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]

One of my bee team guys has lost every hive at his house on years when the field around him on 2 sides has soybeans. He thinks aerial spray is taking them out but unsure. Something is killing them and his bees a couple of miles away are doing very well

All of Iowa isn't dry but my area is and it definitely takes a toll.


Now I have to decide what I'm going to do with a budding hive beetle problem and to decide about feeding for a while, candy sugar boards and if I'm going to fog them for mites.

[Iowanian]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

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.

My pal has the extraction set up/ utcher shop...it's definitely really nice. A lot harder work to extract than I thought but 4 of us do it all together and help each other.

They broke out a bottle of homemade Meade from 3 years ago, but it was pretty rough. Needs some practice I think.

[redfan]

I started off this year with 2 seemingly healthy hives that had been started as package hives the previous April and overwintered once. Nifty.

Then we had what I like to call "this ****ed up Spring". Winter lingers, flower blooms are shy. Then it warmed up, a lot. Bees came out of cluster, but they had eaten all of their winter stores and there wasn't enough blooming for them yet. I didn't notice quick enough, and one hive died. Bummer, dude.

But I still have the one hive, even if it's sketchy to make it. So I feed, feed, feed and the hive comes back from the brink.

I also went ahead and got 2 more package hives for this season. I had queen issues with one hive, and the other was doing fine. I re-queened the bad hive and figured all is well. It wasn't. That hive didn't do shit this season! I mean they built out zero comb! I had given them a deep box that already had 8 frames totally drawn out. The bees said "Thanks mister, that'll do!", and proceeded to do no more comb building. I've never seen that before., not one more frame had been drawn! I just checked them on Monday, and they're still content with what I had originally given to them. I'm not very confident this hive is gonna make it through winter.

My other package hive did well. I got 1.5 gallons of honey from it, a fully drawn deep, a fully drawn medium super, and they are about halfway drawn on another medium super. This hive is still sucking down the 2:1 about a gallon and a half per day!

The near death overwintered hive was my star this year. I got 6.5 gallons from that hive and I haven't killed it yet!
I just finished treating all 3 hives with oxalic acid, so hopefully that will increase my survival pct. going into next year.

[Iowanian]

Sorry you had a tough year. I'm also down 4 hives from last year, but I've already found some decent cutouts for early spring with buildings-sheds that are being torn down...so, ground level, chainsaw cutouts.

I'm still having a hive beetle problem....much much worse than before. I did buy some beetle traps and the oil to put in them and am catching a lot, but man....

[redfan]

Welp, hopefully this next year will have a little better weather for the bees.
I'm very thankful to have harvested what I did, my best year yet for honey. I sold all of it I wanted to. The optimism in me hasn't died out!
I'm looking forward to those warm spring days when the flowers are blooming and the bees are flying. We're on the other side of the short days now, it won't be long!

As far as I can tell I don't have too bad of a problem with SHB, but I went ahead and got some of these anti-beetle entrances:

https://guardianbhe.com/

They might help your situation.

I was looking at the hybrid queens from this guy:
https://newriverhoneybees.com/

[Iowanian]

It's been a little slow in bee world with this weather. I'm hoping we don't have another late start to spring, and I'm going to try to slip some sugar blocks into the hives if it ever warms up.

I bottled my last 5 gallons this weekend and have been peddling it to make some cash for supplies for this spring.

On tap for this spring, I already have a couple of cutouts scheduled. I'm going to start charging for anything that I can't use a chainsaw on this year. Too much time and cost to do it for free unless it's easy. Also on tap, I'm going to convert some of my older-warped hive boxes into bee traps. Seems simple enough to do and I saw my bee team buddy have good success last year with them.

Also, this year I'm going to raise a couple of hives with comb honey to sell in mind. I'm going to cut the foundations down to 3/4" starter strips and see what happens. There is big demand for that and not a lot of supply and I aim to cash in on that if I can get my bees to cooperate.

