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Also, finally got my new extractor yesterday. It's got a few dings from the unsecured wrench they ship inside the body.  But yeah, I was having some honey lock in a hive and also wanted to get some honey extracted before my surgery next week since I'm not sure how long it's going to be before I can do stuff.
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Jun 30, 2016 15:58
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Anyone have any experience with Solvenian hives? They seem like they offer a ton of advantages over Longworth hives, with the only disadvantage being that you can't just keep stacking to increase the size. http://www.keepingbackyardbees.com/the-slovenian-beehive-arrives-in-the-us/ TL;DR is that it's basically a longworth hive rotated 90 degrees with front and rear doors instead of a bottom board and a lid, so you have access to all the frames just by opening a door. The frames are like books on a shelf, instead of hanging down from edges.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:14
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There is a big downside with the fixed size for where I'm at anyway. The two box or whatever fixed size could be too much area for a starting/weaker hive to defend and then it would get overrun with hive beetles. I'm also not sure how practical that is if the bees propolis the frames in or drew comb outside the frame. I love the idea of it though.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:49
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:There is a big downside with the fixed size for where I'm at anyway. The two box or whatever fixed size could be too much area for a starting/weaker hive to defend and then it would get overrun with hive beetles. It also mentions that the bees become conditioned to the front being the entrance, not the back, and being pretty chill with the keepers coming in from the back. Mind you, I've had bees for two months, so I don't know a drat thing.
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Jun 30, 2016 18:55
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stealie72 posted:The article talks about keeping two small hives in one of them during the winter by keeping a board or other excluder between the upper and lower portions, so it's fixed at two max, but it looks like you can go down to one if you need to. The guy being interviewed mentions keeping two hives (one in the upper, one in the lower) for the winter, pulling the queen from the second one in the spring, sliding out the divider between the upper and lower, and combining them both under one queen for a quickly robust hive. That divider is going to need to be between the left and the right portions or else one hive isn't going to have an entrance/exit. I'm not sure how have exits that close would work. I've seen folks do two Langstroths on top of each other, but I'm not sure I like it. I can't tell you why, it just looks too "wrong" for me. But I have a hard time seeing how the bees are going to be more or less fine with a back open versus a top open. If your bees are easy to deal with, they're usually easy not matter what and the opposite is true too. And it might be a regional/bee type thing, but my gals would propolis those frames in to the point that I'm not sure I'd be able to get them out easily. I have to hive tool every thing I move every inspection in general.
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Jun 30, 2016 19:41
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Aramoro posted:Do they have any frames which are all stores? If they do then you could try inserting an empty frame between that frame and the brood. That should encourage them to draw out that frame. Mine are only drawing out one side of the frames so I'm turning them around and rotating their positions to try and get them to draw them out well. The problem is not the space, there are 10 empty brood frames. The problem is that they are not drawing them out. My first queen left when she ran out of room. The guy I bought my nuc from said to upgrade by adding a medium honey super on top of my brood box instead of a second brood box. Queen didn't like that and left. My second queen left or died. My third queen now inherited a weak hive that's completely honey locked since it hasn't had a queen in a couple of weeks. I added 10 empty brood frames which are placed between full honey frames in the top and bottom brood box. The guy I bought the queens from said if they don't pick up soon, I should extract honey so she will have fully drawn out wax to lay in.
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Jul 1, 2016 02:35
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Try this first: feed them. Give them a few days, and if you aren't see eggs and brood then (and some drawn comb. They'll almost always start in the middle top of the frame), extract to clear some space. But if you got empty frames, try feeding them as they tend to like to from feeding before going into their honey supply. Get a bucket, sugar water, and some straw so they can get out and not drown. You won't need to give them a lot, you're just trying to stimulate them into drawing. If you got some protein/pollen substitute, great, give them a little of that too.
