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It's not useless to post about enjoying your interaction with your bees, like any other pet it is very cute and wholesome to hear about :3
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Aug 1, 2019 22:43
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I'm getting more and more certain that some of my bees are illiterate and don't read books about beekeeping. One of my stronger hives somehow lost the queen. No idea how, I at least couldn't remember doing something stupid. Anway, they created like twenty queen cells...completely crazy hive. I removed all but the nicest one, which also hatched. I checked two weeks later: no brood, more and more honey filling up the brood nest. Four weeks later (I know...much too long): no brood, and even more honey. Ordered a queen from a fellow breeder, but just to make sure, added a frame with fresh brood/eggs to check if a queen or laying worker was present. Three days later, not a single queen cell...argh...so I feared that they already might have a worker with ovaries, emitting the queen pheromone, which hasn't yet started laying drone brood. I added the new queen anyway, because I had no chance to store her anywhere. Basically: stupid beekeeper doing stupid things. Checked today: very nice brood nest, new queen (the one I added) running around, laying eggs like the good breeding machine she is. Still don't understand why they didn't create queen cells when I added the fresh brood, as that's how I learned to definitely check if a queen/laying worker is present or not. They also moved all of the honey out of the brood nest. I love bees.
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Aug 3, 2019 10:58
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Ghostnuke posted:stuck my honey super on yesterday. maybe I'll get something? welp, I'm not getting any honey this year. I pulled off the super to fog them for mites last night and they haven't built out a single frame in there yet. I guess I'll leave it on for a while and see if they do anything...
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Aug 5, 2019 15:00
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I pulled my 1 box of honey for the year. It’s been a poor year for production, even comb building. I did not make any splits due to work and this late in the year I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I was considering expanding next year and I may have overbought on equipment.... a local supplier had to move and was selling 10 frame supers for $7.50/each. Deep or medium. I bought 10 deeps, 20 medium, and screened bottom boards/top lids. I also bought enough 8 frame gear to finish out my remaining 10... so 20 hives worth of equipment are now in my barn for next spring/future use.
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Aug 8, 2019 19:24
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this is my first year, but yeah it seems slow. it was all I could do just to get them to build out the frames in both boxes.
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Aug 8, 2019 19:27
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Hm, dunno where you guys are but here in Chicago I had a banner season for honey production and comb building despite a lovely, late start and at least one garbage queen. Did you try coating the foundation with fresh melted wax? Also, when adding boxes with bare foundation, I always swap a few drawn frames into the new box and a couple foundation into the old. Having drawn comb in close proximity always helps them build new stuff faster.
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Aug 9, 2019 00:08
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Here in KS we had probably the rainiest spring/summer that I can remember in my life.
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Aug 9, 2019 02:20
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Question. New hives from nucs in first year should only need 1 or 2 boxes right? Are there problems if you had a additional box for breathing room (hot summer) or are you looking for trouble giving them that much space?
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Aug 9, 2019 14:09
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Gath posted:Question. New hives from nucs in first year should only need 1 or 2 boxes right? Are there problems if you had a additional box for breathing room (hot summer) or are you looking for trouble giving them that much space? Empty box on top or bottom? I will be leaving an empty on the bottom of my warre. An empty on the top of a lang might cause issues. If there is nothing built in it, why not just remove it?
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Aug 9, 2019 18:56
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Each of my 1st year NUC's ended up with 2-3 honey supers just for extra space. It helped a ton with bearding and gave them plenty of room.
the spyder fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 10, 2019 |
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Aug 10, 2019 00:03
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It has helped alot with bearding, but I also have put a slat board on bottom of lang hive too. Just wondering If I was tempting the fates with hive beetles or moths
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Aug 11, 2019 17:01
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With two of my hives, I tried total brood removal as an alternative treatment method against varroa. I was pretty sceptical, putting a hive basically "back to zero" so late in the year. I removed all the brood frames, and splitted the bee mass roughly at 50% between what I put back into the hive and what I added to the box with all the brood. Fresh frames, and 5 litres of 1:1 sugar water on top. Did the oxalic acid treatment yesterday, and boy....not only did the girls gobble up the 5 litres already, they drew out seven combs since last wednesday, and already created really nice food frames from the sugar water. I'll add another 5 litres today. I'll wait now until the box with the brood is mostly brood-free, do the oxalic acid treatment there, and then add a queen. Starting the "typical" acid treatment like I did the last years with the rest of the hives today. It's gonna be interesting if there is a difference between the two treatment methods, and if the two hives manage to get strong enough for winter. Overall, the idea is not that bad, especially since the hives go into the autumn with fresh frames, as I always find it quite a hassle if you miss the point in spring when to remove the old, dark frames. tuo fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Aug 12, 2019 |
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Aug 12, 2019 09:55
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Actually swelled up after the sting on the knuckle a couple weeks ago. Got itchy as hell. Last stings I got didn't really react as such. Do stings get more potent later in the season?
