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.

[Iowanian]

This afternoon my phone rang and a large tree had blown down in a storm last night and had a "giant hive of bees in the tree". It was across the street from a similar situation I resolved last year.

I went alone this time because my people were busy. I borrowed a trailer with a generator and some tools and about a mile from the location looked up to see the steel loading ramp come off and cartwheel down the Hwy. I'm really glad it happened a couple of hundred yards after two motorcycles had passed. I cobbled that with the help of a farm boy from another town that stopped to help.

The large maple had exploded and the limb that contained the hive was split. I didn't even have to saw it. That was th good news. The bad news is climb and brood were thrown around and damaged. I vacuumed what I could and framed up some of the brood comb(babies). I ended up with about 4 frames of brood and maybe 3000 bees. It was a disappointing but we'll see. I didn't see any sign of the queen and the brood young enough to make a queen is pretty limited.

I set up the box in my yard and stole a full frame of brood from a strong hive. I'm going to check in the morning and if they stick around I think I'll buy a queen to give them a chance. Someone in my area raises queens and has a hybrid Called saskatraz that interests me.

Hope they stick around, don't want to waste that much time and work. I do have 15 gallons of bad comb for th bees and a full five gallon bucket of capped honey to squeaze out when I have time.

[Iowanian]

It's been a tougher year this year.

Yesterday I went down to check hives and add a honey super to one of the hives. The hive that contained the cutout seen above had died and two full boxes of comb were gross and overrun with what I think are hive beetle larvae. I'd babied them, a new queen had hatched and was laying....and then I go on vacation for a week and get busy a few days and they're all dead. Pisses me off because I essentially wasted 8hrs on it with no return.

While I was there, my best hive was really active...they were agitated. I opened it up to do my inspection to see if i needed to add a box and they got pretty fired up. I closed it back up and noticed a flurry of activity I'd not seen. I'm pretty certain another group of wild bees had shown up to rob them. There was a big bee fight happening at the entrance with hundreds of bees, there was a group at the top opening, bees were dropping in a ball of 3-4 onto the ground....dead bees were being dragged away. I've heard of robbing, but I'd never seen it in one of my hives. Hopefully they were strong enough to hold them off. I have another hive that has a lot of honey but way less activity and I'm not sure that hive would be able to hold them off like this one did.

This year we've only had a handful of calls for swarms and I didn't get any of them. Helped with a few cutouts that have had mixed results....some are strong for the guys and 2 of them absconded the next day.

The hives I do have strong all have 3 boxes of honey and one I added a 4th. I was hoping to add several hives but now I'm still down.

I didn't get my traps built this year, but a guy I do bees with did put some out and has been very successful. I'll definitely have some traps ready to go next spring and catch some swarms that way. The trick seems to be lemon grass oil and ventilation in the boxes.

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

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 found this channel and became addicted immediately.

I'm not sure if the product (flow hive) he uses is great or not but his channel documents a ton of pitfalls and problems that come along with bee keeping. And personally I find it really entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-x...DKuM00-45OUrvg

[Iowanian]

I don't have a youtube channel but my snap stories are always popular on bee days.

[Amnorix]

First -- thanks for the updates. This stuff is pretty damn fascinating.

Second, forgive my ignorance, but what is a "call for a swarm"?

And what do bees fight about? You're saying the wild bees are trying to rob them, but of what? The honey?

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

I don't have a youtube channel but my snap stories are always popular on bee days.

You should consider it.

I'd subscribe...

[Iowanian]

Swarm call.

Last night while I was chopping weeds near the hives and putting a bucket of old honey comb down for my bees to use as their food sources dry up in the drought and end of summer....my phone rang.

"OMG, do you still do bees, we have a bunch of bees in an old building next to a house we bought....can you get them out"...... This would be a "cut out" because you need to cut a hole in the wall of the building-house and remove the comb and bees and relocate them. You trim the comb that has brood(babies) and use rubber bands to strap it into frames, as well as some frames of honey and pollen.....then you vacuum the bees as you've see in pics. Place them into the box with the comb at their new location. Boom.

