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Really wondering the type of hive designs and what you folks did to prep them for winter.
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Jan 7, 2019 14:34
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Standard langstroth hives. Prepped with oxalic treatments, fumagilin b, a different type of winter quilt on each hive (one with cedar chips, the other with an insulation board from a bee supply store), both wrapped in tar paper. Condensed both hives down as much as possible but the hives were so huge and the queens still laying when the weather turned freezing, so they were still taller than in previous years.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:31
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Hasselblad posted:Really wondering the type of hive designs and what you folks did to prep them for winter. I had 1 horizontal hive (which lived) and then 11 langstroths with 1 deep brood box and 2 westerns on top going into winter and treated for mites with formic acid at the end of September. Winters in California aren't terribly extreme, so food stores weren't an issue and all of the dead boxes had plenty of stores when I opened them. We had ants and yellow jackets galore this year so I used diatamaceous Earth and put on robbing screens (albiet a little late) this year  I like playing with different hive designs, but I've yet to see any research showing that different designs lead to better outcomes and California Winters are so mild that there's not a ton of prep needed for the hives.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:41
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So moisture not an issue?
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Jan 7, 2019 22:33
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Nope. All the hives are elevated, tilted forward on stands, and well sealed with no signs of condensation on the inside. Also, it's been dry as a bone up until last week
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Jan 8, 2019 00:44
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Moisture is definitely a problem here, especially considering how wet it was before/after the cold snap. The quilts were doing their jobs, though, and I even put in sugar cakes for a food/condensation failsafe. These bees were sick, not wet.
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Jan 8, 2019 03:29
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Melicious posted:Moisture is definitely a problem here, especially considering how wet it was before/after the cold snap. The quilts were doing their jobs, though, and I even put in sugar cakes for a food/condensation failsafe. These bees were sick, not wet. Could you elaborate on that? It sounds interesting. Thank you in advance. e: six of seven still standing, but in two the bee sphere is getting smaller (seen while shoving a IR cam under the hive). I hope we hit some 12+ °C temps soon, so we can take a look into the hives. tuo fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jan 9, 2019 |
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Jan 9, 2019 12:32
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tuo posted:Could you elaborate on that? It sounds interesting. Thank you in advance. Sure. Sugar cakes are basically just a no-cook candy, with 1 Tb water mixed per pound of sugar, then left to dry and solidify in a mold of some sort for a day or two. In one hive, I did just a plain cake popped out of a paper plate. The weaker hive got a full candy board, pretty much following this guide. https://honeybeesuite.com/no-cook-candy-board-recipe-for-feeding-winter-bees/ I really like this method and will probably do it again next year despite my hives’ failure this year. I certainly don’t think the sugar cakes were their downfall...
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Jan 9, 2019 21:10
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Melicious posted:Sure. Sugar cakes are basically just a no-cook candy, with 1 Tb water mixed per pound of sugar, then left to dry and solidify in a mold of some sort for a day or two. In one hive, I did just a plain cake popped out of a paper plate. The weaker hive got a full candy board, pretty much following this guide. https://honeybeesuite.com/no-cook-candy-board-recipe-for-feeding-winter-bees/ That sounds interesting. I might give this a try next season. Allthough over here, we got told to - under no circumstances - leave food inside the hive over winter unless we are perfectly sure the bees are running out of food. The reasoning behind that was that during winter times where it gets warmer, the winter bees - attracted by the food - might start collecting it even though they might not need it, and thus work more than they have to and might die earlier. Just repeating what is taught here. How is your experience with this method in say, a winter where the hive has plenty of food. Do they even touch the food if they don't need to/have enough food in the frames?
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Jan 10, 2019 13:06
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Had a visitor to the yard the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ETsOrExxY
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Jan 10, 2019 19:10
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El Mero Mero posted:Had a visitor to the yard the other day: You just gonna sit there while he eats your girls??
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Jan 22, 2019 21:09
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I need to kick on the heaters in the shop and get working on these frames and the rest of the hive... soon.