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Aug 26, 2019 17:57
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Hasselblad posted:Actually swelled up after the sting on the knuckle a couple weeks ago. Got itchy as hell. Last stings I got didn't really react as such. Do stings get more potent later in the season? it might be infected, both my wife and I got cellulitus from bee stings. See a doctor
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Aug 27, 2019 01:21
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Hasselblad posted:Actually swelled up after the sting on the knuckle a couple weeks ago. Got itchy as hell. Last stings I got didn't really react as such. Do stings get more potent later in the season? I was told that the older the bee, the more poison she has available/injects. I can't verify it, as I never checked the age of the bee that stung me, but I can definitely say that most stings I get from bees working inside the hive (younger ones) are not as painfull as stings I get from older bees guarding the hive or collector bees. tuo fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Aug 27, 2019 |
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Aug 27, 2019 10:43
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Did some serious hive management a week ago and am a bit nervous that it will all work out as I am away for another week on a holiday. I have two top bar hives so if some stuff sounds funny that is why. Each hive has 30 frames in a long box with a divider board made of queen excluded mesh. My two hives that were restarted this year had built out very differently. They were both swarms from the same feral hive in an apartment building that came a week apart. One hive built out incredibly fast and was packing away honey like the end times were coming. So much honey that I moved some drone comb into the queen excluded area for them to fill. They had fully built out 20/30 frames and were working on the last few. The red they hive had made virtually no new comb and had actually scavenged some of the old comb. They had a few signs of chalk brood but other than that just didn’t seem to be growing like the other hive. They were using the 6 frames I left from the previous colony and didn’t seem to be worried about building anything new. I went to see how the first hive was doing and found that the queen had moved into to the queen excluded area and had been laying eggs out there. Found a ton of queen cells with larva ready to be capped so I think queen saw the writing on the wall and did a crash diet to get across the excluder. So I decided to take this opportunity to replace the lovely second queen with the productive first queen who was getting ready to gently caress off. Took 5 frames of honey and brood along with the first queen and left her hive to raise a new queen. I divided the second hive in half by covering the queen excluded frame with wet newspaper so they would not fight and could chew through the barrier in a few days after getting to know each other. I searched through the second hive and found the lovely queen. It felt completely wrong and I was really second guessing myself but I smashed that lazy bitch for the good of the colony. I guess next week I will find out what happened in both hopefully I am back to two happy healthy colonies. I am a bit concerned that the productive first hive will take this break in brood reading and fill the hive with honey and the new queen will have no where to lay.
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Aug 28, 2019 04:09
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So, I sit there in my office, doing my work, and suddenly I feel a terrible pain on my left side. It felt like a sting, so I immidiatelly start flapping my shirt, and a loving big hornet flies off from beneath my t-shirt. gently caress that pain and that sting! gently caress that hornet! I did nothing to you, why the gently caress do you enter my office and sting me? Sorry for the meltdown, but drat, do hornet-stings ache!!! My whole left side is red and swollen and hurts like hell! gently caress hornets! Ain't eating bees enough? Do you also have to torture the beekeeper?
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Aug 28, 2019 18:22
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I added a honey super three weeks ago to my hive, and got around to inspecting it for activity today. I was disappointed to find no new comb drawn onto it. There were plenty of bees hanging out in the super, so I'm worried they just don't like the plastic starter on the frames. Am I just being too impatient, or should I switch out the frames?
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Sep 1, 2019 21:40
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Johnny-on-the-Spot posted:I added a honey super three weeks ago to my hive, and got around to inspecting it for activity today. I was disappointed to find no new comb drawn onto it. There were plenty of bees hanging out in the super, so I'm worried they just don't like the plastic starter on the frames. Am I just being too impatient, or should I switch out the frames? My hives stopped comb production about a month ago. Maybe just that time of the season?
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Sep 2, 2019 01:26
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Hasselblad posted:My hives stopped comb production about a month ago. Maybe just that time of the season? Oh bother, I'll keep that in mind next year. I got started late this year, and have been a bit behind schedule.
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Sep 2, 2019 03:18
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Johnny-on-the-Spot posted:Oh bother, I'll keep that in mind next year. I got started late this year, and have been a bit behind schedule. Brushing fresh melted wax on the foundation before putting it in the hive will get your bees to draw it out a ton faster. Mine usually are done with wax by now but one of the hives totally shocked me by connecting every drat box with tons of burr comb over the last two weeks. 
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Sep 3, 2019 01:21
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Melicious posted:Brushing fresh melted wax on the foundation before putting it in the hive will get your bees to draw it out a ton faster. Thank you for the suggestion, I got spare bee's wax so I'll definately give it a try!
