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TheReverend posted:I'll get a bee brush! Thanks! I've always had better luck just slamming the corner of each frame into the concrete (it's an urban hive). Knocks them all off at once and they seem less pissed than if I used my brush. Might require concrete or a block of wood or something. Ah, and one piece plastic frames.
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Aug 9, 2014 06:18
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Hey, beekeeper goons. I've been reading up on the subject in this thread, on reddit, in books (well, currently half a book so far.) in preparation for next year when I plan to start keeping a hive in the backyard. We have a fairly large vegetable garden with plans to expand it next year, and we think keeping bees would be a fun rewarding hobby to go alongside that. My neighbors all seem cool with it, and two of them are actually pretty excited. However, there is one wrench that might be thrown in those plans. How tolerant are bees of having the lawn mown around them? There are a few choices around me when it comes time to order the bees, and I'm planning on getting the calmest ones I can to avoid any problems with lawnmowers, my nerves when checking up on them, and with neighborhood kids. And I'm not really that concerned with getting any honey. If I do, hey, bonus! If I don't, well, at least the veggies are pollinated and I'm having fun. I just want nice, calm bees. My uncle keeps bees, but his are not on a lawn really, so he doesn't have much to say with experience to that. The next local beekeeper club meeting is in about a month and I plan to ask there as well. I just thought I'd get some goon opinions, experience and advice. I've read on some forums that bees don't mind or that it will piss them off madly. And also, the lawnmower in question is a big, old, 48 inch monstrosity, is quite loud, and shakes the ground a bit. I know bees don't like vibrations much. I am probably fine, but there are enough people (though few) saying they were stung/chased while mowing that I figure it be safe to ask anyway. Also, to express my excitement that won't be fulfilled for another 8 months or so.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:42
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It's a good idea to place the hive on a cleared patch or area where there's no lawn to cut. You won't want to be like trying to use a trimmer around the base of the hive or something. I'd say an area maybe five feet by five feet is fine. Otherwise, you can mow. The bees will get more or less acclimated to the activity. Try not to walk right through the "bee lane" - you'll have bees bonking into you and they might not like the mower passing right past the entrance. In the end if they can't tolerate the mower too close, you might have to use a quieter method (like a trimmer) for a yard or two of grass that's nearest the hive. Since you have a garden, maybe there's a spot at the corner of your gardening area, rather than right on the lawn, where you can put your hive? It's great to have them kind of tucked up near a fence or side area so they're not right in the middle of the human activity going on in your yard. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 19:50
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Rotten Cookies posted:Hey, beekeeper goons. I've been reading up on the subject in this thread, on reddit, in books (well, currently half a book so far.) in preparation for next year when I plan to start keeping a hive in the backyard. We have a fairly large vegetable garden with plans to expand it next year, and we think keeping bees would be a fun rewarding hobby to go alongside that. My neighbors all seem cool with it, and two of them are actually pretty excited. However, there is one wrench that might be thrown in those plans. How tolerant are bees of having the lawn mown around them? There are a few choices around me when it comes time to order the bees, and I'm planning on getting the calmest ones I can to avoid any problems with lawnmowers, my nerves when checking up on them, and with neighborhood kids. And I'm not really that concerned with getting any honey. If I do, hey, bonus! If I don't, well, at least the veggies are pollinated and I'm having fun. I just want nice, calm bees. My uncle keeps bees, but his are not on a lawn really, so he doesn't have much to say with experience to that. The next local beekeeper club meeting is in about a month and I plan to ask there as well. I just thought I'd get some goon opinions, experience and advice. Bees tend to exit the hive and go up. You can be standing 4ft away from the hive and be completely out of their flight path. I have a natural area that's mulched around my hives so I don't need worry about mowing directly on top of them. When I do mow with my 42" Snapper I run right by them <4' away and it doesn't seem to phase them. Every once in a blue moon I'll even have one crash into me coming in for a landing. I'm sure that's really disorienting for that bee, but it doesn't phase me. Unrelated: Talk to me about over winter super storage. How what do you guys keep supers around off the hive? Two years ago we had terrible wax moth damage and ended up throwing away most of the frames and starting over. Last year we used para-moth and plastic bins in the garage with some success. The bins we used didn't really fit and they weren't air tight. My garage is my shop/brewery and I don't really like smelling para-moth constantly. Just seems like there may be clever storage solutions out there we havn't considered. Scale wise I'm looking at 2 mediums and 4 shallows.
