens wanted to leave their new double wide trailer if we didn't use the excluder.
 
Caver Dave said:
I'm in a FB group where 100s (of not 1000s) of folks catching swarms in "swarm boxes" (more nuk sized) laced with lemon grass oil (and other similar) commercial products...
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Link to said group? I'm all about some learning.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
Link to said group? I'm all about some learning.
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I was going to post about this. The lemongrass oil not the FB stuff. It works and have heard of pretty good success using the technique. Why lemongrass? It mimics the queen pheromone from what I hear, which is strange because you would think they wouldn't want to go somewhere where a queen already is. Maybe it's an old scent like when a floozy walks out of a room and her smell of Bath and Body Works plumaria lingers.
 

This fella is local to me. His father and himself are master bee keepers. They are also just really good folks.
Check his channel out and give him a like or support.....or just learn a bunch.
 
Just helped unload about 40 large hives. They have to go get at least 40 more later this week. Around the local area the family we helped has that or more they don't move plus great numbers of nucs and a full time queen rearing grafting program! Holy Beeman!
 
Anybody working with their bees yet?

I built a few candy feeders. We are trying to get our two caught swarms over the hump. We fed them hard all summer. We was scared they were getting light to fast.

We placed a nearly full candy board feeder on both hives.
Our second caught swarm has always lagged a bit. They are our arseholes too. They hardly have touched the sugar candy.
Our stronger hive devoured the whole batch. We checked about late January and they neither had taken much interest. I wasn't terrible concerned. Today we checked and they had built comb in the unit and she was picked clean.
We added a protein cake to each and split out the un used candy from the other hive.
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What we salvaged from the other candy board. This is a spare.

We also went ahead and stacked a honey super on each and put a queen excluder between it and the two deep supers.
 
Funny you bumped this. My buddy called today to ask if I wanted a split this Spring. My hive looks like it's made it so far. This week is going to be warm so I expect a lot of movement from these wee beasties.
 
McCracken said:
Funny you bumped this. My buddy called today to ask if I wanted a split this Spring. My hive looks like it's made it so far. This week is going to be warm so I expect a lot of movement from these wee beasties.
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My wife is talking doing splits and.....yadda yadda.

I'm like: I'll be happy these don't starve and I get some Honey!
We have sunk a small fortune in these two free swarms.

We got a lot of learning to do still.
 
The Bee Keeping world lost a good member this week. He was a founder of the Alexander Bee Keeping Group and a mentor to many. Having kept the Bees of one of his 8 brothers he built from that point. He tended hives for over 45 years. He had a 30 plus frame slinger to give you an idea of how many bees he has kept or helped with.
Along side the hay, cows, fishing, camping, Church, and mainly God first amongst it all......he was someone I called my Uncle and family. Technically my Grandmothers brother.
Rest in Peace Larry Bolick.
 
Welp. We did some bee work about two weeks ago in the warm spell. Saw a lot of signs of prepared swarm activity.
Threw on a honey super for each to give them room.
Cold snap. Fast forward to today. We had numerous capped queen cells large numbers and a shrunken down queen. She was ready to get gone.
We split the brood and split the capped queen cells, destroying extra cells.
Two capped cells for each deep. We then put the queen in a nuc box with some brood and some bees of her own.
If it works we just grew two new hives and will place the old queen in another super of her own.
 
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My wife snapped a pick of our little honey flow. First time ever doing it. Our hives had set backs so we only pulled some off one, it also swarmed on us so less bees.
 
Got into the hives today. I suck as a beekeeper. Back about 10 years ago with no kids I had all this time to fool with them. Now, it's a struggle. Fast forward to today and I haven't been in the bees in about 3 weeks. When I left them, I had two full supers of honey and starting to draw out the third in my big hive.

The other hive was upside down. Laying in the super and no work in the brood chamber. I flipped it and let them work back up into the brood.

I go into the big hive today and my numbers are way down. Splochy brood, no sign of a queen with about 5 superceder cells hanging around. Wax moths in the upper super with larvae crawling around. Hive beetles joined the fray too. The two supers I had were either chewed up or half empty now. I decided to pull the super with the wax moth damage and set it out in the sun. I figure I'll let the bees clean it up and take what they can to out in the other super. I left the new super that they never started drawing out to see what happens. I put in a beetle trap so hopefully that will reduce those numbers. Lastly, I swapped out the inner top cover. I'd been running one with a slot in the front. The other hive doesn't have this slot and also doesn't have moths so I'm thinking that may be the issue since the moth damage was in the top super.

The other hive I flipped and put the brood back on the bottom and put the super on top. It's numbers were booming. Lots of good brood and lots of coverage on the frames. I'm thinking of trying to steal a frame of good brood and putting it in the shitty hive to see if they can turn a cell into a queen.

We'll see what happens. If they can make it through winter I'll be happy. However, I've got to start feeding them. Around here in east TN you've got to start feeding in July. The dearth starts now and it lasts until late fall.
 
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