In that case, I explained that it is a bad time of year and the bees have a low chance of living, but if it can wait I'll be happy to get them in the spring as soon as dandilions bloom. they agreed that was acceptable and I'll probably have some pics to post on that in April 2019.

A swarm call....the phone rings, email pings, FB messager dings....."OMG, there is a giant ball of bees on the tree in my yard/side of my house/fence post/mail box"

Bees get too populated or run out of room in a hive. Their instinct is to create a new queen....when she hatches, half of the bees leave with the old queen to look for a new place to live. They swarm out of the hive in a "cloud" of bees and land nearby and cluster(as you see in pics above on limbs or tomb stones etc).....then scout bees dispatch and look for a new place to live that has the proper volume of space and ventilation....then they come back to the ball of bees(swarm) and fly as a group to the new place to live.


Robbing: I'm not certain what causes it but sometimes bees will find another hive(wild and hives like mine)....they basically send an army of raiders(typical scum) and they'll fight their way into the hive....eat the honey and take it back to their hive and place it into their own comb and cap it to save. I suppose it's an instinct.....They'll clean out honey from dead hives too. Last night I placed a bucket that had some old capped honey from a tree that fell so that my bees could use it. When they cap it in their own comb it will be as good as new. I have some video of the bees fighting.....my bees lined up at the entrance and a hole near the top....the raiders flying in and trying to force their way in....2-3 of my bees would jump on one and ball it up, stinging....there were a lot of clusters of fighting bees on the ground in front of the hive.....and as they died, workers were dragging them away from the hive at the same time. Mine must have won because they were fine last night.

Fun fact. In a bees life, a single bee can make 1-2 tea spoons of honey.

[Amnorix]

Got it. Cool, and thanks for the additional info! Glad your hive won the war!

[Iowanian]

This past weekend was honey extraction time. My sister tagged along to practice her photo hobby and took a sting so she's legit now. My brother in law wanted to try and tagged along in a light rain to pull honey supers off of hives....and in standard welcoming form, when it was time to leave and he was taking the hood off, he got his face beat up.

Other than that, it was pretty smooth. Production for the team was about half of last year due to dead hives. If everyone had the year we did, honey prices should go up.

I'll attach a few pics for those that want to see them.

[Iowanian]

Mooooar of that bee hole footage

[Iowanian]

Another

[COchief]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

Omar of that bee hole footage

Is slicing that wax layer off as satisfying as it looks?

[Iowanian]

Originally Posted by COchief

Is slicing that wax layer off as satisfying as it looks?

It is, but it's actually harder work than you'd think. The most satisfying part for me is the first second when you open the spigot and honey pours into the filter screen to begin filling your bucket. That's the payoff. I get the same feeling later when I crack the honey bucket to fill the first bottle.

[KS Smitty]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

This past weekend was honey extraction time. My sister tagged along to practice her photo hobby and took a sting so she's legit now. My brother in law wanted to try and tagged along in a light rain to pull honey supers off of hives....and in standard welcoming form, when it was time to leave and he was taking the hood off, he got his face beat up.

Other than that, it was pretty smooth. Production for the team was about half of last year due to dead hives. If everyone had the year we did, honey prices should go up.

I'll attach a few pics for those that want to see them.

I don't know if Iowa is in the same drought conditions Kansas is but we will have lower honey production because the flowers are not as big as they are in a wet summer so there is less pollen available as well as less water.

A local honey producer tested his combs and they tested positve for glyphosphate but not in the honey. Do you have that concern up there?

Thanks for keeping this going.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

It is, but it's actually harder work than you'd think. The most satisfying part for me is the first second when you open the spigot and honey pours into the filter screen to begin filling your bucket. That's the payoff. I get the same feeling later when I crack the honey bucket to fill the first bottle.

Looks good man. Your stuff looks clean and professional. If I tried to capture honey, I'd just make a 60 acre sticky ass mess.