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Leperflesh posted:You will probably be OK. Lost bees are close enough to the new hive location to probably be able to smell it. When I got home around 5 there were a bunch circling the old location but it now it is 8:30 here and there are only a few dozen in the old location, less than 30 it looks. So that makes me feel better. The longer it is in the new location the more they will acclimate. Also I thought I was all done with moving stinging insects but now I have to destroy a wasp nest under my deck. Opera Bitch fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Jun 30, 2017 |
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Jun 30, 2017 01:39
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Opera Bitch posted:When I got home around 5 there were a bunch circling the old location but it now it is 8:30 here and there are only a few dozen in the old location, less than 30 it looks. So that makes me feel better. The longer it is in the new location the more they will acclimate. Just fill a spray bottle with very soapy water and spray it down. Kills all insects on contact and simultaneously inhibits their ability to fly. (The soap acts as a surfactant allowing the water to smother their breathing holes.)
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Jun 30, 2017 02:44
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Well checked in on the hives and things are going well. Lots of brood in various stages of development and lots of eggs. They seem to have lots of stores and the bigger hive is starting to fill combs with honey. Spotted the queen in the second hive (this is the swarm that came from a log) she is busy laying eggs. These bees seem to be deetermined to make as many swarms as possible. There were two capped queen cells and one empty one. I cut those off and they didn't seem to care. Going to have to keep a close eye on them. Not a very big swarm to begin with, I don't need half of them flying off only for all of them to die in the winter.
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Jul 2, 2017 19:04
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My whole yard is infested with weeds, I'm going to spray round up on the whole thing. The easiest way to take care of all the weed roots is probably to till the yard afterwards yes? Also how long before I should till? I am getting rid of the whole yard, not just the weeds. Although it is 95% weeds. lol internet. fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Jul 5, 2017 |
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Jul 5, 2017 03:51
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lol internet. posted:My whole yard is infested with weeds, I'm going to spray round up on the whole thing. The easiest way to take care of all the weed roots is probably to till the yard afterwards yes? I don't have much experience with bees, but maybe the veteran beekeepers can teach you how to get them to sting the weeds to death?
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Jul 5, 2017 06:59
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Any other southern New England beekeepers here? I've noticed daily battles between my backyard hives and what I presume are scouts from other colonies. So far, my hives have successfully fought off the interlopers. Hell, there were two dead bees in front of one of the hives yesterday. I'm wondering if there's a dearth going on now that we're in early July. I still see stuff blooming, and I see my girls bringing in pollen for new brood, so I'm not sure. Maybe it's because I'm using boardman feeders? This is the first time I've made use of them.
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Jul 5, 2017 18:31
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Stitecin posted:I don't have much experience with bees, but maybe the veteran beekeepers can teach you how to get them to sting the weeds to death? drat wrong thread. Sorry
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Jul 5, 2017 19:43
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Stitecin posted:I don't have much experience with bees, but maybe the veteran beekeepers can teach you how to get them to sting the weeds to death? If someone could train Spanish slugs to eat dandelions and thistles then we could turn them from a pest to a garden helper.
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Jul 6, 2017 08:32
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Forest fire season here (gently caress you, independence day) and our little valley is once again full of light smoke/haze. I am wondering if it is affecting my hive at all.
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Jul 6, 2017 14:37
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Fog Tripper posted:Forest fire season here (gently caress you, independence day) and our little valley is once again full of light smoke/haze. I am wondering if it is affecting my hive at all. Smoke makes them eat honey doesn't it?
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Jul 6, 2017 21:47
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So I am thinking I am probably getting rid of the hive. My husband hasn't been stung since we moved it but there are still a lot of bees hanging around the house and pool, so much that he isn't able to hang out outside for long. Each time he has been stung it has been out of nowhere and it isn't really worth the anxiety over WHEN is he going to get stung any more. I wish we would have known he was allergic before we invested sooooo much money in everything.
