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Hello all, I just learned that there is a beekeeper thread here. I'm a rather new beekeeper, beeing in my second year. Started with one hive, currently have two hives plus two Ableger/Offspring??? (drat, I need to find some german=>english translator regarding bee stuff....), allthough one of them is rather weak. All hives are Carnica. Currently feeding them with both apifonda (sugar paste stuff) and liquid sugar stuff (3:2 sugar/water, especially the weaker hives prefer the liquid stuff) to prepare them for the second varoa-treatment (doing it with 65% ant-acid with a liebig-dispenser). I am quite sure you don't understand most of the stuff I just said because I don't know the english translations for all the stuff yet, but I promise to learn them. Basically, I wanted to say: hi 
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Sep 5, 2017 18:18
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:
Can't say the are aggressive at all, to be honest. We had a rather bad year over here, because during May we had a very, very unusual weather. Freezing tempeatures for two weeks, which basically killed all blossoms from fruit trees, almonds etc. That's why we also had nearly no honey during that period. I made the first split of our main hive this year, but we made a beginners mistake. I didn't check the nest (is this the right term?) which was given to us. The bottom part had a crack, at the back. So after splitting the hive (two brood frames, one food frame, many bees) it was beeing robbed by another hive which simply walked into the "back door". Typical beginners fault. So the first split was robbed within 48 hours, and we didn't react fast enough. Two months later, the have was strong again, producing a couple of new queen cells, basically preparing for swarming. The problem was that the hive also completely ignored our drone frames. While they accepted them, they didn't use them for drone brood (and thus for removing it to reduce mites), but filled them up with honey, so we also couldn't really control drone population. So we decided to create a second split in June. This one developed quite good, the new queen started laying eggs quickly. But somehow, they "got stuck". They never went over four frames, and currently they are hard at work keeping wasps out. We already have the opening hole closed down so only two bees fit through it to help them control the wasps, but they still are rather weak. The other three hives are very well. We are currently feeding the winter food, and plan to do so for another two weeks. After that we will do the second formic acid treatment, and we will decide then wether we reunite the weak split with the main hive (killing the new queen before), because the formic acid should irritate them enough so that the two hives won't notice that they don't belong to each other (otherwise we might just use the "newspaper" method). But I see this as a last resort, and actually don't plan to do that. I hope that the weak split hive gets its stuff together and the queen gets more into laying eggs (drat this is emberassing if you don't know the proper terms in english :/), because the hive itself has everything it needs...enough pollen, enough food, currently a very friendly weather.... If I get through the winter with all four hives, I'll be the happies beekeeper, but I actually hope to get over it with at least three of our four hives. Current indicators point to a quick, cold autumn/winter over here. BTW: we have one incredibly aggressive carnica hive at our beekeepers club. They hit me many dozen times this year. To the point, that we deciced to exchange the queen. Fun thing: when we opened the hive to kill the queen, the hive was totally calm. We also didn't find the queen (the club doesn't mark their queens). When we opened the hive a week later to kill the queen, they again where calm as gently caress. Ever since then, the hive is rather okayish....still aggressive, but far from what they used to be. Guess they just need to know what will happen to their egg-machine if they keep beeing assholes 
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Sep 5, 2017 21:17
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Tuo!
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Cease to Hope posted:your english is fine, dude, don't even worry about it Thanks Still feels stupid if you don't know what the correct for "Eilage" is, the state the Weisel/Queen is in when she lays eggs, but I'll do my best to make my post halfway readable BTW to any one interested: I am currently using the Zander-format for our hives, which is one of two very typical frame formats over here. Allthough I already have everything planned and available to move to ZaDant, which is basically the same as Dadant, but based on Zander format. Advantage is that we don't have to switch out all our nests/houses (how do you call them? it's "Beute" over here, if a fellow german can help me), but can simply extend the brood rooms with a ZaDant-spacer and use larger frames. We plan to do this with the new split hives next year and maybe even with our strongest hive if it gets over the winter fine. Reason is I absolutely don't like the way the Zander-nests handle, because you have two brood rooms, and during swarm control, you have to rip the whole hive in half every time you do swarm control. I think I prefer the Dadant way of only having one brood room with larger frames, thus we plan to move to Zadant-frames/format next year.