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Jul 1, 2016 03:37
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I've got 2 feeders with 1 pint 1:1 sugar water and 1 tsp Bee Healthy in each and a water source nearby, with a stick in it to give them away to not drown. They've had the sugar since Tuesday, and they've always had the water. I'll be inspecting them Saturday morning, and if they haven't drawn any new comb I'll figure out a way to extract honey from brood frames without having an extractor. Should be fun 
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Jul 1, 2016 13:25
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Sorry for suggesting you do stuff you're already doing there. But yeah, sounds like you're doing the reasonable route here. If you extract, leave the wet frames for the bees to clean out for you. I usually go with sticking them in an empty box and putting the box on it's side. I've heard of folks using instant grits in the area around it if you have problems with ants (supposedly the grits blow up the ant's stomachs or something), but I've never tried it. But yeah, can "extract" by just cutting off the cap, turning the frame, and letting gravity work for you. It's going to take a while, require some filtering, and probably be really annoying (might want to melt the leftover goop and set it aside to seperate out wax from honey, then filter again to get any leftover stuff out of the honey). If you can put the frames anywhere that is above 90 or so and the bees can't get to it, it'll make your work easier. The wax and honey are easier to work with if it's warm. Sinister_Beekeeper fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Jul 1, 2016 |
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Jul 1, 2016 14:35
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Our first year we harvested an entire hive, 75lbs of honey, with nothing but a sterlite container and a big flat knife. It took a while for each frame to drain but it worked.
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Jul 2, 2016 08:01
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Wow. Also, we now know which of us is the one about to do a second hernia repair with the pregnant wife and which of us isn't, haha. Seriously though, that's cool, but yeah, it's a lot of work and even more waiting.
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Jul 3, 2016 01:39
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I have made mistakes. I stayed up until 3am reading this thread. I now want bees very, very badly. There's a place a few hours away that does courses - if I'm still interested come winter, I'll book myself in for one and see what I think. I'm in rural North-Eastern Ontario. I know there are bees somewhat locally, maybe I'll look up one of the groups and see if I can't get some hands-on knowledge this year and see what I think. We've got a big enough yard that I can put one or two hives in without an issue. But we've got mostly trees and rocks and swamps, so I'm not sure how they would fare. Local group brain picking time I suppose. This stream of consciousness brought to you by not enough sleep. Also, you guys are awesome, bees are awesome, and damnit why do I keep finding new hobbies.
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Jul 6, 2016 21:00
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The best advice I could give you is to see if your local groups have any sort of mentoring before you go through a lot of trouble just to find it's not really your thing. Also, there's usually always folks looking for plots to place their hives if you decide you like bees but don't want to deal with them yourself/want to get some honey as "rent".
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Jul 9, 2016 12:09
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Hey all! First year beekeeper here and so far, it's been great. However, I noticed today that my bees have been gathering to drink from the spigot on my house. There's a clean birdbath about 15 feet from it with lillypads for them to land on, but I have yet to see a single bee at the bath. Any idea as to why this might be? My spigot doesn't usually drip, and I want to make sure my ladies are getting enough to drink!
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Jul 11, 2016 04:20
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So come revel in the schadenfreude that is me and my queenless hive. My girlfriend and I bought two nucs earlier this year, one is doing fantastic, the other, not so much. We noticed about a month ago we couldn't find one of our queens. We didn't worry too much because everything we saw and read said that sometimes you just miss her and it's a non-issue if you don't see any emergency cells. Well a couple of weeks later, we notice emergency cells. So we call the guy we got the nucs from to order a new queen. The guy is really into beekeeping and pretty much every time we've had to talk to him to order nucs or whatever, he chews our ears off and tells us to ignore advice we saw in another beekeeping book or to only read his, etc etc. Anyhow, I call him up and let him know we need to order a new queen. He asks why, I explain that ours is MIA and we're now seeing emergency cells. I tell him we both think it's possible we accidentally rolled the queen or dropped her while working the hive, but after asking me some questions, he says they swarmed. This sounds reasonable to me. but he's also doing the condescending old guy "how could you not know they swarmed? I mean I know that! Come on!" routine. Anyways, he proceeds to tell me how to introduce the new queen when I get her in a few days. He tells me to do the following... -Go through the queenless hive beforehand and remove all the emergency cells. Also keep an eye out for replacement queens, etc. Get rid of them if possible. -Take 2-3 frames of uncapped brood from the healthy hive and switch them over so the new queen gets fresh workers. -Introduce the new queen immediately. When I say "Oh you mean just put the queen cage in right away and let her eat through the candy?" He says no, uncap the cage, put the cage in the hive so she can get out and, they'll accept her. "But everything I read said to leave her in the cage with her attendant bees so that they eat the candy and eventually the colony gets used to her scent and accepts her." "No, that is wrong, don't do that. They really need a queen and will just accept her." "Uh, ok I guess. You're the expert" Pretty sure anyone who has worked bees or introduced a new queen can figure out what happened next. Steps 1 and 2 went well. Step 3, not so much. That or the bees were just really excited to meet their new monarch. Guess I'll go order another queen from another apiary then... 
Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jul 15, 2016 |
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Jul 15, 2016 01:26
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Sounds like there may already be a queen there. So do you have larvae/eggs? I don't bother looking for queens usually, I look for that because you know she has been alright as of a few days back at least. Make sure before slapping down some more dough for no good reason. You're mentioning emergency cups in the plural, which sounds like swarming. Where were the cups on the frames and how many are you talking about? Swarming takes a few weeks to go, so there are warning signs, but yeah, this person being a jerk about it isn't going to help you out. If you ever see them swarm, oh you'll know. It's a loud beenado. If it makes you feel better, my long-suffering wife is horrified someone told you to just dump her in there. If you put a queen cage in a hive If the bees aren't super hostile, you can get away with not putting a frame of brood in there, but it's just a good practice if you can spare one. Also, slap a feeder on for a couple of days, then try to wait a week or two before messing with the hive so they don't kill the new queen because they blame her for some lunk opening their house up and bothering them. But yeah, queenless hives will usually flock to the queen cage and kind of dance around in my experience. They'll try to clump the cage and kill the queen if they got a queen, and I realize it sounds like I'm saying the same thing, but one is the bees obviously trying to get to the queen to screw her up and the other is more of a goofy dance. If I don't respond and you need help or I just wasn't clear, shoot me a message since I'm still recovering from surgery and well, lulz painkillers. Having to get the previously mentioned wife to come out with me and work bees soon since I'm on a ten pound weight restriction for a few weeks, so maybe she'll be a bit more comfortable dealing with them in the future (she likes them, but she's a bit scared of them). Sinister_Beekeeper fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jul 15, 2016 |
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Jul 15, 2016 01:47
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Thanks for the advice! We did have both larvae and eggs in the hive, though they were mislaid/two to a comb (for at least the past 2 weeks) which from what we know means workers are laying eggs and that there are issues with the hive. Also drones are in abundance, etc. The emergency cells, I want to say we had maybe 10 or so? Again, following that guys advice (I am done following that guys advice...I mean what he does clearly works for him but he's pretty meh at teaching others), I removed the emergency cells prior to putting the new queen in. I did put a feeder on as well, so they're good for the next week. So we will forgo checking the hives on Saturday (our usual inspection day) so as not to piss them off anymore, and only feed the healthy hive if it's used up it's food by that point. We need to get another super ready for that one as well (they are currently filling up the second super as we speak). Also, I appreciate hearing that there might be a slim chance they accepted the queen (or that one is still in there) instead of outright killing her. Because as soon as I opened that cage, all the bees were basically beelining it towards the workers and the queen. I quickly lost sight of the queen and the attendants did not look like they were being received well. Basically, it was like watching  happen in real time.
