I am hoping it warms up enough this week that I can check and put some sugar in for them. I'm sure the guys further south are ahead of me but I've still got snow on the ground....and flooding rains today. May hives had snow pile down up on them most of the winter. I dug out the entrances but assume the snow helped insulate the, if it didn't being , moisture into the hives.

If mine are still alive I'll get them fed and try to keep them going until dandelion bloom.

Thanks, Iowanian!

I'm taking a four day course (spread over several months) from my county ag office. Just last weekend girlfriend and I attended a class on swarm control and got to split some hives. Good stuff. ( http://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/alachuaco/...lachua-county/)

We are blessed with warmer weather most the year down here, so I think wintering is less of a worry here in Florida. But, Varroa mites and small hive beetles love it down here too...

I did notice the kid who grew up around bees was wearing short sleeves and no gloves. I think I may step it back to gloves and hat (and long sleeve shirt of course) in the future. Well, for doing a cutout, I guess I would want a full spacesuit honestly, but just working with the bees in good weather, they were pretty agreeable really.

Springtime
 

I'm liking the start of this season much more than last year!
I think the cold winter we had helped conserve their food stores and I didn't have to do any emergency feeding like I did last year.

I'm gonna go ahead and say at this stage, all 3 of my hives have overwintered successfully. 100% survival for the first time!! Maybe, just maybe, I finally did something right.

I've given all 3 some Super DFM to help give them a boost. They really seem to like it, they eat it right away after I sprinkle it on the tops of the frames.

I've made a 4 chamber queen castle (just a reg deep divided into 4 separate chambers), and I hope to be doing some splits with queen cells fairly soon. No queen cells yet, though.

I've got a package of Saskatraz bees coming, and it'll be interesting to compare the different behaviors between species. I've only worked Italians until now.

I hope everybody's hives survived, and may your nectar flow be long, sweet, and voluminous!

This is great.

This thread is fantastic.

Glad to hear that red.

Mine lived also...but others I know and help all lost about half.

Last weekend I flipped my boxes(switch the top hive box with the bottom) and cleaned the bottom board. You do this because the top box is pretty much empty if honey and you put that box on the bottom so the Queen with lay in that box and leave room for honey making above.

My welfare apartment hive had a lot of dead bees in the bottom, already has hive beetle issues and some roaches. I'm going to pinch the queen soon and replace her and see if they can be turned into something useful.

The hive I got from the cemetery swarm a couple of years ago is roaring....enough bees I'm afraid they will swarm. I'm considering doing a split with that hive soon.

I hadn't fed but it was a rough winter so I took the easy route and on a warm day a month ago dumped some dry sugar on the top cover. Moisture seemed to harden the sugar and it worked fine. I saw tree blooms earlier in the week and flowers bloomed today. Should be good to go.

I hope to get some swarm traps out this weekend or soon after. I'm pretty excited to see if I can make that work.

We have only one warré style hive. Wintered great. Didn’t feed.

I’m of the mind that a healthy hive *will* swarm, so we gladly just collect it if possible and start a hive for a friend or another for ourselves.

None of the Springfield area beekeepers caught ANY swarms last year. Zero. It was strange.

If any planeteers in SGF want to keep bees and need a gentle push down the slope, I’m good at shoving.

I built a few more hives so I’m ready to trap a few swarms.


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This doesn't have anything to do with my bees but it's still interesting to me.

I didn't know it before but Notre-Dame Cathederal has a small Apiary. A guy in Paris as part of a bio-diversity program has been placing hives on roof tops in the city for several years and placed hives on top of a roof at Notre Dame in 2013.

The bees this guy keeps are "brother adam" which aren't very popular in the US but are known for being gentle. This line of bees was developed by a benedictine monk named Brother Adam who started bee keeping in 1915. He traveled Europe, the Near East and North Africa finding parasite resistant bees and developed the Buckfast strain in Buckfast Abby after losing more than half of his hives.

They keep the Brother Adam bees for their nature, because there is apparently some blowback due to honey bee swarms in the urban area. A lot of the urban beeks don't do splits and hive management and end up with alot of swarms.



I also learned reading about this that St. Ambrose is the Patron saint of bee keepers. The story has something to do with a swarm of honey bees landing on his face when he was a baby sleeping in a crib.


I just found it interesting that one of the issues with the fire yesterday was removal of the bee colonies.

I have a new hive in which I just installed a package of bees. The western Kansas beekeepers association orders them by the crate and we go pick them up. I am using a flowhive;

https://www.honeyflow.com

which promises "honey on tap!"

After MUCH youtube study and being full of bee - e - ness I sat out to trap a hive in the wall of my father in laws old farm house. Guess what, they are africanized!

Also guess what, they side of my head is swollen like a pumpkin and my wife actually feels sorry for me! I should have known when they acted the opposite of any hive I've been around to kill them all first but the thought of saying "I trapped that hive"was too strong.

Tonight they die,,,,, every f'ing one of them! Then I will remove and dicard the chemical laden comb, rinse the inner wall with clorox and seal the hole.
Never again. :harumph:

PS It's nice to have my wife feeling sorry for me though.:)

I'm curious how/why you think they are Africanized?

Depending on your experience they could have beaten you up due to weather conditions, time of day, banging around...or in my case just smelling way too much like a griz or something.

Take some pics.

Going to my second Bee Keeping meeting. I will buy 2 hives. They intrigue me and have the land to go for it.

I read "The 101 Bee Keeping for Dummies" book and seems there are a lot of variables involved.

My wife hates bee's so this will be an adventure.