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Sep 5, 2017 21:31
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We currently are unsure of what to do with our weak split. They obviously are getting robbed by wasps. We already have a mesh in front of the hive opening so only two bees can pass. This helped tremendously, but the split is still weak as gently caress. They currently sit on four frames, and have most of them filled up with not yet closed-up honey (we are constantly feeding with sugar sirup, 3 parts sugar, 2 parts water, in a feeding frame within the hive). The number of bees is rather low, many of them have fallen to wasps. The queen is obviously present, but the brood nest is only about the size of a small hand on two frames, plus a couple of brood cells spread all over the other frames, which worries me. Obviously it's a young queen, three months old, but she still seems to lay eggs all over the place. One of the frames also obviously was robbed by another bee hive because a small part of the honey combs was bitten out. The bees in there seem normal and are working, but it is a very low number of bees, and a worryingly low number of brood cells. Autumn just begun, and we now would have to do varroa treatment (we treated all the other hives the first time, but spared the split, so now the second treatment has to be done). The sugar sirup we put in there is emptied very fast...like three liters every day, which leads me to another idea that they are still beeing robbed by other hives. There are quite a lot of "black" bees walking around the hive, which are not attacked by the other bees, where I am not sure if these are survivors of the wasp robbery or bees which still fight robbers constantly (thus getting black/loosing the pelt). To make thinks even worse, we found a single cell with chalkbrood this weekend. Only a single cell, also no chalkbrood in the waste underneat the hive. I have no experience to judge wether we should kill the queen and reunite the split with it's origin hive. The number of bees is rather low, so I guess it won't matter to the origin's hive wether they have five hundred bees more or less, as they are quite strong. What would you all do with this split? A professional beekeeper told me he doesn't treat splits which can't defend themselves against wasps, as they won't be strong enough the coming summer, but I am no professional beekeeper and thus not interested in how much honey I get, I am interested in keeping the little buggers alive. What would you do with this split? Wait another two weeks, do varroa treatment and hope for the best? Or is the split doomed to die? It looks like winter is coming soon over here, so no long and warm late summer.
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Sep 11, 2017 20:15
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I'd be worried about merging them with another hive given the presence of chalkbrood. If the queen is laying in a bad brood pattern, she may be a loss at this point in the year. The split is best counted as a loss; they're going to be too weak to overwinter. Yeah, I thought so. Well, I'll continue feeding them and will check again in two weeks, if more chalkbrood is present. If it is, I guess I will have to seal it's fate. Stupid wasps, but that's nature, I guess, and what we get for breeding mostly harmless bees :/
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Sep 12, 2017 07:18
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So we found out what was the the big(gest) problem with our split, apart from the wasp invasion. Wax moths! This also explains the extremely spotty brood, and what we identified as chalk brodd simply was a single brood cell with everything around eaten by wax moths which the hive no longer cared for, and must have died shortly before hatching...it had a strange, white look. After consulting a more experienced beekeeper, he looked through our other hives and one of them is so strong that they actually no longer know where to put the bees. We took a brood frame with bees from this hive as well as a food frame with bees and put them in the split. Then moved the split to my home garden, about 4kms away from our other hives. The strong hive has already replenished the missing food frame. Now nine days later, the split has a good bee population, the brood frame hatched nearly completely (allthough we had some cold nights and days and I feared that this was a big mistake). No wasps in sight, and it looks like the new bee crew is already hard at work repairing the hosed up frames. They now sit on all six currently available "frame alleys" (that's what Google tells me is the translation for Wabengasse, which I guess is totally wrong). We feed them three liters sugar sirup every two or three days, which is now happily transfered to food frames. I'll check on sunday if the queen is now able to create a closed brood frame, with the help of all the newfound bee-friendos. With a little bit of luck, they'll manage it, our friend told us. If not, the other hive is so strong that he said they won't miss this single brood frame and the bees we transferred too much....they had six brood frames, covered 99% with brood...the queen in there is an egg-laying bee-machine....actually haven't seen similar brood frames before...every single cell filled with brood. tuo fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 10:29
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Also currently doing our second varroa treatment, should be finished this sunday. Our two strong, young hives have a very large amount of bees, and the second hive body is filled with ten perfect food frames. Guess they should get over the winter fine if nothing strange happens. Our older hive - which had some major problems during summer, queen stopped laying eggs suddenly - was heavily infected with varroa, like > 50 falling a day. After the first varroa treatment, everything changed, and the queen started laying eggs like a madman. They currently only sit in one hive body, with about three to four brood frames (1/3 food, 2/3 brood) plus the outer food frames. They started putting brood in the lower hive body again two weeks ago. Will check this sunday after the second varroa treatment what's up with them, but it looks promising that they have a chance to make it through the winter. This was the result of the first varroa treatment of mentioned hive. They were reduced to actually sitting in only three alleys...now they are back to eleven (nine in upper body, two in lower two weeks ago) 
tuo fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 10:38
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the spyder posted:Our two hives have been doing great this year. One is definitely stronger than the other, but both queens are laying in the tightest brood pattern I've seen. Like solid frames of 80% brood. I'm hoping to split them in the spring. I do have one question, the "weaker" hive does not seem to like building out comb. We had a frame break apart earlier this year and they haven't touched the "used" partially drawn frame I replaced it with. Same for the honey super, they refused to touch the new comb in it. The other hive has built out every piece of frame I've put in it. Odd? Similar here. Our strong young hive builds out everything you put into it within days. The old hive only touches the frames in immidiate need, and ignores everything they currently don't need. Strange, because normally the young bees want to get rid of the wax they produce, I was told. Well, if we need something build out, we put it in the strong hive, wait two days, and pull it out, ready to go into the hive that needs it. Since we started beekeeping not too long ago, we sadly don't have a cache of build out frames from the years before.