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Jul 15, 2016 02:45
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Worker laid eggs are duds, also you'll usually see more than two in a cell. I've seen like 6+. But in any case, the duds wouldn't get to larvae stage. Ten or more cells sounds like swarm cells. They're usually going to be on the bottom of the lower honey frames (they try to keep them from the queen since she'll sometimes kill them) and you'll have like one on each end of a frame on the bottom, then one in the middle, two on the next, etc. Supersedure cells are usually in the middle of a frame (up along the foundation), not on the bottom of the frames hanging off. I'd check them Saturday. If you got larvae, it's been 4-9 days since a good laying queen was around (their eggs on a predictable schedule, so keep that in mind with swarm/supersedure cups since you can count down from when they're filled/capped if you need to). But yeah, I'd just look for larvae or even better larvae and eggs, then get out. Not trying to screw with you, but it sounds like there could be a viable queen in there, so it's better to verify than spend more money on one you might not even need and spend some less time worrying. Inspect them in the afternoon if you can when foragers are out to make it easier if you can. I think you're in a better situation than you think you are. This is going to sound like I'm putting you on, but look for bees on the frame tops sticking their rumps up and flapping their wings and pay attention to if they're loud or not. If they're mostly quietly bopping along with their butts in the air, you're probably good. If not, look at the brood frames you stuck in since that is probably where the next supersedure cup is. Usually to get a swarm this late in the year, you're doing good and they likely ran out of space (so now you know what to look for as far as overcrowding). If you screwed up to get them to swarm when yours where getting ready to, they would have likely just bailed on you, so other than not catching when they were out of space, it sounds like you were doing just fine. I screwed up both ways starting. I slapped too many boxes on a new package and they got overrun because they couldn't cover it, and have had a swarm from overcrowding too. You'll get to where you can kind of eyeball what it should be with time. And yeah, I figured you knew exactly what I meant between a friendly rush towards a new queen and a hostile one. It's not really subtle. Also, don't worry if you see an empty queen cup every now and then. Some of mine always keep empty queen cells ready. As long as there isn't an egg there, it's nothing to worry about.
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Jul 15, 2016 03:45
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We've been having some really strange weather here. So I got a nuc at the start of June but weather has been pretty poor so not too much activity, they've been taking down a lot of feed. Except when I did my inspection last week with only 8 frames drawn out I find a bunch of queen cells. Naughty Bees. I cut them out to buy me a few days then split the hive, moving the queen and a couple of frames into an empty nuc and choosing a queen cell to be my new queen in the old hive. I'll check again on Monday to see how they're getting on and confirm my queen selection. My plan is to reunite them at the end of summer choosing the best looking queen and moving to the double deep system for over winter hopefully. That said my last plan did not survive contact with the bees. This exact thing has happened to 2 other bee keepers in my area, hives preparing to swarm when they've got plenty of space. Weird.
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Jul 15, 2016 11:31
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Thanks again (and good luck with your surgery!), I'll take a quick look on Saturday and post what I find. Maybe we still have a function queen, maybe we don't. I do feel a little better knowing that if they swarmed we were at least doing everything else right. The healthy hive did have a few super cells that were empty, so I'm not as worried about them, though I am going to paint and prep the next super for them so we can get ready to expand instead of having another swarm.
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Jul 15, 2016 14:25
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Aramoro posted:This exact thing has happened to 2 other bee keepers in my area, hives preparing to swarm when they've got plenty of space. Weird. Sounds like they know something we don't is about to go down.  You can try rotating frames in the brood boxes, but some queens like to swarm. But for an area-wide exodus, that's just weird. Are all the bees from the same beeyard or something? Wonder if there's just a line of bees that really, really likes swarming and all three of you got them from the same spot. Handsome Ralph posted:Thanks again (and good luck with your surgery!), I'll take a quick look on Saturday and post what I find. Thanks, but I got out of the hospital Saturday and the surgery went good. Just sitting around recovering. But yeah, pregnant wife and guy that can't lift more then ten pounds (I went over the limit once and am not going to do that again) inspecting hives this weekend is going to be hilarious.