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Aug 11, 2014 20:01
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 This is the layout of the yard. It's a bit odd, but there isn't really a place near the vegetable garden in a corner as there's a gate, house, or shed. I was thinking just above the tree (south side of the tree) where it'd get partial shade. There's a dead patch of grass there so it wouldn't be a big loss to put something down there or not really mow it too often. And thanks for the reassurance
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Aug 11, 2014 20:15
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I pull my riding mower as close as I can all the time and they don't care. Trimming doesn't bother them either. I did nearly bump one off though once getting a wheel too close. I do plan on laying mulch under the hives next year so I don't have to trim under them. 
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Aug 11, 2014 21:10
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drewhead posted:Talk to me about over winter super storage. How what do you guys keep supers around off the hive? Two years ago we had terrible wax moth damage and ended up throwing away most of the frames and starting over. Last year we used para-moth and plastic bins in the garage with some success. If you have a chest freezer, freeze the whole super (frames and box) for at least 24 hours. That'll take care of everything. This also works when pulling full honey supers but you can't extract the honey for a while.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:22
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They never bothered me mowing the lawn except the one time I rode by with the mulcher pointed at them so it was shooting twigs and grass at their hive. One of em stung me in the skull for that.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:38
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We stored a bunch of frames in 20-gallon giant zip-loc bags. Make drat sure the zip is sealed and you're fine.
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Aug 14, 2014 09:18
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My bees were bought in late April and were installed into a brand new hive easily enough. Admittedly the hive doesn't get enough sun where it is, but with a contentious neighbor beside me I felt a low visibility was preferable to optimal sun but complaints to the city and constant badgering. I have tried to be mostly hands off of my bees but my latest inspection was not confidence inspiring. They have only drawn out about 6 or 7 frames and the way they draw the wax out is very frustrating as the only way to look at the frames would involve destroying their work. Is the lack of maximum sun truly hampering them or is my colony weak for other reasons? And why is the comb being drawn in the way it is, and is there any way I can stop it?  
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Aug 18, 2014 02:24
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Indolent Bastard posted:My bees were bought in late April and were installed into a brand new hive easily enough. Admittedly the hive doesn't get enough sun where it is, but with a contentious neighbor beside me I felt a low visibility was preferable to optimal sun but complaints to the city and constant badgering. That's a really a weak colony. Did you feed them to get them started? Are there signs on diseases and mites? If you used plastic foundation, the bees will sometimes reject it and build their comb between the frames instead.
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Aug 18, 2014 03:18
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ShotgunWillie posted:That's a really a weak colony. Did you feed them to get them started? Are there signs on diseases and mites? I did feed them for the first few months. Pollen patty and sugar water. And yes it is plastic foundation.
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Aug 18, 2014 03:39
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Indolent Bastard posted:I did feed them for the first few months. Pollen patty and sugar water. And yes it is plastic foundation. Your bees do not like plastic foundation. Some bees just don't. Switch to wax and they would have gone hog wild. Chances are, though, based on the lack of population and construction that the hive swarmed or absconded earlier in the season. You can't inspect to check the brood, but if you did, I can't imagine you'd see much, or that it would be healthy. Have you seen any other hives in your area? A healthy hive in a good spot should draw out that much comb in 1-2 weeks in the spring, with healthy food sources and a good queen.
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Aug 18, 2014 03:52
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ShotgunWillie posted:Your bees do not like plastic foundation. Some bees just don't. Switch to wax and they would have gone hog wild. I have not seen any other hives. I was worried something was wrong... So now what do I do? E: I'm totally bummed out I feel like I let my bees down  Indolent Bastard fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 04:04
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Harvested just over 42# yesterday from our two hives. Restarted this spring with packages so feeling pretty good about that amount. Spun the spinner so hard yesterday that on the first go I threw out the comb from the frame. Never done that before, opps. Was a bit more gentle after that and had no more problems.
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Aug 18, 2014 13:25
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Your queen could suck, it happens. Check them out and see if there are any eggs or even brood. Also it looks like your spacing between the frames is not that great. Bees seem like they do weird things to the right spacing and it looks like the frames they are occupying are too close together
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Aug 19, 2014 04:18
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Kick-Puncher posted:Your queen could suck, it happens. Check them out and see if there are any eggs or even brood. Also it looks like your spacing between the frames is not that great. Bees seem like they do weird things to the right spacing and it looks like the frames they are occupying are too close together No. Bad. Boo, hiss. One of the most common mistakes I see new Beekeepers make is to try to evenly space out the frames to take up the entire hive body. NO. Frames from every single modern manufacturer are designed to be self spacing. That means when presses tightly together, they allow the bees to build full depth comb and allow for proper bee space between adjacent frames. If you don't have the frame side bars touching their neighbors, the bee space is too big and the bees will brace it. Having larger gaps on one or both sides of the hive body is much easier to deal with. If you do regular checks, like you should, you might have to clean up a little burr now and again, but it will be one frame, not all ten. GOSH! 