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Jul 8, 2017 20:55
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Opera Bitch posted:So I am thinking I am probably getting rid of the hive. My husband hasn't been stung since we moved it but there are still a lot of bees hanging around the house and pool, so much that he isn't able to hang out outside for long. Each time he has been stung it has been out of nowhere and it isn't really worth the anxiety over WHEN is he going to get stung any more. I wish we would have known he was allergic before we invested sooooo much money in everything. Do they have access to water? It might be they are drinking from the pool or leaking drains/taps?
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Jul 8, 2017 21:01
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Spookydonut posted:Do they have access to water? It might be they are drinking from the pool or leaking drains/taps? We have a shallow birdbath next to them and a reservoir 50 ft away. There are some bees that go to the pool but not as many as we expected. But all it takes sadly is one sting to make him swell and itch like mad and make working very uncomfortable.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:03
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Not having a hive will likely not remove bees from your yard. Bees are pretty much everywhere.
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Jul 9, 2017 06:11
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Opera Bitch posted:So I am thinking I am probably getting rid of the hive. My husband hasn't been stung since we moved it but there are still a lot of bees hanging around the house and pool, so much that he isn't able to hang out outside for long. Each time he has been stung it has been out of nowhere and it isn't really worth the anxiety over WHEN is he going to get stung any more. I wish we would have known he was allergic before we invested sooooo much money in everything. This is probably the right thing to do. I am sorry about the bees though 
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Jul 9, 2017 20:20
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There is a cool new beekeeping thread in, of all places, TFR: Bees: They're Nature's Bullets.
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Jul 10, 2017 19:23
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Leperflesh posted:There is a cool new beekeeping thread in, of all places, TFR: Bees: They're Nature's Bullets. I am cross pollinating in here. I am sorry to hear of the removal of a hive but I support you in this action.
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Jul 11, 2017 01:38
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Leperflesh posted:There is a cool new beekeeping thread in, of all places, TFR: Bees: They're Nature's Bullets. What do you mean "of all places"? Fight me
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Jul 11, 2017 03:12
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Fog Tripper posted:What do you mean "of all places"? We don't believe in violence here and we don't have any guns but we will fight TFR with a wicked drum solo and some angry blog posts that will disarm and subdue them.
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Jul 11, 2017 05:09
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Catberry posted:We don't believe in violence here and we don't have any guns but we will fight TFR with a wicked drum solo and some angry blog posts that will disarm and subdue them. As part of the "we", you are incorrect. Guns are cool. Bees are cool.
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Jul 11, 2017 18:39
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Poque posted:I really need to get back in touch with my beekeeping contact to get involved this summer. I did this while drunk and now I'm going to a honeybee class tonight and I'm super excited!
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Jul 11, 2017 18:45
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Yeah I have a gun, even though I'm not a TFR poster. I'm sure plenty of DIY hobbiests do. Fog Tripper posted:What do you mean "of all places"? What is unexpected is bees in TFR because you know, bees aren't guns? I would prefer not to fight you, friend. I meant no disparagement of your subforum, only that it was an odd place to find a bee thread.
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Jul 11, 2017 20:27
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Fog Tripper posted:As part of the "we", you are incorrect. Will science one day develop bees with miniguns for stingers? Only time will tell.
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Jul 11, 2017 20:32
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Haven't posted in a while 'cause life has been crazy. But my wife and I are doing bees again this summer. Started with four hives, now down to three. Not exactly cure what happened. In one of the hives, the bees never made an attempt to release the queen. I had to manually release her. Checked on the hive again the next day and could not locate the queen. Hive dwindled pretty rapidly. A couple of attempts to bolster the hive with frames from a good hive with larva did nothing. Got bored and put up a beecam in one of the top bars, but the focus on the cheap assed camera sucks. Still it was a fun project that I detail on my poorly updated blog. FuzzyBuddha fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jul 12, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2017 20:59
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Catberry posted:Will science one day develop bees with miniguns for stingers? Only time will tell. Those would be the cunts with wings, the common hornet-wasp. Speaking of which I have noticed a bunch this year and have been trying to surgically strike their nests with wasp spray while avoiding anything I suspect a bee would like to visit.