1- they react differently than other bee hives. A puff of smoke they attack, a spritz of sugarwater they attack. They attack directly and in groups. They are direct in all patterns of come and go not lazy like a honey bee. Lastly I looked at two under a microscope.
2- This is the second hive I have dealt with. Once you handle them you will understand. I hope you never have to.

They are dead now if you want to verify I will send you some!:hmmm:

At what price do you sell the honey? To be honest, it sounds to me like given the amount of time, effort and costs, there can't be much profit margin, but obviously there are businesses around honey production so there must be some profit to be had..?

So, again, THANKS so much for this awesome and interesting thread!! I've said it before but will keep saying it because I really do appreciate it. Very cool stuff!

Help the idiot time again though (sorry, but I'm confident I'm not the only one who doesn't know this stuff!):

1. "welfare apartment hive"?

2. "Pinch the queen and replace her". So pinch the queen sounds easy enough -- remove her -- but how do you just replace her? Are you able to identify a young queen in another hive and just move her to the other hive? Are queens available for sale? Do you trade queens with other beekeepers? Amazon literally has EVERYTHING from A to Z?!?

3. Separate question -- do you have to keep your hives reasonably far apart from each other? I have no idea if they are territorial, but in a prior post you were discussing a war between your strongest hive and a foreign invader. If you had hives close to each other, it would seem to me the risk of that would always be there.

So I get that the swarm needs a queen. How do you split the hive? Can you just get some queen from somewhere and put it into a new hive complex and then physically move a bunch of bees from the existing hive to the new hive and then it's all good?

Glad to hear all your hives survived, and good luck with the trapping!!

It sounds like you're at three hives right now. Is there a number you're aiming to get to?

Last, do you take your hives out to pollinate for farmers or anything? I remember learning about that a decade or so ago when we had the scare where alot of bees were dying. I never knew that was even a thing, but obviously that's another way to make money on the hive.

Am..

I name my hives based on where or how I get them or for some other reason to keep track of things.

I have one hive that I named after a local welfare apartment complex. The hive always has had hive beetle and roach issues, it smells weird, the bees are grouchier than my other bees, and there isn't anyone working in that sonnabitch during the day when the others are...low producer, grumpy, bug infested welfare trash....that queen is from a low rent trailer park for sure. This hive is named after a specific complex I don't want to name because of privacy reasons. I actually bought the hive as a nuc my first year.

"pinch the queen". A hive is what the queen is....If she's gentle, your bees will be. If she's a hard worker, the bees would likely be good producers. This hive has sucked for 3 years. I'm going to find the queen and squash her, and install a replacement queen either from a cell I find in another hive or a purchased queen. A new queen in that hive of workers will eventually lay eggs of better stock and in 6-8 weeks the hive will be completely different. Hopefully better.

My hives are close together. You pretty much just need enough room to work. The "big boys" will put 4 of them on a single wooden pallet. I think at some point having too many in the same area would be counter productive, but the large bee yards have enough bees in one area that I'm not worried I'll ever have more than I should in one spot. The truth is it's easier to have them in the same general area because you don't have to spend as much time running around to check on them. Right now there are essentially 3 guys on my bee team. One guy is tired of bees dying and probably getting out and another moved out of the area. Of those remaining we have bees on 4-5 farms.

The only reason I'll spread mine out would be if I do splits(taking frames of brood from a good hive and place those and bees from that hive into a new box where they'll hopefully make a new queen and become a separate hive). I'd move them so the bees don't get confused and go to their old home. I think they need to be a mile away or more. I do have a copule of friends who have asked me to place a hive near their garden or orchard I might do just to help them out, but I don't have the hives available right now. I'd do that, but I'll never send my bees on the big trips to California or anything. It's a good way to make some money in the winter but a great way for your bees to die.

My goal for this year would be to end the season with 7-10 hives but I'd be happy if I end up with 6-7 healthy ones. I'm not looking to get too big, this is just a hobby right now. I'll also probably help my pal get more hives filled because they have a lot more and more of the processing equipment etc. I'll spend as much time helping him get back up and going, because honestly just like deer hunting it's more fun with a battle buddy.

I only have 1 trap out right now, in my orchard. Time is the only thing holding me back. I'll try to take some pics of the trapping process and how it works...win or lose, success or fail.

Prices for honey vary a little every year, there ends up being kind of a standard.

It also depends on the quantity. Smaller jars sell for a higher price per volume.
I get $6 for a 12oz bear and $7 for a 1lb bottle and $14 for a 2lb jar. I do sell some quarts and half gallons but not as many due to the volume I have. The best money would probably be on small 2-4oz bottles but I don't go to farmers markets or anything to sell.

If anyone wants some, I do ship but you have to pay for that(sorry).

Interesting. I have no interest in messing with those after watching some youtube videos of removals. Their honey does have a market and they're rabid producers but the squeeze isn't worth the juice to me.

I just picked up my Saskatraz pkg a couple of hours ago. I've got 12,000 or so bees sitting under my desk. They sound like a little electric fan. Now if the rain will hold off until I can install them, that'd be swell.

I currently sell my honey for $10/lb, and that'll be going up next year.

I'm very interested to hear about those, because I was considering a saskatraz queen for the replacement mentioned above.


Side Story.
There was a news story in Des Moines a couple of weeks ago about a local ice cream shop that uses honey instead of sugar. The lady was hauling a 5 gallon bucket of honey in the back of her crossover car and hit one of the pond size pot holes and it exploded 5 gallons of honey in the back of her car. The basic premise was "OMG, how will she ever get that cleaned up".

My initial thought was "duh...back it into a bee yard and open the hatch for 2-3 days" and it would be good as new. They also forget honey is water solluable and some detail shop volunteered to clean it for her.

