The bee keeper diaries

[Iowanian]

It's a great time to buy stock in eppy pens.

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.

[PHOG]

I like it, but it may need some Benny Hill music.

[Iowanian]

I have some videos my kid made that has them clipped together and music, but those clips have a tag on them that leads to my kid and I can't do that here.

I've got some other non-time-lapse videos of inspections where i explain things. I'll upload and share some of those sometime....but I'm hoping to get some swarms caught first!

[Groves]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

Harvesting. I've posted a couple of times about that with pics. The time it takes I guess depends on how many hives you have, what equipment you have and how you're processing. Grove would have a different answer than I would, because from what I understand he takes full combs, crushes/smashes them and drains honey off into jars.

I assume he means me.

I'll describe my process, but here's several videos, one of which is the harvesting process after I've taken a box from them.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0U53qWtHWrV5T

He's correct, I take full boxes, because I don't run frames. There's a lot I don't do, but I don't begrudge anyone keeping bees however they want.

So for the Warré hive style that I run, you add a box to the BOTTOM of the stack in the spring, and you take a box off the TOP of the stack in the fall or whenever you decide to harvest. (Some guys harvest in mid summer or even spring.)

The theory is that in a natural cavity, the bees are observed to start at the top, and build comb downwards. This hive style mimics an "endless" tree cavity.

The downside is that you regularly get honeycomb that at one point contained brood. Every time a cell is used for rearing brood, the pupae leaves a papery husk when it hatches as an adult. Nobody likes the taste of husk, so having former brood comb holding honey is a negative for some people, and you certainly can't make cut comb out of it.

Another downside is that it takes a lot of bee energy (read: honey) to make wax, so forcing a colony to make their own honeycomb could be considered energy that is wasted instead of letting them not spend that energy (because you provide them with either already drawn comb or plastic comb)

The upside of this system is that I believe bees are made to make wax, and they're quite good at it. So letting them build their own comb in some ways lets them fully be themselves.

Another upside is that the comb gets renewed frequently. The queen is often laying in cells of freshly created comb, or just one year old. It's a known thing that toxins build up in the wax, and that wax which is re-used year after year contains more toxins than freshly built wax.

Another upside is that I don't generally do squat to my bees. The MO Conservation has guidelines as far as "every 10 days do X", and "every 30 days do Y", and for some folks that's part of the fun, but for me, NOT doing those things is definitely part of the fun.

I pay em a quick visit in the spring to add a box, and a quick visit in the Fall to take a box. The rest of the time I just enjoy em, look in the windows or sit and watch the entrance.

They work for me, so I get to treat em kindly...by leaving them alone. Other people get to treat theirs kindly....by treating them for pests or cutting out queen cells or whatever they want.

I don't use fume boards, but I've often used a thin box with a bee escape in it. This lets the bees which are in the honey box (that I'm about to take) make their way down to the rest of the bees, but doesn't let them come back up. A one way door so to speak.

So I leave this bee escape in-between the topmost box and the rest of the boxes for 24hours before I take the top box off.

If I don't use that method, I'll just take the top box off, put it on a solid surface (so no bees go out the bottom) and then place a bee escape on top. This escape uses some window screen rolled into a cone. The bees come out of the top of the honey box, crawl up the cone, then fly out and back to the hive.

There's a video of that at the same link.

Lots of ways to skin these cats, and I love it that so many of you are keeping or thinking about keeping bees.

[Iowanian]

Good stuff groves.

I worked through all of my hives today. Everything looked good other than I definitely need queens in 2 of my splits. I added honey supers to 4 hives, so I’m officially banking honey for 2022.

I stole the idea from a guy, but today I screwed cattle ear tags to each of my hives. Now they’ve got a number and a note of where each one came from….a split from hive 7, a swarm from 2021. It should be helpful in tracking what’s going on.

I did get a call for a swarm today. It was 20 miles away and 60’ up a maple tree. I was going to hang a swarm trap nearby but they bolted before I got there. I do have traps out and saw scout bees on 2 of those today. Won’t be long.

Going good for me so far. The best news is I ordered some bad ass ball caps with my logo on leather patches. They were delivered yesterday and they are cool.

[Groves]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

I screwed cattle ear tags to each of my hives. Now they’ve got a number and a note of where each one came from….a split from hive 7, a swarm from 2021. It should be helpful in tracking what’s going on.

Do you use any software? If I ever decide to have more hives than just a few I could see some of these apps being helpful. They let you record inspections results quick and easy and you can scan a QR code or whatever on each hive.

No swarms here yet or scout bees.

I’ve never done any cutouts. I stick to swarm captures and bait hives.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Iowanian]

I can’t say I’m really “using” it yet but I downloaded and started entering info in an app called Apiarist beekeeping assistant. I’ve had a mentor recommend one called hive bloom.

I probably won’t track everything but do want to track sources, mother colonies, hive health, temperament and ,Anne queen age when i know and then I’d like to track production….and then build in the future from the producers.

We will see.

I’m much more interested in swarm catches and traps than cutouts at this point. No more free cutouts.

[Iowanian]

I got my first swarm yesterday and took a video. It’s 10 min but I’ll link a shorter version also. I’m still trying to figure out how to embed video from an iPad…if you know how to do it help me do it.

This makes 19 hives if you’re tracking me.
Full version
https://rumble.com/v16e7dg-first-swa...e-of-2022.html

Shorter version
https://rumble.com/v16g2hk-honey-bee...ture-2022.html

[raybec 4]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

I got my first swarm yesterday and took a video. It’s 10 min but I’ll link a shorter version also. I’m still trying to figure out how to embed video from an iPad…if you know how to do it help me do it.

