I'm aware that the inside of the boxes are never painted (I believe that the bees do that with some natural material).
I was just thinking that if the paint's fumes were at a minimum that the bees would be more attracted to their new homes.
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I'm aware that the inside of the boxes are never painted (I believe that the bees do that with some natural material).
I was just thinking that if the paint's fumes were at a minimum that the bees would be more attracted to their new homes.
I think what you are talking about is propolis or bee glue. They coat and stick everything with it.
These box's are going to be added to the top of existing hives and although i see that your point might be credible in a perfect world, for all practical purposes for me the possible negative is offset by the positive.
I am glad that i test fit my foundation before going to my bees.
A made a mistake and ordered the wrong size foundation. I put in the number one row up.....
To look on the bright side luckily it was the next size bigger and it was $5 USD per 100 cheaper. It is much easier to make things smaller and I figure I saved about $2.50 an hour for my labor while doing it!:rofl2:
Not a good bee related day. I am worried about 3 hives two that swarmed and the swarm that I caught. I will just have to let nature take its course and hope for the best.
Both the backs of my hands are stiff. One hive in particular was ornery and I stopped counting at 10 or so stings.
To be positive at least I am not allergic to them! :rofl2:
Always learning.
I showed this picture and a video I took to my mentor and he had me check out the following link.
Attachment 268075
What Should I Be Doing With My Bees This Month?: Washboarding bees
I currently have two hives and this year the one hive gave me 105 pounds of honey and the second gave me 32 pounds (this hive swarmed this year).
I extracted and finally got everything bottled up and here is what 137 pounds of honey look like. Last year I had 36 pounds so this was a pleasant surprise. It is a mixture of 16 oz., 8 oz. bottles, a couple 2 pound bottles, two 3 pound quart jars, and the plastic jugs have 10 pounds of honey that is committed to a friend that makes mead.
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Heard something interesting on talk back radio recently, that local honey can help prevent asthma and allergies because of the regional pollen content.
Sent from a moto x far far away
One article I read said that last year the average Minnesota hive was down a bit and averaged 58 lbs.
My big excitement today was installing some honey gates in 5 gallon buckets.
Gosh I lead a boring life!:D
Sometimes old tools work best.
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I ran across this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLKmfZCYh0s
Took the first honey of the year for me. About 70 lbs by the bathroom scale. 1 bucket 18.2'% moisture the other 18.4%.
I have to check out the new to me used heated knife. It kept cooling off I think that it needs a new plug end. I hope that is all it is.
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I took a picture of this hive yesterday. It's in a fake tree trunk and viewable from front and back. The bees enter from outside through the tube on the lower left. Attachment 269693
I pulled the last of my supers today. 13 in all but not all full. I am hoping for about 8 full equivelents.
Does that make sense???:hmmm:
They were mad today even before I started I got stung at the edge of my eyebrow/temple area. Then I got it in the ear through my suit. They liked my right ear for some reason. I didn't even use Vegital this morning......
I am going to sacrifice some of the crop this fall and try to get all six hives through the winter. Having a strong hive ready to go in the spring is one of the answers from what I am finding.
But if I knew everything I wouldn't be hanging around here!:rofl2:
I decided to give up extracting for the day......
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I decided after only getting stung one in the finger trying to pick up a scraper.
:rofl2:
On top of the plastic box I put a super that I just extracted honey from.
They didn't leave at dark.
Did I catch a swarm?
We will see in the morning!
My tax dollars at work.
A new bee 'sky rise' in Como Park offers home for pollinators - StarTribune.com
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I would put one in my yard for free but from what I understand it wouldn't be legal......
They didn't even put it on our street that a share of the money came from.
I wrapped by bees up for the winter today.
5 colonies look good and one is questionable.
Things are out of my hands until spring. I may check them on a warm day in Feb or there about.
Did a quick peek into the hive yesterday as it was sunny and warm and my sister-in-law was in town and really wanted to see the hive. Just went through the upper honey super and checked their stores. They were super docile for this time of year and all looked good. They are carrying a heavy mite load and I'll have to treat them in the spring or risk losing them the following winter.
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After dinner we cracked open a 4 year old mead which was delicious!
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Notice the layer of sediment at the bottom of the bottle. When originally bottled the clarity was murky. After settling it has a beautiful golden color and when poured is like champagne.
Bees are awesome.
I find it interesting that you want to treat for mites in the spring. I have always been told Fall is the time to treat them after you pull your honey and the brood are at a low number. Kill the mites in the fall so the bees don't have to have one more thing against them in the winter. We are in very different climate areas. I am in MN.
How much honey did you get this year? I got about 55 lbs per hive average for my 5 hives and I heard that was not bad for around here. I did not feed them in the spring or this fall and i hope they have enough to make it through. Many around here kill off the hives in the fall and get new ones in the spring. But I got enough for me!