That said....instead of selling a jar at a time, even if it's at a discount rate, maybe take a look for businesses in your area like that ice cream shop to sell to?

Good news. Notre Dame bees survive.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fox...rvive-fire.amp

Put a nice sized swarm into a hive on Easter. I’ll post a video later.


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I hope everyone had a lovely Easter
 

We had a nice weekend, albeit a little windy.

I got my Saskatraz pkg installed Wednesday (4/17) evening. It went fairly well, with only a couple of minor issues.

This pkg came in what's called a Bee Bus. (Photo 1) As you can see, it is plastic, and it contains rock 'n roll Rush bees. Well, they are a Canadian breed after all. Typical pkg setup, feeder can in the middle, queen cage off center just like every other pkg I've installed.
So the initial process to install is the same: remove the feeder can then remove the queen cage. If you've ever installed a pkg before, you know how imperative it is to get the feeder can off and queen cage out as quickly as possible (when you pop out that feeder can, a volcano of thousands of bees erupts).
The queen cages I've had are a mix between 3-hole, JzBz plastic, and Cali mini cages. This was a California mini, which has a metal strip anchored to the back for hanging the cage between frames. The metal strip even hangs out of the pkg making for easy handling.
When I was removing the queen cage, I broke off the metal strip right where it attaches to the queen cage. No big deal, except the queen cage has now fallen to the bottom of the pkg and I can't really see where it is because there are thousands of bees obscuring my view. I'm now standing over the hive they're going into so I just start gently shaking bees into the box. Shake, shake, shake, senora, work your body line. No queen cage yet, so I shake shake shake that booty some more. After a little more gentle shaking, the cage plops out onto the tops of the frames. Check for a living queen, yep, there she is, none the worse for wear!
It's a good thing I had some drawn out frames, because I was able to smush the cage into the comb and it stuck there (screen side down).

Now it’s time to get the girls some feed!
Did you guys know if you let sugar syrup sit in a bucket for months, it will become moldy and unusable? Well I didn’t. I had to dump about 2.5 gallons of 2:1. That felt just like lighting a ten dollar bill on fire. I had to leave the hive open without a lid for about a half hour while I went to mix up some new 1:1. Normally this isn't a big deal, but I’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings in the area! It’s friggin’ raining all around, but it looks like I’ve got a window. I lucked out and didn’t have anything get wet. I put on the feeder box and lid, and called it an evening.

I released the queen on Saturday (4/20).
With all the queen cages I’ve had in the past (the ones with a wood cork), the bees went ahead and chewed out the cork and released the queen on their own. Not this time, I had to pull it out with some needle nose pliers. I pulled the cork, and then stuck the cage back onto the frame. I tried to watch the queen walk out but she was surrounded, so I put the lid back on and came back about hour later to an empty queen cage. I’ll check them again this Sunday to see about eggs/brood. They were bringing in henbit and dandelion pollen, so hopefully they’ll have some brood soon.

Here's the full capture and install of a swarm issued by my hive.

https://www.facebook.com/grovesthegr...1251775474479/

That's a nice video but I'm not going to lie, I was waiting for that entire ball to drop on the ground when you clipped the bush. One of the first swarms I caught we took a box and placed it under the bush and I was trying to clip branches back and it shook a little too much and scattered them in the grass. Now if I can, I try to put a tarp-towel under.

The hives you run are very different than Lang but they're cool to see.

Much easier if they just cooperate and gather on the end of a chest high branch of a small tree.

If weather had cooperated I had intended to be in the middle of a bee hive removal-cutout right now, but it's raining.

Tomorrow I'm looking at a removal from an old corn crib-barn that has what appears to be 2-3 separate hives in one wall. I won't know until I get into them for sure, but it's either an 8-10' wide hive with 3 large entrances, or three....I'm obviously hoping to find 3 with queens. Jackpot.

I'll take some pics and share when I can.

This is messed up...Police are searching for suspects after the Brazoria County Beekeepers Association (BCBA) said someone dumped out dozens of beehives and set them on fire at a county bee yard in Alvin over the weekend. Up to 500,000 bees may have died.

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/b...photo-17301049

Dumb question, but what do you do with a single hive that large when you find one? How large of alive can one queen support?

I found a tree a storm blew out that had one of the largest hives I'd ever seen with multiple entrances. Everything was gone, but I counted endless layers of comb stretching through multiple hollow branches that all joined together in a main trunk I could almost crawl in.

Here are some pics from the cutout I did today. It was in an old corn crib that is being torn down soon. I found signs of 4 other old hives in the same building.

These were large. A lot of bees and I ended up with two separate hives within a few feet of each other. I caught one queen but I'm confident I got the other in the vacuum based on how they acted when I put them in their new box.

A lot of work but a good day of bee catching.

Weren't you expecting three queens in this lot? whatever the case, it looks like you did some really good work and I hope you get the Queens that you're looking for.

Depending on species, how many bees can one Queen "rule over" so to speak?

One queen per hive. They will kill another queen.


I thought there could be three hives in the wall because of the number of entrances being used. It turned out to be only two living hives.....and three more old ones with no bees. The east wall had a dead hive also.

I'm still happy. Two nice hives are in my bee yard now

I realized I didn't answer your question.

I'm sure everyone who does hive removal does it a little differently. In a hive that large, there would be old comb, empty comb, new comb, comb with brood(capped larvae as seen in my post above) and drone comb(capped larger pods with drone-males that are pretty useless).

When I get into a give with a large volume, I would start by cutting out the old and empty comb. I put it into a tub, and will set it out for my bees to clean up. Sometimes I feed it to my chickens, but this time I'm going to start melting some down for wax.