This makes 19 hives if you’re tracking me.
Full version
https://rumble.com/v16e7dg-first-swa...e-of-2022.html

Shorter version
https://rumble.com/v16g2hk-honey-bee...ture-2022.html

3 minutes of bees for 7 minutes of sawing

Just kidding, thanks for posting that, we kept bees when I was younger but I don't have the space for them now.

[Iowanian]

The hard part is nicely sawing through that green limb without the saw catching and shaking them all onto the ground. I was annoyed by how long it took. I probably should have had a kid pull back the limbs under it and just shook them into the box….that’s more fun anyway.

[Groves]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

I probably should have had a kid pull back the limbs under it and just shook them into the box….that’s more fun anyway.

The air bomber method. Nice. Like that old timey birthday game where you drop the clothes pin from your chin trying to land it in a bottle.


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[Iowanian]

Yesterday I did a little maintenance around my hive areas, weed eating etc.

I've got a swarm living in one of my traps and I'll plan to move them tomorrow and get a trap right back up in that spot. So far, using a hunting ladder stand has been my most effective location for swarm traps. 10-12' up seems to be the sweet spot for my success, though I have caught them in lower tree forks etc.

One of my splits is defnitely queenless and I think 2 are probably not going to make it without significant intervention. Not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll probably just let them go at this point and focus on replacing them with swarms.

I'm not sure if it's the weather or something else, but in general I've got more aggressive bees this year. 2 hives I'd call mean, but even on a nice day yesterday at my second yard I had bees bouncing off of my facemask the entire time I was there. I'm sure some would tell me to do a mite check and see if that's why they're grumpy, or if I need to kill and replace a couple of queens. Unfortunately, I haven't found many queen cells and there haven't been any available to buy in a reasonable drive.

That said, white clover is blooming and I've started adding the honey supers(boxes for collecting honey that I keep). I've got a couple of boxes put together with comb foundation and I'll add those this weekend.


I did make a new tool to help capture swarms that are clustered higher locations. I bought a 23' telescoping painters pole. I obtained a clear plastic water jug and mounted it on the pole. Now, If I get calls for those swarms higher than I can reach, I can extend this pole, and hopefully knock the cluster into the jug and bring them down to the hive box without dumping 20,000 bees on my head. I'll try to get a video to share when I get a chance to try this out.

[lewdog]

We save SO many honey bees from the pool or at least they look like them but various kinds that aren't all the same. The wasps are definitely different and also seem better about getting water. The honey bees get in the pool and quickly drown while the wasps know how to sit on top with their long legs, get a drink and take off. So when we see a bee worth saving, we quickly swim over and use a sandal to lift it out of the pool and get it to dry land. When then watch it's minutes long routine of trying to dry itself off so it can fly away.

My son also asked me what bees make their houses out of. I said I didn't know. He said, "it's probably bricks and poop."

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

Yesterday I did a little maintenance around my hive areas, weed eating etc.

I've got a swarm living in one of my traps and I'll plan to move them tomorrow and get a trap right back up in that spot. So far, using a hunting ladder stand has been my most effective location for swarm traps. 10-12' up seems to be the sweet spot for my success, though I have caught them in lower tree forks etc.

One of my splits is defnitely queenless and I think 2 are probably not going to make it without significant intervention. Not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll probably just let them go at this point and focus on replacing them with swarms.

I'm not sure if it's the weather or something else, but in general I've got more aggressive bees this year. 2 hives I'd call mean, but even on a nice day yesterday at my second yard I had bees bouncing off of my facemask the entire time I was there. I'm sure some would tell me to do a mite check and see if that's why they're grumpy, or if I need to kill and replace a couple of queens. Unfortunately, I haven't found many queen cells and there haven't been any available to buy in a reasonable drive.

That said, white clover is blooming and I've started adding the honey supers(boxes for collecting honey that I keep). I've got a couple of boxes put together with comb foundation and I'll add those this weekend.


I did make a new tool to help capture swarms that are clustered higher locations. I bought a 23' telescoping painters pole. I obtained a clear plastic water jug and mounted it on the pole. Now, If I get calls for those swarms higher than I can reach, I can extend this pole, and hopefully knock the cluster into the jug and bring them down to the hive box without dumping 20,000 bees on my head. I'll try to get a video to share when I get a chance to try this out.

My wife turned really mean back in 2006. In hindsight I should have replaced her so I'm thinking that's the problem with your hives. The queens have turned into Royal bitches and all the worker bee's are taking it out on you.


Yeah, get rid of the bitches!

[displacedinMN]

Mean bees have been on social media. They are turning into the rest of the world,

[Iowanian]

I got a swarm this weekend and captured it a little different way than normal.


https://rumble.com/embed/v16eb28/?pub=14uowq


I also went through my hives a little this weekend. I didn't do a deep dive, but found some of them aren't as strong as I'd like to see, and it looks like 2 of my splits are queenless and dying. I added the swarm above to one of those boxes, and I've got another swarm caught in a trap to replace the other.

As a rule of thumb, I really want to get the bees I'm going to get this year before July. The old timers say "A bee in July, ain't worth a fly". You're just not likely to get any honey out of bees you get this late and your goal is to build them up, keep them alive so they'll start strong next year. I've been adding honey supers(boxes of honey frames) and I'm hoping the dry weather will get them get out and pack in pounds and pounds of honey every day.