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Aug 19, 2014 05:31
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ShotgunWillie posted:No. Bad. Boo, hiss. That's news to me. Thanks for the tip. I'll know for next season.
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Aug 19, 2014 12:45
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Indolent Bastard posted:That's news to me. Thanks for the tip. I'll know for next season. Yeah, some of the new beekeeper books don't mention that; the Beekeepers Bible comes to mind as an example. Maybe they think it's obvious? It clearly isn't. 75% of the consults I do, the people are complaining that their comb is wonky and they don't know what happened. I go and almost every time see the frames widely spaced. It's a pain to fix if it goes too far, but it's doable. Don't even get me started on the hippies who chuck their new Georgia or California bred packages into an entire hive of foundationless frames. 4 weeks later and I get a desperate email explaining that their bees built sideways across the frames and everything is impossible to look at and what can they do about it, and will their bees die!? Good money though!
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Aug 19, 2014 16:24
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ShotgunWillie posted:Don't even get me started on the hippies who chuck their new Georgia or California bred packages into an entire hive of foundationless frames. Yes, what kind of idiot would do such a thing... (Me, the me kind of idiot)
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Aug 19, 2014 17:02
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showbiz_liz posted:Yes, what kind of idiot would do such a thing... I wasn't going to name names!
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Aug 19, 2014 18:45
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The real question is now, what do I do with 1/4 of a hive? Can I give them away to an established hive if they integrate them properly? Can they (or should they) over winter and I can see what is up next year? Kill them off?
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Aug 19, 2014 18:48
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If the hive has a viable queen, it's possible the hive can recover. You might have to feed them all winter. Depends a lot on your local climate and I forget where you live. If there's no viable queen, you're probably better off starting in April with a new package or nuc, rather than trying to rescue this one by re-queening. You will probably at some point have to go into the hive and fix all the frames, which could be really destructive if they've got brood in the crazy comb, but chances are good that the crazy comb only has pollen/nectar/honey in it since bees want nice straight comb for brood. If there's an experienced beekeeper you can get to come help you out with an on-site consult, that is probably your best option. For spacing, what we were taught at our class (at Beekind in Sebastopol, CA) was to use a ten-frame deep/medium box, but only put in 8 frames, and put "follower boards" on either side of the eight frames. This creates a ventilation channel up either side of the box, which is good for hives in our climate (it gets pretty hot in the summer here). Also bees in the wild tend to build about eight parallel combs, so with ten frames in a box bees often ignore most of the outer two frames anyway. And the follower boards + the eight frames fit nice and snug up against each other, with a bit of room along the outside that gives you the 'slack' you need when you're prying loose frames.
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Aug 19, 2014 19:13
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ShotgunWillie posted:No. Bad. Boo, hiss. What? I dont think I have ever had frames that actually would fit into a super all touching without weird gaps on one end or the other. I have put them close and it makes it super annoying to decap honey as you cant just scrape down touching the top and bottom of the frame
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Aug 22, 2014 05:17
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These are correctly spaced frames:  It's OK and in fact intended by design, for there to be space at both ends of the box. Those spaces provide ventilation to reduce moisture buildup as the bees resperate and uncapped honey dehydrates to the consistency the bees desire. You use your hive tool to pry the frames apart a bit when you want to pull one out. Spaced like this, the bees will rarely or never build connecting comb, so you don't tear comb apart when you need to pull a frame. This also makes frames interchangeable so you can rearrange them if necessary.
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Aug 22, 2014 05:31
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So I'm really keen on keeping bees in my garden next year so Im getting as much info as I can, one thing I can't find out is how high do bees fly? I live in a satellite town in Scotland, within 2 miles is a country park, fields and gardens obviously, the country park especially has lots of flowering trees in it. So im happy in that respect. The problem is in my back garden. There's a 3 story building making a rectangular back green (50m by 35m) and that's where my garden is, bang in the centre of the court, 8m from the nearest building. Would bees fly out of the back court quite happily or would the height of the buildings around them prevent them from doing so?
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Sep 30, 2014 16:33
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Aramoro posted:So I'm really keen on keeping bees in my garden next year so Im getting as much info as I can, one thing I can't find out is how high do bees fly? They fly level from the hive until they run into something then they fly straight up to their cruising altitude like 20-100 meters until they get to their destination.
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Sep 30, 2014 17:42
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People keep on offering me hives they don't have time for. Anyone in NYC have a location ready and waiting? I'm up to like 15 hives from like 6 this spring.
