Anyone keep Bees?

paradisePWoffrd said:
I read that as 70% honey 30% water.
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Duh, 7 plus 3 is 10..... I messed that up. But I was thinking in the right direction.

To cut 30 percent means add that much water to the other.....

Making sure is wasn't supposed to be the other way around.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
Duh, 7 plus 3 is 10..... I messed that up. But I was thinking in the right direction.

To cut 30 percent means add that much water to the other.....

Making sure is wasn't supposed to be the other way around.
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It could be the other way around, but I would think that would create a lot of water for them to consume vs a syrup
 
Little north of 300 lbs. of honey this go around.
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Now if it'll stop raining I can get some nourishment back on some hives.
@McCracken how are your boxes? I got one I was going to pull two more medium supers from. They are my meanest hive. Been avoiding them and I'm paying for it. They where showing swarm tendencies mid flow. My guess is the queen got shrunk down and got through the excluder........or I got a double queen issue. The latter is less likely but if they had a more mild mannered genetic queen it would make me happy. Got to dissect the the top mediums and the bottom double deeps to see what's going on.

Moving forward I have my biggest boxes in double deeps, excluder and a feed super on top. My hopes are to get that super and all the upper deep can hold of bees and stores for winter. Plan is to make big splits next year or start about 10 nucs.
 
Unfortunately I lost mine in early Spring. The warmer winter months caused them to start ramping up sooner than expected and then we had a cold snap at the end. They burned through their supplies and starved to death. I went to open the hives up and nothing came out.

I would go ahead and requeen that hot hive if given the chance. Otherwise, expect the anger for a while. The good news is, a hotter hive generally produces a lot more of the good stuff.
 
@tlucier and @jeepinmatt I helped a friend pull 1600 pounds off his hives then helped loaded and relocated them to make sourwood. He is in his sixties and has really shrank down his operation.

The supers was double stacked floor to ceiling in his basement. We will pull almost the same amount tomorrow and move those bees as well to a sourwood location. He has had as many as four or more loads to various locations just for sourwood.

In his eyes he said this year was dismal to his past glory days...... You sure couldn't tell my arms that.

His son another mentor and friend is doing that much and more while working a full time job. His dad helps and I help sporadically.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
@tlucier and @jeepinmatt I helped a friend pull 1600 pounds off his hives then helped loaded and relocated them to make sourwood. He is in his sixties and has really shrank down his operation.

The supers was double stacked floor to ceiling in his basement. We will pull almost the same amount tomorrow and move those bees as well to a sourwood location. He has had as many as four or more loads to various locations just for sourwood.

In his eyes he said this year was dismal to his past glory days...... You sure couldn't tell my arms that.

His son another mentor and friend is doing that much and more while working a full time job. His dad helps and I help sporadically.
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Man, I would love to have someone like that close by, to teach me the ropes. I have considered getting bees myself, and have provided a home for others to keep them, but it seems like an expensive hobby to just try and figure it out as you go.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
Man, I would love to have someone like that close by, to teach me the ropes. I have considered getting bees myself, and have provided a home for others to keep them, but it seems like an expensive hobby to just try and figure it out as you go.
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Yes, yes, and yes. Drive down some I'll stick your head in a hive. Got an extra veil or two.
 
I guess I keep bees now.

Had a good sized tree fall in our backyard 2 weeks ago that knocked the power out for us and 45 of our neighbors. Had a honey bee nest halfway up the trunk. Luckily one of my neighbors used to keep bee's so he came over with all the gear and a hive setup. Had to open up the tree with the chainsaw.

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We assembled a 10 tray hive and packed 7 empty trays with empty comb as well as honey comb, remaining 3 trays had empty wax comb and placed it about 60' away from the old hive. Used a bucket vacuum to get most of them out on Friday and yesterday. Pretty sure we got the queen yesterday as activity at the old hive is non existent this morning. Will be feeding them sugar water to keep them happy.

I still need to do a lot of reading on maintenance and upkeep. Luckily, these bees are very docile and don't mind you handling them.

I did pull out two good sized chunks of honey comb and got about 3/4 of a pint of honey. Dark golden brown and delicious.
 
Welcome to a new addiction.......it as bad as tools or 4wd if you ask me. Maybe worse sense the wife is one hundred percent on board.
Hollar if you need help. We just order 10 more deeps, 10 mediums, and five sets of tops and bottoms today.
 