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Jul 11, 2017 21:08
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I posted:lovely days at the hive. 3 queens gone, gotta install a nuc, etc Far better days at the hive! So I ended up asking my old timer beek about his reasoning for not just doing the newspaper method, and he laughed and told me that was probably a better solution that simply didn't occur to him as he was overthinking it. So that's what I did. The nuc ended up not being very big- not much in the way of drawn comb, and just shy of two frames of eggs and brood. Still better than zero, though, and all I really needed was a queen and nurse bees anyhow. Installation went well, very few dead bees, but did not spy the new queen. Split my two full honey supers between the existing hive and the nuc box to ensure everybody had food if poo poo hit the fan, spread the newspaper between, and waited. Opened it back up today for the first time since- it's been 12 days. The newspaper was completely gone, and there was only about half a frame of capped brood in the nuc box, no eggs or larvae. All the frames were drawn, though. The queen thankfully has moved to her rightful home in the original bottom two boxes and is laying like a champ there. Tons of eggs and larvae, super tight pattern, and I spied the lady going about her business. She is loving ENORMOUS, easily the biggest queen I have ever seen. Unfortunately my poo poo rear end Chinese GoPro knockoff decided to die for no reason just as I was getting to her frame, so I didn't get any shots of her. Her big butt will hard to miss in the future, though. Bees all were super calm again, far less runny. Fuckin relieved.
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Jul 12, 2017 05:25
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FuzzyBuddha posted:Haven't posted in a while 'cause life has been crazy. But my wife and I are doing bees again this summer. Started with four hives, now down to three. Not exactly cure what happened. In one of the hives, the bees never made an attempt to release the queen. I had to manually release her. Checked on the hive again the next day and could not locate the queen. Hive dwindled pretty rapidly. A couple of attempts to bolster the hive with frames from a good hive with larva did nothing. Chances are the package had a virgin (or very old) queen shaken in with the workers. She'll release the pheromones that cause the bees to bond to her, but will age out of mating properly. Then, when a new queen is introduced, they reject her out of hand because they already have one, even though she is a dud. Have had it happen a few times, always with new packages.
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Jul 12, 2017 18:24
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So one of my hives seems to have built a whole comb of drone comb.  A few of the old cells had these white deposits in them.  I remember when I first put the swarms in that there were lots of drones but I rarely see them during inspections these days.
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Jul 16, 2017 03:03
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Drone laying like that is usually a sign of a queen gone bad.
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Jul 18, 2017 17:51
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Is sticky white stuff like that in the comb there normal? I don't think I've seen anything like that. Also, my carniolans loving HATE black socks. Opened them up a few days ago and got a nice sting right under my ankle. They did the same to my husband when we installed them. Found out after I got stung that he, too, was wearing black socks.
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Jul 18, 2017 19:45
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Aramoro posted:Drone laying like that is usually a sign of a queen gone bad. What is odd is they made just this one comb with big cells. The rest of the hive is overflowing with brood. I am adding 2-3 new bars a week with this swarm. The colony is easily double the other one I have.
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Jul 18, 2017 22:53
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Is drone laying basically "this hive is hosed lets make sure our genetic lineage survives" ?
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Jul 19, 2017 04:59
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Is sticky white stuff like that in the comb there normal? I don't think I've seen anything like that. I saw a video where they set out a toy dog outside a killer bee hive to demonstrate their aggressiveness. It was a white dog with black spots and the bees gathered at the black spots and the narrator said that the bees target dark areas in attempts to sting the eyes (Most animal eyes are dark/shaded and don't have clearly visible whites like humans do).
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Jul 19, 2017 05:33
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Catberry posted:I saw a video where they set out a toy dog outside a killer bee hive to demonstrate their aggressiveness. It was a white dog with black spots and the bees gathered at the black spots and the narrator said that the bees target dark areas in attempts to sting the eyes (Most animal eyes are dark/shaded and don't have clearly visible whites like humans do). Yeah, the old timers said bees hate dark shades, but I'd never had a problem with occasional black socks. This time I watched one of the girls fly off the inner cover straight for my foot. She immediately stung. Then another went at my suit pocket. I ended up going inside and letting my partner finish the job. It was a cloudy day but we needed to put in a couple frames and put on a new quilt box. 