If there is quality, capped honey I would cut that and put it aside to either use or sell as comb honey. Some of it I would cut to fit in a frame and use rubber bands to hold it in to place in the new box I'm moving the bees into for starter food.

What you're really looking for are the comb with the capped brood and young larvae. You'll cut those to fit into frames to place into the new box. That's the real value of a cutout in addition to the bees, because there are already babies ready to keep the hive growing. This is in pic 3 of 5 a couple of posts above.

In short, even in a physically large hive, unless it is late in the summer and contains a lot of honey, there is a lot of throw-away comb or old comb that can be melted down for wax.

Have you run into any colony collapse (correct term?) or mass die off of bees in your area?

There aren't many large commercial bee yards in my area, so i'm not certain how to answer your question.

Every bee keeper I know has lost hives. My brother had as many as 8-10 and they are all dead right now. Another guy on my bee team is down about 50% of his hives right now. I've bounced between 2-7 live at any given time.

There seem to be multiple things killing them. Sometimes it's conditions like last year where it was too cold too late and a lot of them starved on top of a box of 90lbs of honey. It seems like varroa mites get a lot of them, and as I've mentioned before I'm convinced aphid spraying of soy beans is getting a lot of them.

I'm not a scientist or a scholar so I'm not an expert, but I don't think it's rocket science to figure out why colony collapse is a thing.

A lot of keepers ship their hives to a common place and then they are shipped south on a tour from Florida-texas and then to California for the almond groves. Bees from all over the country to go one place on trucks, interact, and a lot of them die.

To me it's like going to spring break cruise...long trip, there are girls there with the flu, one food worker with norovirus and a couple loose women with STDs.....and people wonder why there is shit on the walls of the ship when it gets back to port.

You can make as much money per hive doing pollination as selling honey...but I'm not sending my bees there, even if I get enough to make it an option.

That was very cool.

I'm completely stunned that you did that with noting more than a hat with mesh, -- short sleeves no less. WTF? You carried the hive around and then dumped it into the box with practically no protective gear.

Is that typical? Why the heck aren't they stinging the crap out of you for messing with their hive??

Swarm bees are very gentle. There isn't a hive to protect and they've just gorged themselves on Honey. Think about how you feel on Thanksgiving day after pie when the Lions are on.

Split time!!
 

I've been monitoring the hives for queen cells (in between all of the rain we've been having) and I finally found a couple that looked viable.
They were in the lower super above the top deep, kinda odd place but I've seen queen cells all over the hives in odd places.
Last month I made a queen castle (a deep divided into 4 2-frame chambers each with its own entrance), and I've been itching to use it ever since.
Everything growing around where I live seems to be a couple of weeks later than last year, and the bees are following suit. I had a hive swarm 2-3 times by this time last year. This year, they're just now making/capping queen cells.

On Sunday, I pulled the frame that had good looking cells and put it in the queen castle. Then I pulled a deep frame that had a good mix of capped brood and honey and put it in there as well.
I went back about 3 hours later and saw a couple bees leave from the entrance; a good sign. Hopefully it'll take!

Iowanian already answered, but I’ll chime in.

A place where bees build comb/raise babies/store honey is called a hive. The group of bees living in the hive is called a colony. A group of bees that have loaded up on food in their stomach and shooed the old or new queen out to sit while they go find new digs is called a swarm.

Bees protect hives, but swarms don’t protect anything. That’s the main reason I just wear a veil, and don’t really need that even.

A few years ago the swarms from my hive gathered 12ft high in a cherry tree. I put a step ladder in the bed of my truck and climbed it to ship off the branch.

It went well enough, but one of my sons had the job of steadying the ladder. I was as gentle as possible with the cluster, but a clump or two did fall.

The boy talks like it was a lowlight of life, but I can tell it was a proud moment for him. He continued to steady the ladder even though a few hundred bees fell on his bare head/chest/arms.


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I spent last night and part of today building bee traps and put 3 out. I've been mouthing off about them for a couple of years here, but they are strapped into sound locations, scented with old, smelly comb and some lemon grass oil. The tree in the pic has had bees in it at least since the 80s. That is one reason I think this is a good spot.

I put one close to my office and I'll check the others each week and report back when I get anything. If I don't have anything in a couple of weeks I'll make adjustments to their location.

...and yes, half of the shit in my shop is broken

Are you hoping to attract a queen into the box and the rest will follow or do the worker bees prepare the hive for the queen and then she moves in?

Glad you guys are posting pictures along with your info. I really haven't seen many bees at all this spring, not even the dumb-blebees (wood bees) are as numerous as they usually are.

I'm hoping entire swarms move in.

When the bees swarm out of a hive( naturally way to propagate, the old queen and half of the bees leave)... they ball up around the queen and scout bees go out and search for a new home. They report back "hey I found a 3 bed 1 bath fixer upper in a bad neighborhood" and another says "hey I just found a 4 bed 2 bath near good schools that already has some delicious stinky old comb...let's go there to live".

Then the entire swarm flies to that spot and moves in and starts building.

Once a swarm moves in, I'll give them some time to build up, hopefully lay some eggs and feel like home....then I will go soon the disc some evening and close the entrance and move the hive to my bee yard and place the frames and bees into a hive box.

....and go re-set the trap. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

Don't laugh at this question.

Are all honey producers one breed of 'bee'? Are there multiple breeds that produce honey?