I've wanted to keep bee's for awhile. Just never had the opportunity to go take the class etc. Then the bee's fell into my lap (or yard). I did add a feeder into the hive last night and put an entrance reducer in. It was pretty dark and there were only a few bees that came and "greeted" me. I'm assuming that the majority of them were sleeping or working on rearranging the hive.

My plan is to leave them alone for a week or two and then pull some trays to see if there are any baby bees/evidence of new comb material.

Hopefully they take to the new hive and do well. We did notice at the old hive there was larva infestation(moths?) My neighbor said that it was pretty normal and there wasn't much to we could do about it. Hopefully, the relocation will take care of the majority and the bees can fight them off.
 
YJJPWrangler said:
I've wanted to keep bee's for awhile. Just never had the opportunity to go take the class etc. Then the bee's fell into my lap (or yard). I did add a feeder into the hive last night and put an entrance reducer in. It was pretty dark and there were only a few bees that came and "greeted" me. I'm assuming that the majority of them were sleeping or working on rearranging the hive.

My plan is to leave them alone for a week or two and then pull some trays to see if there are any baby bees/evidence of new comb material.

Hopefully they take to the new hive and do well. We did notice at the old hive there was larva infestation(moths?) My neighbor said that it was pretty normal and there wasn't much to we could do about it. Hopefully, the relocation will take care of the majority and the bees can fight them off.
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upon inspection take inventory of the numbers......if they are fairly low and have more comb then bees your setting up another infestation of wax moth larva. You can pull comb and make a make shift divider to make a smaller box or put them in a 5 frame nuc reducing comb to police and space to work. The wax moth want kill them but they make an over all mess add stress and could make them abscond. I like 7 to eight frames of bees mid day while all the foragers are out on a 10 frame box. Honey supers are a little different but even then to little bees to do police work is a problem.

Edit: Root cause was most likely a very old hive location varying populations and to much comb vs current population. After the summer solstice all hives; especially wild hives, slowly but surely ramp down growth and bee numbers. The queens will slow down laying rates and eventually the biology and metabolism of the new bees changes over to winter bees........and they live longer.
 
Comb in the old hive was 8-10' long with the comb at the bottom being very old(brown). When we inspect in a few weeks, I'll start counting larvae. We tried to remove them as well as possible when we stocked the new box but I'm sure we missed a few.
 
YJJPWrangler said:
Comb in the old hive was 8-10' long with the comb at the bottom being very old(brown). When we inspect in a few weeks, I'll start counting larvae. We tried to remove them as well as possible when we stocked the new box but I'm sure we missed a few.
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Just went back over this....don't wait. If it's a good queen and they are gonna stay she will be laying now. It will be hard to get a good mated queen the longer you wait. Drones are fewer and fewer now all the way to when they get booted for the winter. If they went queenless you'll hopefully have signs. Depends if they have young enough eggs upon discovery. Now isn't ideal to be needing a queen. If they have eggs and are in queen cups with royal jelly you got a time line. Worst case a queen is roughly a month from we need one to laying. If you run into trouble I have contacts who may still be grafting queens.



On another note two years running I have had a box go plum swarmy in July. Not a regular occurrence or a good thing. Both large swarms from it hit the trees so high I could not get them. Now I'm in the late queen event boat with that box.
 
Well my beekeeping experience is over. Hive swarmed out late last week. I thought they were doing well, getting the box cleaned out etc but I guess not. I know they are still around as they are all over my hydrangeas. I can not find where they swarmed to. They are not at the old hive at all. Looks like I'll be doing some more reading and getting some opinions on what/where to order in the spring.
 
YJJPWrangler said:
Well my beekeeping experience is over. Hive swarmed out late last week. I thought they were doing well, getting the box cleaned out etc but I guess not. I know they are still around as they are all over my hydrangeas. I can not find where they swarmed to. They are not at the old hive at all. Looks like I'll be doing some more reading and getting some opinions on what/where to order in the spring.
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Big ol 🙁....but sounds like your hooked.

As for bee purchase. I have two friends who book nucs for sale every year. Like over a 100 between them both plus queens.

If I get it right I plan to sell around 5 to 8 myself.
 