A local blog by the place I get much of my supplies.
What Should I Be Doing With My Bees This Month?
Your bees did great! Any of the harvest going to mead?
This hive is from a 5-frame package I got this last spring and I didn't take any honey from them. They mostly filled that upper deep and are going into winter heavy.
These bees are supposed to be 'hygenic' and somewhat resistant to the varroa and I was hesitant to treat them this first year. Maybe they can handle the mites? In the past I've treated in the fall with formic acid and it was effective. Are you treating for the varroa mite?
I might also just split them in the spring and hope a break in the brood cycle will knock down the mite.
My 200th post: when I ski dived the 200th jump was a biggie. I was the last out on a 12 way and dived down on the formation in a full on delta.
This is not as exciting.
Getting the hives ready for winter here in southern Ohio. I put my insulated covers on the tops and will get the bee cozies and mouse guards on this weekend - it has been warm enough during the day for them to break cluster but temps will dip next week.
I have not treated for mites this fall because I have almost no issues with them but have done several things to try and knock the small hive beetles down with seems to have hit this area hard.
Last year I got 135 pounds off of two hives (105 from just one of them). It was really raining here this year so I think some of that affected the honey production and I ended up with only 43 pounds total off one hive. I had two hives last year and had one die off so I didn't expect anything from the 2 new hives this year but will feed heavily in the spring to get them built up to hopefully get some decent production next year. I am currently at 3 hives and may try to go to 4 next year which is all that I want for now.
I treated with Formic acid this fall.
I tried some two year old mead this fall that a friend made and it definitely gets better with age.
A friend of mine brews beer so I offered to trade off honey if he would make the mead. It has been settling since June and he is going to bottle soon so looking forward to having that.
Do you guy’s test for mites before treating with formic acid? I usually test by throwing bees in a mason jar with powdered sugar and screw on a cap with metal fencing. The metal has holes big enough for the mites to fall through but not the bees. Then I shake the mason jar with the bees inside on a paper plate and spray the plate with water. I can then see the mites, if any, and then know to test or not.
When I tested in fall both of my hives had no mites so I didn’t treat. My hives did okay when I harvested, the one producing 53 pounds and the other produced near nothing. The one that didn’t produce was having other problems and NOT mites though. It swarmed 4 times and the population was low after a while. So, do y’all test for mites too? It saved me some formic acid for future years in case I have mites.
Just put in two hives this past year. I'm using flow hives and they make the process of harvesting the honey a lot easier. Just turn a key, honey flows out and you catch it in jars. We've had one harvest so far, tastes like lavendar and jasmine! Apologies if these have already been discussed, I haven't read the entire thread yet.
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The other thing we have, purely for pollination purposes (though I did grab the sugarbag out once to try) is an Australian native bee hive in a hollow log on my front deck. They are smaller than european bees and bite rather than sting (and they don't die if they bite you). Their honey is a lot less viscous than european bee honey, and has an interesting flavour (depends on what they have been collecting I guess). Here's a bad slow-mo of them.
Native Bees
James.
I have read about these flow hives before and thought they were more of a gimmick.
It will be interesting to hear your thoughts after a couple more uses.
There are many different bees than the Honey bee that most people think about and they are all interesting.
One time when I was younger we tore down a shed and got the honey from a bumble bees nest that was in it. Not much honey but boy it was good!
Tim
Honestly don't know - they certainly were more costly than a normal setup. I'm afraid I am new to bee husbandry so I won't have too many useful thoughts in terms of comparisons. The ones I have are a plastic (or nylon?) frame with pre-made plastic/nylon uncapped honeycombs split vertically down the middle - the bees just fill them and cap them. When you insert the "key" and turn it, it splits the frame in half vertically (one half slides upwards from the other half by a small amount), which cracks the seal on the fake honey cells and allows the honey to flow out to a hole in the bottom of the box.
Seemed to me at the time of setup to be a whole lot easier and less stressful on the bees than what was described to me by the bee guy as being the traditional approach to collecting the honey.
I guess the thing will be how long they last/work as intended before needing to be replaced. Hopefully a long time - they aint cheap.
James.
Certain types of honey crystallize in the comb very easily. What would happen with these if the honey crystallizes?
Propylis or what I call bee glue. One little dot of that may keep the whole flexing thing from happening.
Just a couple of thoughts I have had.
Tim
Ah I see. Yeah, it was a little stiff the first time we did it in fact, but I used two keys for leverage and stability (guy recommended doing it that way) and went gently and it opened OK. Apparently you can run into trouble with cracking them if you go at it hard. So yes, that is definitely something to be aware of in the future for sure.
James.