Multiple... and they all have their individual pros and cons.

for example:

Italian- Apis mellifera ligustica GOOD TRAITS: Very gentle, good brood pattern, isn't so prone to swarm as much, great honey producer, light on excess propolis and makes nice looking white comb honey. A great bee for someone new to beekeeping. POOR TRAITS: Can drift between hives and not find their home. Are prone to rob other hives during a dearth. A dearth is a lull in nectar flow.

Caucasian- Apis mellifera caucasca GOOD TRAITS: They have a long proboscis or tongue. So they can work certain flowers other honey bees cannot. Very gentle. POOR TRAITS: They don't build up very fast in the spring and are very heavy on propolis, making the hive very sticky to work. Can rob more.

Carniolan- Apis mellifera carnica GOOD TRAITS: Explosive spring build up, are not so prone to rob, are very, very gentle, and good comb producers. POOR TRAITS: Explosive build up means more swarms. Honey production is less than the Italian bee.

Russian- Hybrid A product of the U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture's Honey Bee Breeding Genetics, and Physiology Lab of Baton Rouge, Louisiana by importing this bee from the Primorski region of the Sea of Japan because it had survived mites for 150 years. It is not a species but a hybrid.GOOD TRAITS: Bred to be more resistant to mites and more winter Hardy. POOR TRAITS: Produces lots of propolis, always seems to have swarm cells in the hive, and moderate honey producer.

Buckfast- Hybrid

A product of Brother Adam (1898-1996). He spent his entire life perfecting the Buckfast honey bee hybrid. He claimed to have eaten a teaspoon of honey a day and in case you don't want to do the math, he lived to be 98!

GOOD TRAITS: Strong resistance to tracheal mites and good hygienic behavior.
POOR TRAITS: Can be defensive.


Minnesota Hygienic- Hybrid A result of the work of Dr. Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota. A few months ago, my wife and I traveled to a queen rearing conference in Ohio where Gary Reuter was one of the main speakers. Gary is a Research Technician at the University of Minnesota working with Dr. Marla Spivak. Dr. Spivak and her team were able to produce a trait within breeder queens, a trait where the bees are able to reduce disease by being exceptionally hygienic.

GOOD TRAITS: Good honey producers and more able to resist American foulbrood disease. POOR TRAITS: Those mostly common to the Italian bee since this is an Italian bee. Many other beekeepers and breeders have their special line of queens that they are breeding, making claims, that to them, are very true and founded. But to be honest, there is always the flip side. To gain a positive characteristic may mean you gain two negative characteristics. It is very difficult to hold a pure line or race of honey bees. The more important factor is that they are produced from a colony that has satisfactory or higher traits.

https://www.honeybeesonline.com/diff...of-honey-bees/

No...not a dumb question. I don't pretend to know everything.

There are several species/variety of honey bee.
Italians and carniolan areprobbaly the most common species in North America. Some people raise Russians...which are bitchy but make a lot of honey and are harder to kill. I've also heard of caucasians

I'm interested in a newer hybrid one called saksatraz.

I had to look up others in North America....starline(hybrid Italian) cordovan, midnight, buckfast( discussed in earlier posts about Nortre Dame) German/English native, Lus, Africanized.

I copied this from web. Each variety has a strength.

Races of Honey Bees in North America



There are several popular races of honey bees raised in North American for honey. There are others around the world but we will just talk about the ones that are here. I will preface this with this observation. I have not seen dramatic differences in the races of bees. They all do well when managed well. They all do poorly when they are not managed well. The differences noted are slight. When a race is mentioned as "swarmy", keep in mind that all bees swarm if crowded. A "swarmy" race is just a little more prone, not a lot more prone to swarm. Differences of individual colonies is often greater than the generalizations mentioned here. Another example is a race that is known for being gentle may not be any more gentle than any other gentle hive of some other race, but are less likely to have a hot one.

____________________________________


Italian

Apis mellifera ligustica. This is the most popular bee in North American. These, as all of the commercial bees, are gentle and good producers. They use less propolis than some of the darker bees. They usually have bands on their abdomen of brown to yellow color. Their biggest weakness is that they are prone to rob and drift. Most of these (as all of the queens) are bred and raised in the south, but you can find some northern breeders.

Starline

These are just hybrid Italians. Two strains of Italians are kept separate and their hybrid is what the Starline queen is. They are very prolific and productive, but subsequent queens (supersedures, emergency and swarms) are disappointing. If you buy Starlines every year to requeen they will give you very good service. Unfortunately I don't know of any available anymore. They used to come from York and before that Dadant.

Cordovan

These are a subset of the Italians. In theory you could have a Cordovan in any breed, since it's technically just a color, but the ones for sale in North American that I've seen are all Italians. They are slightly more gentle, slightly more likely to rob and quite striking to look at. They have no black on them and look very yellow at first sight. Looking closely you see that where the Italians normally have black legs and head, they have a purplish brown legs and head.

Caucasian

Apis mellifera caucasica. They are a silver gray to dark brown color. They do propolis excessively. It is a sticky propolis rather than a hard propolis. They build up a little slower in the spring than the Italians. They are reputed to be more gentle than the Italians. Less prone to robbing. In theory they are less productive than Italians. I think on the average they are about the same productivity as the Italians, but since they rob less you get less of the really booming hives that have robbed out all their neighbors. They are fond of propolis and often coat everything in a sticky kind of propolis, like fly paper.

Carniolan

Apis mellifera carnica. These are darker brown to black. They fly in slightly cooler weather and in theory are better in northern climates. They are reputed by some to be less productive than Italians, but I have not had that experience. The ones I have had were very productive and very frugal for the winter. They winter in small clusters and shut down brood rearing when there are dearths.