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Sep 22, 2017 10:46
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So how's everyone doing? My three hives are doing drat fine over the winter, did the second varroa treatment with oxalic acid three weeks ago, and the two strong hives were sitting at 8,5 frame alleys, the weaker one at 6,5, all of them with quite a lot of food. The split we did looks like it is basically done for...it only created a very small (1,5 frames) food resorvious. We are feeding it with honey+powdered sugar as much as we can, but they are currently sitting at only 1 frame alley, so I guess they won't make it. Every experienced beekeeper told us to write them off, but we still wanna try it, allthough I am quite sure it's a loosing battle. The other three seem very cool and good, though. I'm confident they might make it to march.
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Dec 25, 2017 16:52
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Go go bees! All three hives here looking good at the moment. Hope we get all three through the winter.
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Feb 5, 2018 10:42
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does anyone here run a digital/IoT bee-hive-scale?
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Feb 17, 2018 16:37
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I'm running a typical, european Zander-hive on my three hives. This means that the brood nest is divided into two boxes, so everytime you do swarm control/check the hive, you rip apart the brood nest. I don't like this, especially since it happens all the time that you kill some bees when reseating the top brood box. Thus, I plan to change to what is called Zadant here...basically enlarged Zander-frames, so you only have one brood box, similar to Dadant. Since we are a couple of weeks away from reopening the boxes/restarting the season, my idea to adapt was the following: - take the brood frames from the (I suppose) bottom brood box, and put them into the new Zadant-box. Put a new Zadant frame between them (depending on how many brood frames there are). Put a food frame at the outer part. Add one of the old Zander-boxes on top with the rest of the food frames. - when one of the "old" non-Zadant-brood frames is fully filled, move it to the outside of the brood nest, wait till it hatched, then replace it with another new Zadant-frame closer to the middle (moving the other brood frames more outwards) - continue until everything is moved over to the new, larger Zadant-frames another idea - of course - would be to only start with the Zadant-change when creating splits from the hives. Anybody done anything similar to this and has experience on how to do it?
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Feb 18, 2018 14:58
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After having the darkest three months since people record the weather over here we had a rather sunny day today, and I stuck a camera in front of my three hives since all three decided to go out for some cleaning flights and for collecting pollen. All three hives were treated the same regarding Varroa and all three were fed the same. The hive further out (team brown) was rather weak, but managed to get strong again before going into the winter. Team red and Team blue were drat strong, but strangely, team red has a very high death toll, as you can see as I just cleared out the dead bees yesterday. The first bucket of dead bees had nearly all with the tongue wide out, so the first thing I did was check for food, which they had plenty of. The second thing was checking the dead bees for Varroa, and from about fifty that I checked, only two had a Varroa on them. Still puzzles me what's going on with them. The dead bees since then are dying "the normal way", without the extended tongue, but they still have a rather high death rate, and they also seem to refuse to bring them out of the hive, which - as I was told - is normally not a good sign. I checked underneath the hive wether I can see specks of bee poo poo (which would be another very bad sign, if they defecate inside the hive), but I couldn't. All three are still very alive, have plenty of food, but strangely, team red drops a lot of dead bees. They were the strongest hive last year, but not by a huge margin in regard to team blue, who has nearly no dead bees within the hive or on their doorsteps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG_0zYAXVUg e: oh, by the way, I guess this is common knowledge already, but whatever: the University of Hohenheim in Germany researched a completely new way to treat Beehives against Varroa. They apply Lithiumchlorid to liquid food, it has been reported in the "Scientific Report" (make of that what you will). I had the chance to speak with some of the people at Hohenheim, and they assure that it works, leaves no traces in honey - thus could be applied during the spring - and is rather cheap to come by. I can only hope this is all true and works, it would be a game changer over here. tuo fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 16:01
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Hasselblad posted:Do you plan to shuffle brood frames between them during spring buildup? Depends on what the state of them is, normally I try to make all hives equal in strength during spring as it makes things easier over the year. If the slightest feeling remains that team red has some kind of infection, I won't. If team red shows signs of heavy Varrose, I'd rather remove all of the brood during spring...I haven't opened the hives since middle of december (apart from a very short stint in january to check food), so I'll wait how they come out of the winter.