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Jul 15, 2016 17:55
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:Sounds like they know something we don't is about to go down. The guy I got them off has been keeping bees 20 years and it's the first time he's seen it. He thinks it's been weather related. I'll check them tomorrow and see what the bad bees are up to
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Jul 16, 2016 16:04
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Bad news. My honeylocked and hive beetle-infested girls are down to one non-infested comb. I removed all the infested ones last week, leaving 2 behind with 8 fresh frames. Now one of them is infested. I found the queen, got her off the infested one, and took that one out too. Hopefully they can recover from their decimation after a tumultuous first season. The good news? They have a protector: 
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Jul 17, 2016 17:45
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BrianBoitano posted:Bad news. My honeylocked and hive beetle-infested girls are down to one non-infested comb. I removed all the infested ones last week, leaving 2 behind with 8 fresh frames. Now one of them is infested. I found the queen, got her off the infested one, and took that one out too. Hopefully they can recover from their decimation after a tumultuous first season. If you got some beetle traps, I'd put them with the queen. You can freeze the frames and then wash the beetle "stuff" (it's poop) off to re-use the comb. If it makes you feel better, the first attempt I did was wiped out by hive beetles. I had a 3 pound package I put into two boxes and they just couldn't cover the area and keep the beetles out. Once your hives are strong, they're usually good about keeping beetles to a minimum (around here it's pretty much inevitable you'll see a few here and there). You can either try to merge hives if you want or drop them to a single box, which it looks like you've already done, and use a entrance reducer (you normally wouldn't in the Summer, but this is to give them a little easier door to defend). It's hard for me to guess if you got enough bees for the colony to be realistically viable. I'd also extract at least some of those frames if you can, keeping in mind you leave them out away from the hives for the girls to clean out when you're done, if you need some more drawn comb for them. Feed them with an internal feeder if you got one (you can make one fairly easily if you don't) to also not attract hive beetles. Ask around if you know any local beekeepers about fall feeding and feed the hell out of them. It's not like you're going to get a lot of honey, but you might be able to fatten them up enough to get through Winter. Also, seriously screw hive beetles.
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Jul 17, 2016 22:39
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Thanks. I'm already doing a lot of that, though I've been told not to let them eat any of the honey from the frozen frames. What do you think?
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Jul 18, 2016 05:57
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Queen update: It rained a ton all day Saturday so we were unable to check on either hive (but both had been fed on Thursday). The hives are on my girlfriend's parents farm, so we won't be able to check on them till next weekend, but I've instructed her mom (who's been feeding them during the week and doing checks as needed), to keep an eye out.
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Jul 18, 2016 17:53
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BrianBoitano posted:Thanks. I'm already doing a lot of that, though I've been told not to let them eat any of the honey from the frozen frames. What do you think? I've never had one that was bad still have honey on it, but I'm guessing there could be beetle "stuff" in the honey or any possible pathogens that I'd probably clean out just to be safe.
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Jul 19, 2016 18:02
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I'm pretty sure my hive's dead. I had taken out the infected frame and made sure the queen was on the other one. Two days later (right before I left town on Tuesday) I didn't see any bee activity whatsoever. No time to inspect it but I expect the worst. I'm looking forward to not letting my girls swarm next year so this problem doesn't happen!
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Jul 20, 2016 19:35
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Update! Checked the hive that I attempted to requeen last week using that other guy's faulty advice (dumping the queen straight in). No queen spotted (wooo regicide!) and only a few eggs were spotted (though a few cells did have larvae). We did spot a number of emergency cells as well as several drones which my girlfriend (who's more read on this stuff than I am) said is a sign we might still get a viable queen out of all of this, but maybe not. Anyways, I'm leaning towards just maintaining the hive and seeing where it goes from here without attempting a requeening. Our other hive is doing well and the fact this one swarmed rather than just outright collapsing is promising in that we aren't as bad at this as we thought.
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Jul 25, 2016 16:43
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One thing you can do if you are unsure if the hive already has a queen or not, is separate 2 boxes with a queen excluder, cover 75% or so of it with plastic (shopping bag or anything really) as a pheromone barrier, and put your new queen (caged) in the top box. Make sure to shake all the bees out of it first so the old queen can't possibly be in there. The bees will happily have 2 queens if they can't fight each other. Then you can come back at a later point in time and check to see what's happening, and split or remove excluder.
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Aug 2, 2016 14:13
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I'm still anxiously awaiting the results or requeening my hive. The old queen is in the nuc and seems to be doing ok, all the FEDSS are right as far as I can see although I'm very bad at spotting eggs, there were at least fresh larva. Still drawing out frames very slowly though. Next week I'll open the main hive and see if they've got a queen or not. Both hives are still drawing down a lot of syrup. My plan is now if the Nuc manages to draw out the remaining 3 frames before the end of August and the new Hive has a queen then kill the old queen and reunite the hives using the double deep system. If the Nuc doesn't draw out more frames then I won't have enough frames to do it so I'll just see if the nuc will over winter itself.