@WARRIORWELDING I'd be down for a nuc or two. I've got a good area to house them, especially with the trees that are coming down later this week. I'm just unsure on what/when to buy and the quantity. I'd hate to buy a bunch, then lose half or more to disease, swarms etc. But it sounds like that's the "normal" for keeping bees.
 
@YJJPWrangler very rare to find honeybees in the wild like that nowadays! Those make the best hives, if they can survive unattended in a tree they probably have superior genetics.
I maintain 2-4 hives primarily for pollination of our garden, but we also harvest a modest amount of honey. I do very little management, I go in the hives maybe twice a year and I will treat for Varroa in the spring and fall, but that's it. This year I've had one hive vanish, it was a swarm I caught earlier in the spring and it never seemed to flourish. Currently have 2 hives going strong and I got about 40lbs of honey off one of the hives this year.
 
They are still somewhere around the house, most likely in the woods in another hollow tree or stump. Pretty bummed about them leaving as they were very docile .Similar situation. I want them to pollinate the garden/flowers around the house/neighbors and pull some honey out from time to time.
 
YJJPWrangler said:
@WARRIORWELDING I'd be down for a nuc or two. I've got a good area to house them, especially with the trees that are coming down later this week. I'm just unsure on what/when to buy and the quantity. I'd hate to buy a bunch, then lose half or more to disease, swarms etc. But it sounds like that's the "normal" for keeping bees.
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Spring purchase, good nuc with a mated queen. Right before or just into the honey flow is best. After that you have several options to over winter. We went balls deep catching two swarms and putting them in deeps. Over wintered them in a single and fed the snot out of them for the better part of a year and a half.
You can try to grow a Five frame nuc to a double story and over winter. They do well in our area if you buy a good pine box for the R value.
You could also buy a super strong nuc and place those frames in a deep and grow. If that is the choice you transport them in a cardboard nuc to your box. Either or traditional nucs are the frames and bees you supply the box. If you don't have one some keepers sell with a transport cardboard or for much higher the whole box. I will be offering the cardboard transport or placing in your box.

Package bees are shook bees forced together from several hives. You introduce them to a box with a foreign queen. Most of the time she is sold as a mated queen with attendants. Those bees have to establish themselves with everything. A nuc is a fancy term for small colony. Even a swarm has a better start over a package. Swarms already have worked together and when leaving take a pile of honey with them in the honey gut.

Packages do have a place. I sold a very large shook package to another keeper this spring whose over wintered bees was small and failing. Little sugar water spray to ease the introduction helps. When you can boost numbers it always helps. Everyone in a hive has a specific job. Less of every specific job means the hive struggles.

Honeybee Democracy is an excellent book, btw.
 
On another note I fed over 100 hives between 6 thirty and 10. Four separate apiaries. Tard.
 
Do any of you folks that keep bees keep their wax? If so, I'd be interested in some to waterproof my trailer & sideboards.
 
Lurch830 said:
Do any of you folks that keep bees keep their wax? If so, I'd be interested in some to waterproof my trailer & sideboards.
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I use all my surplus currently. I prep foundation with it. I'd hit up a more commercial guy or even Amazon. For most small sellers that stuff is gold.

How many pounds you need? I can ask two of my friends who have larger operations.
 
WARRIORWELDING said:
I use all my surplus currently. I prep foundation with it. I'd hit up a more commercial guy or even Amazon. For most small sellers that stuff is gold.

How many pounds you need? I can ask two of my friends who have larger operations.
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I honestly have no idea...enough to coat the boards for my trailer and the sideboards & tailboard for my C30 after I char them. A coworker says she has plenty, so I might be set.
My google-fu says you have to process the raw beeswax and then cut it with mineral oil or boiled linseed oil? But gives no amount needed for an 18' 2x6.
 
Been stupidly busy. Honey harvest hurt by delayed gathering of the nectar from the "GODS".

Should have pulled supers a month ago. Little girls ate good and reduced my poundage. Well less I have to feed due to all this dry hot weather.

Worked all day yesterday and started early. Uncapped an extracted our whole harvest after pulling supers before lunch.

2 am we have about 7 five galloon buckets of spring honey.

Now to get those wet supers cleaned up by the bees and reset for fall/ winter prep and treat for pest.
 
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