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Feb 18, 2018 19:55
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I know that this is the wrong forum, but I couldn't find one and maybe I get lucky here: does anyone here know about Runner Ducks?
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Feb 21, 2018 16:56
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Suspect Bucket posted:Yes, but this is the wrong forum. Over in Pet Island there's a few livestock threads, might want to poke your head in there. Many thanks for your post. I'll check that thread. We got some runner ducks last year from a friend beekeeper who had underestimated the hatch-rate of the eggs. We checked with local laws, everything is fine. Sadly, we just lost our first duck due to one (or basically all) of the males killing her during what looked like a gang rape. We weren't there when it happened, only saw it afterwards on the cam, so obviously we are a little bit shocked at the moment about what to do. We know that this is a possiblity, and built everything for them following the best practises, but it's rather hard to find someone who can tell you "saw that, you have to do that now, else you loose another duck". That's why I asked, knowing this is the wrong forum, so sorry for that, probate me if need be.
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Feb 22, 2018 18:09
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First day with > 10 °C this year, removed the mouse guard so they can clean up their hive better. Looks like all three made it, and still have plenty of food. If the temperatures go over 15 degrees this week, I'll take a closer peak into the hives and clean out the bottom. Fingers crossed for a successful year for the ladies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01pV1K0oNKA
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Mar 5, 2018 16:01
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MrDesaude posted:Hey guys! long time no see... Out of interest: were you're buckfasts aggressive from the start, or only after hatching a new queen?
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Mar 8, 2018 18:06
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How's everyone doing? We removed the winter food frames last weekend, and had already fully filled drone frames in all three hives which we cut out. Hives are currently gaining 700g per day of honey/pollen/brood. Weakest hive to go into the winter is now strongest hive, strongest hive to go into the winter is now weakest hive, all three treated exactly the same regarding Varroa and winter food. gently caress Varroa.
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Apr 12, 2018 12:16
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Sorry to hear that :/ I lost our only split hive over the winter, it wasn't pretty. Opening a dead hive is something I hope I never get used to, because it really sinks you. It'll be(e) interesting to see this weekend if our hives already start hatching queens. First splits in April?
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Apr 12, 2018 17:54
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*finger crossing intensifies* go bees!!!!!
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Apr 12, 2018 22:11
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Out of interest: what did you use as dry sugar for the emergency food? (not a native speaker, so not sure what it is)
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Apr 22, 2018 16:10
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Ah, okay. Never thought that could work during the winter, if they water is frozen/they can't get out to fetch water. I used honey + powdered sugar/icing sugar to form a paste as some kind of emergency food, worked quite well, but you have to get the mixture right to get it close to the bee sphere without it beeing to gooey to flow all over them.
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Apr 22, 2018 19:33
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Spring over here (Middle Germany) is quite good currently. Our reference hive gains about 1,5 to 2 kilogramms of weight per day (depending on weather). Slowed a bit down because we created couple of splits from the three hives last week. In one of the three, I guess we managed to kill/loose the queen, but they hatched a new one couple days ago, so fingers crossed we'll see some eggs again soon. Both splits doing very well, allthough one of them - after three days - only just began to build a queen cell....hope everything works out. We went out of winter with the reference hive at about 55 kilogramms, removed about 12 kilogramm of winter food in march, and they are now at 68 kilogramms. Looks like we'll harvest some honey next week. tuo fucked around with this message at 13:29 on May 4, 2018 |
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May 4, 2018 13:22
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I really hope both of your bee hives get better. It saddens me to hear something like that :/ On a more cheerfull note: would anyone of all you beekeepers here actually be interested in selling some honey, when the time is right and you have enough? A friend of mine who is also a beekeeper and me are currently on a journey to try to taste honey from different countries and regions. Of course there are the well known things like Manuka and stuff, but if someone would pay you the shipping costs for one or two glasses of honey (plus the honey of course), would you sell and ship it? Or actually be interested in some kind of exchange? It's just a wild idea, but maybe some people would be interested in this? I recently got some honey from another beekeeper from sibiria in exchange for some of ours from last year, and I find it super interesting to experience the different tastes of honey from the different regions and bees of the world.