Midnite

These are, sort of, to the Caucasians what the Starline is to the Italians. I'm not certain but I always thought they are a pure hybrid Caucasian. But I've also heard they are a cross of Caucasian and Carniolan. They have that hybrid vigor that disappears in the next generation of queen. York used to sell them and before them Dadant. I don't know where they are available anymore.

Russian

I have heard several possibilities: Apis mellifera caucasica, Apis mellifera acervorum or Apis mellifera carpatica. Not sure of the exact variety here in the US. They came from the Primorsky region. They were used for breeding mite resistance because they were already surviving the mites. They are a bit defensive, but in odd ways. They tend to head butt a lot while not stinging any more. They are watchful guards, but not "runny" (tending to run around on the comb where you can't find the queen or work with them well). Swarminess and productivity are a bit more unpredictable. Traits are not well fixed. Frugality is similar to the Carniolans. They were brought to the USA by the USDA in June of 1997, studied on an island in Louisiana and then field testing in other states in 1999. They went on sale to the general public in 2000.

Buckfast

These are a mixture of bees developed by Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey. I had them for years. They were gentle. They built up rapidly in the spring, produced awesome crops and dropped back in population in the fall. They are just like the Italians as far as robbing. They are resistant to the tracheal mites. They are more frugal than the Italians, but not as much as the Carniolans.

German or English native bees

Apis mellifera mellifera. These are the bees native to England or Germany. They have some of the characteristics of the other dark bees. They do well in damp cold climates. They tend toward being runny (excitable on the combs) and a bit swarmy, but also seem to be well adapted to Northern climates.

LUS

Small black bees similar to Carniolans or Italians in production and temperament but have mite resistance and have the ability of a laying worker to raise a new queen. This ability is called Thelytoky.

Africanized Honey Bees (AHB)

I have heard these called Apis mellifera scutelata But Scutelata are actually African bees from the Cape. They used to be called Adansonii, at least that's what Dr. Kerr, who bred them, thought they were. AHB are a mixture of African (Scutelata) and Italian bees. They were created in an attempt to increase production of bees. The USDA bred these at Baton Rouge from July 1942 until 1961. They shipped queens to the continental US at about 1500 queens a year from July 1949 until July of 1961. They were raised in testing labs in Laramie WY, Ontario Canada and Madison, WI. The Brazilians also were experimenting with them and the migration of those bees has been followed in the news for some time. They are extremely productive bees that are extremely defensive. If you have a hive hot enough that you think they are AHB you need to requeen them. Having angry bees where they might hurt people is irresponsible. You should try to requeen them so no one (including you) gets hurt.

The bee keeper diaries
 

I feel like I’ve heard this somewhere. Nice description.



Definitely keep us posted on your traps. It’s a great way to a acquire more colonies.

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I'm sure I stole that from you....it was a great description of what they are doing.

Which, if any, of these are native to North America? Are bees hybridized by cross breeding?

After a queen hatches, she flies to a drone congregation area, DCA (drones are boy bees)

She gets mated by 4-8 drones (in-flight mind you.) She returns to the hive with enough sperm to last the rest of her egg laying life.

When laying, she decides when to lay a fertilized egg that becomes a female bee, and when to withhold the sperm to lay an unfertilized egg that becomes a boy bee. Boy bees are haploid.

So her dna mixes with whatever sperm she received during mating flights to create more purebreeds or mutts, depending.


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There were honey bees in NA millions of years ago, but no natives ones today.

Bees can be cross-bred, (not sure how genetically similar the lines have to be) and some genetic lines are made through selective breeding over generations. They're selectively bred for hygiene behaviors, honey production, aggressiveness level, and other behaviors.

That makes them... wait for it.... GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS

OOOOOOHHHHH. NOOOOOOES!

:D

Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.

The swarm we hived on Easter built one box of comb in a week and now has two full boxes of comb.

Today for Mother’s Day I gave that queen another empty box.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...195fdbf378.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...07f968db5c.jpg


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It's been cold and rainy and I hadn't seen or heard of much swarm activity. I did miss out in one last weekend when a lady asked for help with a swarm at her house but wouldn't tell me where it was or her number. Dumb.

This afternoon I was mowing and noticed a bunch of bees in my orchard, even though it was a dreary, rainy day. I had hung a trap/box in an apple tree. I was witnessing a swarm moving into my trap! I trapped my first swarm today. I'm not sure if they swarmed from one of my hives or just outlaws but I'm happy to have them.

It was pretty cool to see. Not long after they arrived there was a flurry of activity. I didn't get a pic but bees were coming out and dropping dirt and crumbs on the ledge and others were pushing the crap off of the ledge. It was pretty cool to see just how fast they started working when they moved in. Almost immediately.

You're one tough MF'er if you mow in the rain.

My bee hive is going along swimmingly. I actually have a wood cover surrounding it so I can lock them in when nearby fields are being sprayed. I think it has helped with all the damned rain too. After my foray with removing africanized bees i have not ventured into swarm trapping again. Although I have a trap box ready. Wondering if I should place it near my hive in case of a swarm from my hive.

McHive opens in Sweden!

Saw this and though of this thread. One effort by a McDonald's entrepreneur in Sweden to try to help bees survive and thrive.

https://people.com/food/mchive-world...den-save-bees/

It didn't rain so this evening I went through all of my hives. The one I hate is a goner...no queen, no brood. My favorite hive has queen cells. I'm thinking it swarmed and that's what I caught in the post above. I'm good with tha, they're great.

One of the cutouts froma couple of weeks ago, the one I knew I had a queen is going great. I put a honey Super on that hive today....but I'm a little concerned by how much drone brood I saw. Didn't see a queen cell but it makes me wonder if they are planning to swarm. The other one from the cutout looks good, but I didn't see a queen or any brood. I'm going to have to buy a queen or rib a frame of brood and queen cells from my big hive or from a friend.