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Jul 19, 2017 13:40
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Spookydonut posted:Is drone laying basically "this hive is hosed lets make sure our genetic lineage survives" ? Well drones are the only way they can pass that on. Most of what I am reading says that drone comb is just part of a normal hive. The only things I am seeing that mention it as a sign of queen health is if she is only capable of producing drones then she is out of sperm. That is obviously not the case since there is a shitload of developing worker larva and tons of eggs.
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Jul 20, 2017 04:02
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My vorroa sheet came in from Dadant. Literally a sheet of plastic with sticky stuff on it. I am assuming single use? $3.50 a pop. Ugh. Welp, will do a single test this weekend.
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Jul 20, 2017 13:36
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Spookydonut posted:Is drone laying basically "this hive is hosed lets make sure our genetic lineage survives" ? No. Drones are a natural part of the hive and perfectly acceptable. In wild hives, the proportion of drones might be 10-20%. They also serve as the primary target of varroa in their native host, apis ceranae, and the preferable host in mellifera. Unfortunately, most apis mellifera workers are significantly larger than ceranae workers after 150 years of selective breeding and are significantly more susceptible to varroa infestation than the workers of their native host. Drones are the reproductive organs of the hive super organism. If you get rid of them, the hive is no longer capable of fulfilling the biological imperative to reproduce, other than swarming. You only have to worry about a dud queen when you see drones being born in worker cells. You'd recognize them because they stick out like bullets. Hence, "bullet brood."
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Jul 20, 2017 15:19
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So I've been a terrible amateur beekeeper by neglecting our two hives and freaked out a wee bit too much over some bearding. It's been fairly hot the last week and our hives have been spending quite a bit more time outside in the afternoon/evenings. Last night one of the hives had a particularly large beard compared to the other hive and I decided to quickly inspect it. Problem #1 - everything was glued together- which is normal. The top cover was firmly glued into the roof. Normal inspections would probably help with this. The gap between the roof/feeder/top was packed with a inch thick of bees. This screams overcrowding to me, but I also have no idea what I'm doing. Problem #2 - the feeder was left on since this spring and firmly attached to the super below with comb spreading through the entrance. After getting everything apart, I found I had broken a succession cell open and inside was a nearly developed queen. This has me a bit concerned that they were mid-process of re-queening or possibly getting ready to swarm? I'm planning on doing a full inspection before work one morning if possible this week. In the mean time I temporarily added a smaller honey super for more room. The good news is that everything else looks great. We are entering dearth and they appear to be packed full of nectar, honey, pollen, and brood. It's unlikely they will draw the super out- but at least there's more room until we can inspect the hive. A quick peak in the neighboring hive shows a similar state and I plan on adding a small honey super on it tonight. I'm going to join our local BCA and see if there's anyone who is willing to mentor me so we don't loose the hives in the winter. Question- does anyone either 1) Space their top for airflow or 2) Drill a upper vent/entrance hole in their langstroth? Last night:    This morning: 
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Jul 25, 2017 22:45
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Kind of surprised my warre has no comb in the bottom (window-viewable) box yet. Every so often they clump up under a section of those bars and I get excited, and the next day when most are foraging I can see nothing on the bars. Plenty of blooms in our area, plenty of irrigation happening for water, plenty of back and forth activity. Just surprised they are not drawing more quickly. Going to treat with Apivar this fall to help the colony out before winter attempts to kick their rear end.
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Jul 26, 2017 17:19
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helno posted:
Thats a brood disease, hard to tell from one picture but most likely either sacbrood or Foul Brood (most likelyeuropean it doesnt look severe enough for the dreaded american) Fog Tripper posted:My vorroa sheet came in from Dadant. Literally a sheet of plastic with sticky stuff on it. I am assuming single use? $3.50 a pop. Ugh. Fog Tripper posted:Kind of surprised my warre has no comb in the bottom (window-viewable) box yet. Every so often they clump up under a section of those bars and I get excited, and the next day when most are foraging I can see nothing on the bars. Remember that apivar is not an instant treatment so make sure to use it early enough that the maximum projected mite die off happens(52 days i believe?) before your winter generation is raised.
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Jul 28, 2017 19:12
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