I've seen quite a bit about bad colony losses this year, but so far I'm good. Hope you are also.

hopefully in 4-6 weeks I'll have some pics and stories to share if there is still interest in this topic.

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Sweet, Love hearing your updates.

[Buehler445]

Keep posting updates dude. I live in the desert so I’m not going to play but I love reading about it.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

It's been a little slow in bee world with this weather. I'm hoping we don't have another late start to spring, and I'm going to try to slip some sugar blocks into the hives if it ever warms up.

I bottled my last 5 gallons this weekend and have been peddling it to make some cash for supplies for this spring.

On tap for this spring, I already have a couple of cutouts scheduled. I'm going to start charging for anything that I can't use a chainsaw on this year. Too much time and cost to do it for free unless it's easy. Also on tap, I'm going to convert some of my older-warped hive boxes into bee traps. Seems simple enough to do and I saw my bee team buddy have good success last year with them.

Also, this year I'm going to raise a couple of hives with comb honey to sell in mind. I'm going to cut the foundations down to 3/4" starter strips and see what happens. There is big demand for that and not a lot of supply and I aim to cash in on that if I can get my bees to cooperate.

I've seen quite a bit about bad colony losses this year, but so far I'm good. Hope you are also.

hopefully in 4-6 weeks I'll have some pics and stories to share if there is still interest in this topic.

I'm a regular reader

[ChiefGator]

Originally Posted by Iowanian

On tap for this spring, I already have a couple of cutouts scheduled. I'm going to start charging for anything that I can't use a chainsaw on this year. Too much time and cost to do it for free unless it's easy.

Forgive my ignorance.. I am just starting to learn some beekeeping.. what do you mean by 'cutout'?

[Groves]

We had a warm day yesterday and the girls were bringing in scads of pollen. I can't remember what they are collecting from this time of year, but it was grayish yellow and those pollen sacks were bursting.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by ChiefGator

Forgive my ignorance.. I am just starting to learn some beekeeping.. what do you mean by 'cutout'?

Cutting the hive out of a tree, building, or other "structure".

[Iowanian]

Originally Posted by ChiefGator

Forgive my ignorance.. I am just starting to learn some beekeeping.. what do you mean by 'cutout'?

I've got some photos in the thread that will show what I'm talking about.

A "cut out" is a hive removal from a place where it isn't wanted. I've done or assisted with them in houses, garages, trees, buildings.... basically you locate the hive in the structure, try to identifY which cavities the hive is located. Once you've done that, you cut an access hole into the structure. After you have done that, you try to find the queen, and begin removing the hive a piece at a time. You cut the comb with brood(babies) into shapes and rubber band it into your empty frames. Sometimes you can keep some with honey, others we put some of those frames as well for food. We use a "bee vacuum" which is like a reduced power shop vac and suck the bees into a closed box. We relote the hive to its new home(one of our hives) and then place-shake the bees into the new hive and then release the queen.

If you're smart, as I'm learning you need to block the entrance for a couple of days so the bees won't abscond(fly away and waste your time and effort).

That's the basics. It's hard work, it's the most likely time to get stung, but it's fun and challenging.

My favorite or preferred are when we get calls that they are in homes/barns that are being torn down so we don't have to be careful for reconstruction.


In other news, I was wondering if you have any favorite bee men in YouTube ? I like 628dirt rooster and barnyard bees videos and learn a lot from them. There are a lot of noobs and douchers with bad information to sort through.


My favorite quote so far was a different guy who was wearing only shorts and when a bee flew up his shorts said "you're not a real bee keeper until you've been stung on the hammer".

[redfan]

I caught a little break in the rain before the wind picked up and checked my hives this afternoon. All 3 seem to be doing fine. Hopefully I get a chance to go in a little deeper later on this week, so I can get a better picture of what's going on in there.

Check out Don "The Fat Bee Man" Kuchenmeister on youtube. Lots of good info from him, he is very experienced.

[displacedinMN]

How has this winter/snow affected things?