I moved the swarm I caught in my apple tree to another place for a few days in case they came from my hive. They would be confused and get lost if I don't relocate them for a few days. I'll bring them back to my yard in a few days and they should be good to go.

I made a mistake today in that I worked them late in the afternoon. They were stirred up because I was so deep into all of the hives. I was stung on a finger and forearm, not a big deal. Then I took my hood off as I finished and got piled. I was stung 3-4 times on the head and 4 behind my left ear....right where the ear attaches to your head. That's one of the worst spots to date FYI. By far the most sore spot and I can feel swelling in my ear and down my neck. Those weren't fun, but I know some of you are cheering for the wrecks.

My ear feels like cauliflower ear.....it's hot and sore. I might tape these wind scoops down to my head next time.....

On the bright side, I won't have to bitch about that shitty, smelly, bug infested hive anymore.

Did you get the yard mowed?

And I admit after reading this post I'm too much of a pussy to think about keeping bees even though I have the ground to do it.

LMAO

Aye, that's a quality wreck.

I did finish mowing last night, it only rained for 20 minutes or so but I'm A grown ass man and I finish what I start.

I can't say that I feel particularly tough about this crash. The finger, arm and head stings dont bother me at all...but this ear.....my inner ear itches....my ear feels like it's 300 degrees and I'm sore half down the side of my neck and up into my hair....I guess that's what 4 stings do....

I'm being super manly....alpha male about it.....brideownian brought me an ice pack that looks like a small red teddy bear. I guess it makes kids stop whining. I'm going to need the ice pack and a couple of ultra manly Busch lights.

A swarm of bees followed a car for 2 days because the queen got trapped in it.

https://educateinspirechange.org/nat...apped-in-back/

As mentioned above, one of the colonies I obtained in a cutout did t have a queen.

I was driving on business and found myself 20 miles from a large producer (3500hives) that sell online. I decided to stop and buy a queen for my that hive. I chose to become saskatraz *fist bump* brothers with red. I bought a saskatraz queen. They are supposed to be fast starters in the spring, good honey producers, decent temperament, winter well and are mite resistant. I suited up a couple of my kids and took them down to help me with the install. Weather and bees were sketchy but they figured out she was there pretty quick. Hopefully they chew out the candy plug and she gets to work.

I relocated the swarm I captured to my brothers farm for a few days and will probably bring it home Friday. Glad to have that one to replace my dying, shitty colony.

Here’s the hive we started from a swarm on Easter Sunday.

There was zero comb that day, and now they’ve filled 3 boxes and now are building in the 4th.

Strong.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...653da1bce3.jpg


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I finally got a call to get a swarm today. I had just been grumbling that I hadn't really even heard of a local swarm this year. A couple of weeks ago I had a text about one an hour away and loaded up to leave to go get it, and some damn hippy heard about it and beat me to it.

This one turned out to be at a farm where I had gotten one of my first swarms. They have a giant maple with a hive up high in a limb that I considered trying to remove a couple of years ago but decided against.

The owner called as he was leaving and said they were swarming out around the yard. I found them 100' from the tree on a limb about 12' off the ground. The owner happens to have a step ladder nearby that I could use and I placed a box on top which ended up being a foot under the ball of bees. I risked them off with a dust pan and a small broom. Out of there with almost all of the bees in about 20 minutes.

When putting these in my bee yard I checked my boxes to see if I needed to add supers....but I didn't yet. Rain is slowing them down I think.

Nice swarm catch, just wish it had been 6-8' closer to the ground.

Haven't gotten anything in my other traps yet but you can bet your ass I'm placing a trap on the farm in this story next year. Maybe this year in case it swarms again.

I thought this was interesting. There was a short article about it in the recent Acres magazine.

http://www.bermondseystreetbees.co.uk/

Beekeepers in the streets of London. Seriously, that is pretty cool.. I like seeing urban farming of all kinds.

In Florida, one of the most popular types of honey is Orange Blossom Honey. What would you call honey from pollen collected in the streets of London? City Scum Honey?

Man, I wish I lived in you area.. would love to see a swarm capture.

Got my last bee training class from the local ag extension office in a couple weeks. Sadly, I missed the most interesting one perhaps.. honey collection.

It was too hot but I needed to go through my boxes tonight.

They are roaring right now after a late start. Excess rain in June washed a lot of pollen off of flowers and slowed down the honey flow and development in my area. Right now it's dry and hot but white clover is bloomed everywhere and my alfalfa field has been bloomed all week and the guy who is getting it isn't mowing...not my problem but the bees love it.

I've got a couple of hives with 4 honey supers and a couple with 2-3.

3 weeks ago I had made a box for comb honey and put it on a hive. They had t touched it for 2 weeks, it this week they had 8 frames full, so I'll have at least 30 pieces of comb honey to sell. I'm going to make some more frames and try to get another 10-20 frames of that because it sells for more money.

I weed eater around the hives, opened every box and they were as calm as could be. The saskatraz queen is doing work and they look great. If it rains and holds off the dirth a little while I'll have a great production year even if I don't have as many hives as I'd hoped.

So, I was just wondering this the other day... How do you actually get the comb part of comb honey? By putting in a special foundation, or just an empty frame that they build all the way out? The frames I keep seeing have plastic or artificial wax foundations in them.

Comb honey is all bees wax and there are different methods to get it. This is my first attempt so I'm not an expert at all.