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Aug 2, 2016 15:03
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So, north Florida here. What kind of schedule should I be looking at for next year installing a brand new hive? I'm thinking of pre-seeding an area of field with clover and a nice pansy bed in January, in the area I have picked for a hive, and fencing off the flowers and hive area from the horses. We get sporadic cold snaps and even soft freezes (ie, holy poo poo there's frost somewhere keep the air conditioning off!) until early march. Can bees tolerate a bit of cool weather when first installed, or should I wait until the threat of cool has completed passed?
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Aug 2, 2016 16:13
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Suspect Bucket posted:So, north Florida here. What kind of schedule should I be looking at for next year installing a brand new hive? I'm thinking of pre-seeding an area of field with clover and a nice pansy bed in January, in the area I have picked for a hive, and fencing off the flowers and hive area from the horses. We get sporadic cold snaps and even soft freezes (ie, holy poo poo there's frost somewhere keep the air conditioning off!) until early march. Can bees tolerate a bit of cool weather when first installed, or should I wait until the threat of cool has completed passed? Baring in mind I live in Scotland and our bees will tolerate a bit more cold than some others. When they get first installed you want them to get out as much as possible which means temperatures > 10C, ideally more like >16C so they can get out and build stocks. That's why we don't have Nuc's available until June generally. They can tolerate cool weather, they just won't go outside so you will have to feed them, should probably feed them anyway to give them a leg up. In terms of flowers for Bees look at flowering trees, they have masses of flowers in a relatively small space.
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Aug 2, 2016 16:28
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Check your local beekeeper association and ask them when they typically start new hives. It's going to vary by region. My guess is that north Florida is warm enough that they do it in mid-April, but that's just a guess. You can definitely provide clover for them but bees will go for a mile or two around the hive to find stuff, so if literally anything is in flower during the spring, they'll be fine. Suburban bees and urban bees do fine too, there's almost always something around they can go after. And in any case, you'll be feeding syrup to your brand new hive for probably the first month anyway, so even if nothing at all is in flower yet they'll be OK.
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Aug 2, 2016 18:45
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Aramoro posted:Baring in mind I live in Scotland and our bees will tolerate a bit more cold than some others. Out of curiosity, do you have any Buckfast bees?
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Aug 2, 2016 22:20
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:Out of curiosity, do you have any Buckfast bees? I don't no, I've got Scottish Black Bees, but I do know people with Buckfast Bees.
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Aug 2, 2016 23:50
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Oh, that is very cool.
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Aug 3, 2016 00:28
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Sinister_Beekeeper posted:Oh, that is very cool. I almost got Buckfast Bee's but they had trouble producing a Nuc so I just got local Apis Mellifera Mellifera, they're European Dark Bees but generally they get called Scottish Black Bees here as although they're essentially the same Bees as elsewhere ones bred here tend to not mind colder temperatures, normally European Dark Bees will go on a mating flight at 20C whilst Scottish Black Bees will go out on a mating flight down to 16C. Most commercial honey farmers use Italian Bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) so you do get a bit of cross breeding between the Scottish Bees and Italian Bees so you do get some of the qualities of Buckfast Bees in some colonies sometimes.
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Aug 3, 2016 15:07
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Most of the commercial apiaries I've seen around this region of the country (I'm in Nashville) have Italians or some mix of them. Since I'm catching swarms, I can't be too authoritative about it, but most of them look like Italians to me. I got one queen that was near some Russians and her lower half is all-black and I really need to get a decent pic of her someday. There are some outfits in Texas selling Buckfasts (not sure if it's the same or they're just misusing the name) and the people I know that have done that have a lot of fun if the hives requeen themselves. If your idea of fun is super hostile bees anyway.
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Aug 4, 2016 00:59
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My bees are really placid which is good. We've got a guy in the association here who is incredibly knowledgeable and he helps out with any aggressive colonies, requeening them for people etc. It's kinda policy here for hobby keepers to try to maintain black bees if you can (less productive than Italians but hardier) and not to make nucs out of aggressive colonies so I think most people who get bees through the association have a pretty good time. My bees are quite black, here are some.   I've not been on the swarm list for this year, maybe next year. I've joined the national association now which insures my hive against theft and foul brood etc which is good.
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Aug 4, 2016 10:43
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