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May 16, 2018 17:24
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El Mero Mero posted:Any advice for chalkbrood? I've got one hive with a bad case of it and there's not much I'm seeing that seems like a reasonable or efficacious treatment. It's positioned the same as the others (regarding air flow etc.)? Is getting pollen and stuff from the same sources as the others?
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May 17, 2018 11:36
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Imo it would be awesome if we could get some honey trading going. I'm currently only seperating my honey between early spring and summer, so I can only narrow it down so much of what is in it. But imo it be cool to share some. Shipping costs of course will be awful depending on where everyone is (I'm in central Germany), but to me it would be worth it to try some honey from your little ladies. I currently have about 50 kilogramms from this year (spring), I assume the summer will supply less, as two of my three hives lost their queen (one was our fault I guess? still don't know what happened, the other one started creating queen cells in the middle of the frame, and the queen itself stopped laying eggs and shrunk to be even smaller than the adult bees....something was wrong with her, OR we were sold an old queen last year instead of a new one) After loving up the two splits last year (first one was on us by not adding enough bees due to inexperience, second one was murdered by wax moths), the splits this year develop fine, so I hope we can go into the winter with five or six hives. Fingers crossed.
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May 17, 2018 11:54
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I was told you can't put a new queen inside a hive which already has a laying worker bee. The worker bee starts emiting the same pheromones when she starts laying eggs as an actual queen, thus the bees in the hive think they have a queen and won't accept the new one/feed her. Brushing them off a couple of meters away (like 20 or so) and putting a new hive where the other one was - with frames and a caged queen in - can work, because the laying worker normally is not able to fly back to the hive. But you still face the problem of having not many bees once the brood of the new queen hatches.
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Jun 22, 2018 12:19
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thought I'd share my favourite spot to relax after stupid IT days...
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Jun 25, 2018 20:36
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:
Eggs in center, single ones, at the bottom of the cell? Or more to the sides of the cell?
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Jun 25, 2018 20:47
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ShotgunWillie posted:Sounds like you got some drag queens going. That can happen in a hive that has no fertilized eggs to queen. A frame of eggs and uncapped brood from one of those splits would have set you right. Not if a worker bee is laying eggs.
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Jun 30, 2018 16:40
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We've been feeding since two weeks over here, some others already did Varroa treatment. Overall, nature is nearly four weeks too early in Germany....stuff that should bloom in August is already over. This will become a loooooong winter
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Jul 28, 2018 08:31
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madmatt112 posted:Wifey and I are house hunting for our first home. Gonna have a yard, and we're looking in a city that allows urban beekeeping. I'm so excited to finally have an opportunity to keep bees after a few years of reading, watching, learning, and planning - I'll have this fall and winter to get some gear and organize with a beekeeper to get going next spring. You did the right thing! Either read up on everything, ask here, or (liken you are already doing) have someone nearby you can ask. Beekeeping in itself is rather easy, but there is all that stuff about Varroa treatment and of course preventing them to form a swarm, that is both important and a bit "non-intuitive". Still, It's a lot of fun. These critters are super interesting, and apart from them trying to kill you sometimes, they actually love you if you care for them!
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Jul 30, 2018 18:07
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So, our bee year is coming to an end (kinda). We started the second and last varroa treatment via ant-acid today. Overall, the year was rather good, and while a lot of other beekeepers around us had major problems with wasps, our hives and splits managed them. One of our hives (where we lost the queen in spring) is now one of the most aggressive hives I ever witnessed with the queen/brood, and they are batshit crazy in regard to building. We feed with feed paste, and they not only empty the bag out in no time, no, they also build one comb after another in the empty bag. They sting through facemasks, they try to kill everyone around. I once witnessed a similar hive, not quite as aggressive, and it didn't make it through the winter. Let's see. I actually prefer a hive that knows how to defend itself rather than a hive where I have to help so it keeps out wasps/other bees. The other five are looking cool, one of them is a bit weak, but I hope the will pull through. I am a bit afraid of the winter. The years was super-strange here in germany. Everything was at least one month too early. After the second treatment, we will feed them another 5kg per hive, so each hive is at about 25kg of food. This sounds rather high, but that's what our nationwide beekeeping society proposed in regard to the super strange year. One more week of varroa treatment, then (I guess) another week or two of feeding, and then we will send them into the winter. Fingers crossed to all the bees out there.