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Oct 2, 2014 16:57
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Spookydonut posted:They fly level from the hive until they run into something then they fly straight up to their cruising altitude like 20-100 meters until they get to their destination. Cool that's good to hear. Im having real trouble contacting the local beekeeping society here as they have essentially no meaningful online presence. Don't suppose anyone here keeps Bees in Scotland do they?
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Oct 3, 2014 12:30
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Beekeeping societies are loaded with luddite old-timers so yeah they can be really lovely when it comes to the Web. I suggest you locate the nearest bee supply store, call them up, and ask for phone numbers for whatever society is in your area.
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Oct 4, 2014 06:05
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Update. My queen had buggered off hence the under preforming hive. The workers made some queen cells but apparently they didn't take. The screwed up burr comb was due to some crappy foundation. It was wax over thin plastic base foundation that had warped enough that the bees just made burr to fill the void, so I'm throwing that stuff away. On the advice of the former director of the University bee laboratory, I put my colony down. I bagged up the single super that they occupied and dropped it in my freezer. While it may appear cruel, it was what would happen inevitably as winter sets in, so I just sped up the process and saved what little honey they produced for the next package of bees. Sucks that this year was a failure, but at least I have a better notion how to handle my next package.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:17
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Any of yall have any Buckfast experience? Particularly from Texas? I've read they become pretty aggressive after a year.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:11
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Any of yall have any Buckfast experience? Particularly from Texas? I've read they become pretty aggressive after a year. F1 crosses from hybrid lines like Buckfast are almost always pain in the assess. Whenever they requeen and mate with the local stock, the genetic makeup of the offspring can be unpredictable.
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Oct 9, 2014 00:58
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ShotgunWillie posted:F1 crosses from hybrid lines like Buckfast are almost always pain in the assess. Whenever they requeen and mate with the local stock, the genetic makeup of the offspring can be unpredictable. Well I bit the bullet and ordered Beeweaver. I need 10 hives to keep my ag exemption, and the shipping costs would double the total price, so I needed somewhere local. Supposedly they've been trying to breed some of the meanness out of them over the last 5 years or so. My old apiary was in California, and the bees were always incredibly gentle, to the point where I could often work them without a veil. I'm going to buy a suit though based on your warning. Bonus Content: Hives being built: We bought our first hive, and didn't like the shoddy construction (or the design). The flat roof pooled water after rain, and the boards were too quickly cut, leaving gaps that while easily propolised, still weren't up to our standard. So - enter building our own hives.  Bottom boards.  Assorted deeps and supers.  Inside shot  Put together shot. The slanted roofs should take care of the water pooling. The pitched roof has a board underneath it, with a hollow space in between to help with insulation.  Painting the deeps/supers  Stacked roofs sealed and sheet metaled. The sheet metal has since been painted white as well.
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Oct 22, 2014 17:18
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I have had a few hives before. Favorite part was climbing a loving tree with no gear to dump a swarm into a bucket. :-D
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Oct 27, 2014 07:09
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I failed to take pix like, months back of getting this baby together. The paint color is fabulous grape. My partner took these during an inspetion today. The past few weeks have been extremely wet, which was an unwelcome end to a poor season. Took off the feeder and checking after how a prophylactic course of mite away. We have Italian bees; they've been nothing but calm and gentle. They weren't too interested in drawing out a honey super, but we put it on rather late as well. It's our first year, so we made a couple stupid miscalculations of this nature. Due to all the winter weather in Georgia earlier this year, we also got the bees rather late. Still, they have seemed pretty happy.  Probably about five full deep frames of nothing but honey, not including any estimate of the honey in frames that also have brood. We'll be putting fondant on. It's been a cold, dry year here.  I started out with a real phobia of bees, but that has been improving steadily. Working our hive is oddly relaxing. I'm hoping to add a second hive this spring.
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Oct 28, 2014 00:29
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http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/02/honey-on-tap/ This seems interesting, but will the bees definitely chew the wax caps off the empty cells?
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Feb 20, 2015 03:57
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Spookydonut posted:http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/02/honey-on-tap/ I'm more curious about how they're not just getting nectar water. How would the machine know that the honey is ready?
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Feb 21, 2015 03:39
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They shouldn't be capped unless the honey's cured, looks like the keeper turns the knob so you could check to make sure. Wonder how long it takes to drain a frame like that? Seems cool I'd just be worried about crushin bees, if any frames were overly built out/had drone cells I could see a horrorible mess happening! Free Cheese fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 04:36
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And I guess with this sort of thing people might become a bit lax on their hive inspections.
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Feb 21, 2015 05:07
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