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Sep 3, 2019 02:19
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Speaking of bees wax... I changed to a different frame format last year (Zander to ZaDant, which is basically just a higher Zander frame, more similar to US Dadant). Worked like a charm. This year, I had terrible problems with the most outward frames, and thought at first it might be the new format. When I added fresh frames with foundations, and the bees didn't draw out combs right away, they started to "cringe" or topple into itself after some time. It was always the most outward frame towards the sun, where the hive is the hottest. Of course I suspected myself....melting them into the frames when they were to cold? The wires too lose? Whenever that happened, the bees of course started to join the two frames into one, and exactly at the spot where they put the honey, so removing one always was not only a hassle, but resulted on open honey running down the hive...not good. I pulled my hair out in regard to this....I tried to fix everything I might have done wrong. The frames where I used my own wax (I'm slowly starting to build up my own wax cycle) didn't have that problem, then again the machine I have for creating them is pretty bad, and they are very thick, so I thought it's that. Two weeks ago, I read the national beekeepers journal, and what do I see? The (actually pretty respected) company I bought the wax seems to have bought (and resold) tons of wax that had major portions of paraffin in it. Other beekeepers actually had frames collapse inside the hive, with brood and honey dripping out. Of course I read this after I built a new area where I can keep the honey frames over the winter (well ventilated, treated with b401, etc.). So back to square one, melt everything (like 400 frames), and make candles from it which you can't even put the lable "pure bees wax" on. Argh.....
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Sep 3, 2019 16:19
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tuo posted:Speaking of bees wax... Yiiiiiiiikes. Any possibility of them giving refunds?
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Sep 3, 2019 18:25
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Melicious posted:Yiiiiiiiikes. Any possibility of them giving refunds? I sent some samples to the beekeeper's journal, together with the invoices from the seller. They'll test it and give me feedback. I assume the seller will give out refunds. He's one of the biggest (IIRC the biggest) seller for beekeeping equipment since like a hundred years or so over here, and I can only assume he got screwed over also. It's just so sad that exactly in the year where I wanted to start a propper wax cycle, I now have to melt basically every single frame from this year. Argh. But other beekeepers got hit worse...their honey combs actually collapsed into themselves, not only making it impossible to extract the honey, but also causing major robbery between the hives. There are sellers of wax who actually test each and every production charge, but of course they are even more expensive as the wax is already (like 30 EUR per kilogramm instead of 25 EUR). Good thing is: I melted all the excess wax I got this year couple of days ago, which produced six big buckets of wax, which I actually wanted to bring to a local foundation production company (for each kilogramm of wax you bring, you only pay like 10 EUR instead of 25 EUR for the cleared wax they give you). I'm glad I red this article before, else I would have brought them wax which might have paraffin in it (as I also melted some of the crumbled frames which we removed). At least I don't have to care about christmas presents this year. Candles....tons of them....
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Sep 4, 2019 09:45
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I woke up nice and early to inspect the hive, hoping the bees might be morning people, and the progress of the super, and got some bad news. I discovered beetles, and these ones don't even wear boots and play music.  And as if that wasn't bad enough, there's a hole on the backside of the hive.  Now the beetles are no problem, I just have to ramp up my traps, but that hole is more than a little disconcerting. Is there a patch job I can do, or should I just buy a new box?
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Sep 11, 2019 15:03
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You can totally patch up the hole. Alternatively, use it as an upper entrance, depending on where this box is.
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Sep 11, 2019 17:49
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Paint a piece of plywood and screw it down over the hole? It'll still be a place where water can accumulate and encourage rot, but it'll buy you another few years at least.
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Sep 11, 2019 18:00
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Update on my queen swap. It worked. lovely hive built a ton of comb and the population has boomed. Awesome hive has a new queen and has enough stored honey that I took a few frames.
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Sep 22, 2019 00:53
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So I guess that's it for this year. All hives fed and treated. Apart from two hives, pretty low amount of varroa dropped. I hope it's a good sign, and not that the treatment didn't work. Gonna weigh them this week to be double sure everyone has enough food, and then the stupid waiting game begins :/ One hive is on the weak side...I thought of removing the queen and joining them with another one, but somehow decided to not do it, as they grew quite a bit during august, but still have problems keeping wasps out of the hive (which to me is always a big alarm sign). I fear I'm again making an error in hoping they make it, instead of adding them to another...let's see.... tuo fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Oct 7, 2019 |
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Oct 7, 2019 11:30
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I see lots of my bees creeping around in the grass sleepily and I'm wondering if the hive is ok. The hive itself is also super aggressive right now and they stung my neighbor. Could it be that the area is so dry it's made them angry?