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Sep 16, 2018 15:53
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Hasselblad posted:Why feed them so much when it is the time of year they would typically reduce numbers? In theory if they stored away enough honey, you should not have to feed them, period, beyond perhaps late winter through early spring IF they actually need it. Well, they didn't store enough honey, because we took that. Normally, we feed around 15kg per hive, and that's been working good. But we have a very strange summer this year...stuff that bees normally collect in august was available in June. It also was a super-dry year, so not much water for plants to produce nectar. Thus the advice to feed more. Of course it's a burdon on the typical winter bees, because they shouldn't be tasked with food collection, but we are not there yet. And also: it was advises to all beekeepers here to feed at least 24kg for the hive-size I have. In regard to requeening: nah, they requeened themselves already this spring, and I am not a big fan of playing too much bee-god. My concern is not the aggressivnes (because, eh, we are keeping bees) but the fact that the hive is exploding of bees. They are building poo poo left and right, and to my experience, these hives have a harder time in the winter. We'll see.
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Sep 16, 2018 16:55
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Hasselblad posted:Then don't do that? Again, feeding them at this point is well, pointless, as you are keeping their population up for no reason whatsoever when they should be downsizing for over wintering. Not only that if you are taking more than just the surplus honey, you are taking away their preferred food that would stave off diseases and such. Then nearly every beekeeper over here is obviously doing it wrong. Also, it's one of six hives that is hostile, mostly because they decided to requeen this year. Hasselblad posted:Again I have to question why you would even take the honey that they struggled to create in such a year. Because some beekeepers do that. And the year was a very good year for honey over here, but everything was way too early in contrast to past years. That's why it is adviced to feed them more than usual this year over here. tuo fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 17, 2018 |
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Sep 17, 2018 19:24
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Under normal circumstances, (western honey) bees don't sting when going about their daily business. There is always the off-chance of a bee flying into long hair, panicking, and stinging, but that's a freak accident. They don't actively attack anything outside of their hive, like wasps do. They tend to poop when leaving the hive, because apart from the queen no bee is allowed to poo poo inside the hive. This led to one beekeeper here who had to move his hives because the were on a garage top directly next to a luxury car dealer. I have my own car parked directly under the balcony where I raise the splits, and imo the poo poo stains are really, really minimal. My neighbours - as they say - hate bees (as they claim they sting, and obviously can't tell a wasp from a bee). Since they told me this fact, I put the splits where they can't see them on my balcony, and they don't even realize I have two or three splits there over the summer.
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Oct 26, 2018 09:11
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:This year I've had the privilege of helping an elderly couple manage their apiary, and they began the transition to styrofoam hive bodies a few years before health issues got in the way of working the bees. The styro boxes are actually really excellent to work with so far. To my surprise, the bees don't gnaw on them and I haven't seen any of the boxes shitted up with propolis. More importantly, the boxes insulate very well -- important in our northern climate -- and they're very light, which helps a brokebody like me get much more done when we're talking about dealing with more than a dozen hives at a go. A friend of mine moved completely to styrofoam over the last years, and he also says he'll never go back. I hesitate to try one, because it simply feels somehow "wrong" to host the bees in styrofoam....but I read so much good things about them, I might try one out next year, as I need two or three new boxes anyway. Still somehow feels "wrong".
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Oct 26, 2018 09:15
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:I think I know what you mean! Styrofoam just mentally equates to trash for me. My fellow beekeeper uses a special opener for them because he told me they still wear down a bit over time if you use typical hive tools (then again, wood does the same over time I guess). Looks like this: 
tuo fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 27, 2018 09:49
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 04:16 |
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God drat, liquid smoke - suspected to be totally bad for humans - now used on bees.  get rid of that top box, or modifiy it so it can take frames. The idea with the bottles in there is awful on so many levels...
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Dec 9, 2018 17:16
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