Plastic foundation makes it easier for the bees to build comb, but you can't cut the complete comb out. You're using those foundations to let the bees build comb that you'll scrape the wax cappings off and extract honey and have comb for bees to reuse. By not having to build the comb they can produce honey much faster.

As for comb honey, it's what bees do when there aren't plastic foundations. What I did was remove the plastic foundations from frames. I had purchased some wax foundations. I cut a couple of those into 1" strips and I placed the wax foundations in the top slot of the frame and then used the strips like caulking to smash it into place. I just wanted it tight enough to hold and knew the bees would built it up solid. It seemed like a dismal failure for 2 weeks, but this week the bees went ape shit and had the comb built and almost full.

Another guy told me yesterday that he just removes frames 3 and 7 from a box. He'll take the foundation out of those and replace them but space them out a little further and says the bees will do their magic even without starter strips. I'll probably try that next to get a few more.

Some people do starter strips along the top of the frames. The method Groves is using is ONLY comb honey from what I understand.

I'm thinking more about building a horizontal hives because it will be easier to manage and remove frames as people need it....and I just think they are cool and want to try one.

As for how you "get it" you pull the frame out, measure it and cut the squares with a fillet knife.

I should be able to cut (3) 4x5/6" squares of comb honey out of each frame. You can buy plastic containers that look like something you'd buy a breakfast biscuit in at a gas station, or something more like a sandwich tupperware with a lid to sell it. I'm doing this because Comb honey sells for a lot more than regular spun honey.

Thanks for the great explanation man..

Seems a helluva lot more rare down here in Florida now too. I see jars of honey, but almost never do I see comb honey any more.

Mark

I got a call tonight. Sunday a guy was tearing down a house and ripped open a wall of bees. They had destroyed the comb(ugh)...and said a large ball of bees had gathered on a tree. Today they were on the ground in the rubble of the flat house near the former hive entrance location.

I put a box near them and most of them marched in, but I didn't catch a queen that I saw.

The colony is in a box in my yard, it this late in the season I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I might try to look for a queen tomorrow, I might pull a couple of brood frames from other hives and I'm considering spraying them with sugar water and dumping them I to my newest/smallest hive.

Thoughts?

All I have to contribute to this thread is the cover of the Ohio Players classic 1975 album Honey:

https://i.imgur.com/z1q8aR6.jpg

You can always as a last resort use them to bolster a weak hive. Use the newsprint trick. Add them to the other hive with a layer of newspaper between them. They will not like the scent of each other, but they’ll get used to the scent of the Queen by the time they chew through the paper in a few days.

Could be plenty of breeders with spare queens still. You never know.

Did you leave a box at the old location to pick up the stragglers?

Keep us posted!


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M unfamiliar with the newsprint method.

I went down tonight and dug through the box and couldn't find a queen. Doesn't mean there wasn't one but I didn't see her and they were cleaning the old shitty comb I had put in their box. I dug into another strong hive and dug out a frame with some capped brood and some visible larvae. It was getting too late and the bees were getting pissy so I only added that single frame. Still not sure there is a hive that will be sound to survive a winter.


On the bright side, I opened some other to check and they made honey this week. I'll have 10-15 frames of comb honey. Maybe I'll have time tomorrow night to harvest some of that.

Honey snack

I've been taking spoons of honey for allergy reasons and I think it's helping.

I've also started watching what I eat and I've figured out a new breakfast snack I like. Toast with peanut butter and a drizzle of honey on it. Honey goes great with peanut butter.

I'm trying to cut way back on soda. A glass of crushed ice with a good drizzle of honey and filled with water is making it easier to drink more water....and the ice with a little honey is a satisfying snack.

I'm working with a local ice cream shop...exploring using honey for their ice cream sweetener instead of sugar and maybe honey lemonade.

I grew up on peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Parents are from Tennessee so it might be a southern thing. Or an economical thing (resuming honey is cheaper than jellies).

My fave is peanut butter and marshmallow cream.

Peanut butter and honey is where it’s at man.

What are you allergic to?

I've never been tested for allergies, but rag weed has been high lately, so I assume that and I assume I have some tree pollen issues that come up earlier in the spring.




Grove, I'm assuming for the newspaper method, I simply pull the top from the main hive, put a layer of newspaper over it, and place the donor hive on top of it and cover it? They have to chew through to get out and by that time the bees are used to each others' smell enough they won't murder each other? The other idea I've seen is to spray both with sugar water and them dump them together? I know I can still buy a queen, but I"m concerned there isn't enough time left for this hive to build up enough to survive by the time the flow stops.

The only item I'm pondering is they hives are about 20' apart right now. If I did the newsprint/hive blend do you think the time it takes them to chew through and assimilate they would re-orient to the new hive?

Also, I'm going to try to process comb honey this weekend and will take some pics of that to share.

The deed is done and went pretty smooth.

I decided to use groves advice and merged the bees I collected the other day with the last swarm I had captured to bolster that hive. Used the newsprint method.

While I was working the bees, farmer came by mowing hay 10 yards from the hive I was in...I was curious how they would react but bees barely took notice of the racket.

Took a little while to process comb because I was trying to be careful and figure out the best way. Went good and I've got 25 boxes of comb honey to sell with about that many more frames in hives left.

....roll that beautiful bee footage. Now we find out if all the people asking for comb honey put their money where their mouth wants to be.

Allergies are a bitch.

I took immunization shots for 7 years and they didn't help a lot. Pigweed/Palmer/Waterhemp is the butt****ing devil. It winds me up like a clock.

Corn pollen to a lesser extent but there is so much of that shit that it's pretty much a shit day if I have to walk pollinating corn.

Looking good on that comb honey! Charge accordingly!


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