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Oct 12, 2019 00:33
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celewign posted:I see lots of my bees creeping around in the grass sleepily and I'm wondering if the hive is ok. The hive itself is also super aggressive right now and they stung my neighbor. Look closely at the wings - do they look all hosed up? Bees walking on the ground in front of the hive is usually a sign of deformed-wing virus, which is a sign that the you probably also have a large varroa population in the hive and it won't make it through the winter without treatment.
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Oct 12, 2019 01:14
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Question to fellow beekeepers: In the last couple of years, I did the feeding for winter with fondant. I learned it that way. In every book I red since then (and every forum I visit) it's said to use either sugar water (3:2) or the already inverted sugar sirup you can buy. I normally only use liquid food for splits, but wanted to try it out this time with three hives, and I kinda hosed up. I put the food box in top of the brood box, and didn't add anything between. The beespace between the bottom of the food boxes tank (an Adam feeder) and the top of the frames is a couple of centimeters/an inch and a half. So OF COURSE the ladies built combs within that (tiny) space which they filled with the food. So....will it affect the bees if the food box (empty) stays on top during the winter? I know that some beekeepers actually add empty boxes on top for air regulation, and come out fine, but I have zero experience with that. The bees basically have an air cushion now above them (with a small entrance from the Adam feeder). I assume it's okay, but I am a bit nervous. tl;dr: empty food box in top of hive over the winter: deadly or not deadly? e: that's the feeder I'm using, and I can't remove it because I didn't put like a foil or something on the frames, so they combed it to the lower frames from the brood box: 
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Oct 17, 2019 15:21
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is winter feeding a thing? I hadn't planned on doing anything.
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Oct 17, 2019 15:49
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Ghostnuke posted:is winter feeding a thing? I hadn't planned on doing anything. Only if you harvested honey during the year. If you didn't, it shouldn't be a thing if the hive's strong enough and theres enough food to gather. (I'm talking about ca. 50 deg lat here) e: oooh, I just realized I might have made myself completely unclear due to my lovely english. Of course I don't mean feeding during the winter, but feeding FOR the winter. So basically late july to middle of september.
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Oct 17, 2019 15:58
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I think you should be fine. You could even slide a sugar cake in there for the winter if you wanted to give them a failsafe + some condensation control.
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Oct 17, 2019 16:55
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tuo posted:Only if you harvested honey during the year. If you didn't, it shouldn't be a thing if the hive's strong enough and theres enough food to gather. oooooh I gotcha. I just took my honey super off this week, these little turds didn't build out a single frame in there so no honey this year. I checked in the deeps and they fukken packed those frames though, so they should be good for the winter.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:25
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Melicious posted:I think you should be fine. You could even slide a sugar cake in there for the winter if you wanted to give them a failsafe + some condensation control. That sounds good! I know I'll use a foil inbetween the feeder box and the brood box next year, so they don't start combing there. Regarding the sugar cake: I lost the link to the article on how to make them. Someone has that handy? I might need it for one of my weak hives....they were very slow on the uptake and are on the "light" side in regard to food.
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Oct 18, 2019 13:11
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Ghostnuke posted:oooooh I gotcha. I just took my honey super off this week, these little turds didn't build out a single frame in there so no honey this year. I checked in the deeps and they fukken packed those frames though, so they should be good for the winter. We had a pretty lovely honey year here too. After an okay start into spring, we got a super cold and wet may, so the hives consumed everything they collected until then themselves. The summer was okay-ish, but also nothing to write home about. Similar to your experience, our hives packed a lot of the food into the sides of the brood box and only couple really touched the honey supers and frames in there. Fingers crossed for next year, but I'm not very positive about. e: on the bright side, our hives multiplied like rabbits, and most of the swarms and splits are really strong at the moment. One I assume is lost, only has a weight of about 18 kilogramms at the moment (with ten ZaDant frames, of which seven are fully populated with bees). They are the brood from the brood-removal of four other hives, and actually made a sursprisingly good queen, but fail to gather enough food, allthough we feeded them for weeks. I assume our varroa treatment didn't work well, allthough I can't find any bees with deformed wings. But since I'm not sure wether it is the varroa that bugs them (and I don't want to open the hives at the moment due to temperature), I won't join them with another hive with low mite count. It's the one I want to slip a sugar cake into, but I still fear we might loose them over the winter 
tuo fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Oct 18, 2019 |
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Oct 18, 2019 13:15
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tuo posted:Regarding the sugar cake: I lost the link to the article on how to make them. Someone has that handy? I might need it for one of my weak hives....they were very slow on the uptake and are on the "light" side in regard to food. This is the guide I’ve used in the past, though I’ve been reading about some folks adding vinegar to bring the cakes’ PH closer to that of honey. https://honeybeesuite.com/no-cook-candy-board-recipe-for-feeding-winter-bees/
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Oct 18, 2019 17:58
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