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Feb 1, 2019 17:13
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celewign posted:You just gonna sit there while he eats your girls?? Everyone's gotta eat
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Feb 1, 2019 17:19
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Last weekend finally gave us the chance to check with the hives (11° C). Overall, it looked pretty good. The five hives we took care off for winter all have couple of kilogramms of food left, all of them sitting at five to six frames, the outlier of course beeing our crazy hive which sits at ten frames, filling out the whole box with more bees than necessary (luckily still has enough food left). The sixth hive - which we got late in the year, after any chance to add food - doesn't have much left, allthough they also are strong. We decided to give them some food paste in the hopes that they can use it before sub-zero sets in again. Looking at the weather forecast for the next two weeks, I am optimistic that we get out of winter with at least six of seven, maybe (depending on how the feeding works) five of seven. Still no clue why the seventh hive died. *fingers crossed
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Feb 11, 2019 13:23
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BTW: if anyone is interested, I used a (cheap) IR camera this winter to regularly check my hives for what's going on. Filming the hive from the outside only showed on one hive a clear temperature gradient (the crazy hive), I guess my camera is too cheap to pick up the nuances there. But what works pretty well is actually shoving the camera under the hive, and film through the bottom grid. You can get a good sense of how many dead bees are lying on the grid, and you can easily count how many frames are populated by the bees (and of course, if anyone is at home at all). Some pics I took (filmed from underneath the hive, looking up into the frames)    The images alone don't convey it of course, because they are just a snapshot, but when I opened up the hives last weekend, what I saw then perfectly matched the impression I got from checking them once a week with the IR cam (in regard to strength etc.). BTW: I used the cam with a lightning extension and a self-made "stick" so I can easily move it underneath the box.
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Feb 14, 2019 12:55
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https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/02/18/694301239/massive-loss-of-thousands-of-hives-afflicts-orchard-growers-and-beekeepers Looks like commercial hives in California lost about 50% this year, which is pretty bad.
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Feb 19, 2019 20:42
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Leperflesh posted:https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/02/18/694301239/massive-loss-of-thousands-of-hives-afflicts-orchard-growers-and-beekeepers For context, commercial folks tend to see 25-40% fewer losses than hobby beekeepers owing to the stricter and more consistent management. The normal loss rate for commercial hives is 25% with hobby folks seeing 40-50% This means the backyard beekeepers are seeing 75-100% losses this year. For me, I saw 12 out of 13 hives die this year (I treated for mites twice, and installed robbing screens permanently too). Devastating year. El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Feb 19, 2019 |
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Feb 19, 2019 21:41
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drat, that sounds really heartbreaking! We lost one of seven over the winter, and hope nothing strange happens to the other six (all look good currently). Reading these numbers from fellow beekeepers in the US feels really, really bad :/
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Feb 20, 2019 11:20
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quote:But this year, a special problem might have taken down the honey bees more than usual. They tossed this in there but did not actually say varroa was the cause of losing 50,000 hives. Part of me wonders if the fires out in CA effected the bee's foraging. I would find it highly unlikely that those hives were not closely monitored and treated for varroa.
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Feb 21, 2019 15:47
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Hasselblad posted:They tossed this in there but did not actually say varroa was the cause of losing 50,000 hives. Part of me wonders if the fires out in CA effected the bee's foraging. I would find it highly unlikely that those hives were not closely monitored and treated for varroa. No commercial beekeeper should loose that much to varroa....that pest is understood good enough, imo, and there are enough indicators over the year in regard to how much treatment is needed. What you are writing about foraging: do you relate this to pollen or to honey/overall food?
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Feb 21, 2019 17:10
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tuo posted:No commercial beekeeper should loose that much to varroa....that pest is understood good enough, imo, and there are enough indicators over the year in regard to how much treatment is needed. Overall. I know that all that crap was blowing over us in Utah for a good while last year and I imagine it was a bit worse closer to the fires. My line of thinking is that if smoke tends to cause bees to hunker down, they might get less foraging in.
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Feb 21, 2019 17:18
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Speaking of varroa: Do you guys have any opinions on what the best oxalic acid vaporizers are?
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Feb 21, 2019 17:22
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Hasselblad posted:Overall. I know that all that crap was blowing over us in Utah for a good while last year and I imagine it was a bit worse closer to the fires. My line of thinking is that if smoke tends to cause bees to hunker down, they might get less foraging in. Smoke makes bees calm because it simulates the forrest around them burning down, so each and every bee smelling the smoke goes into the hive and tries to get as much food into it's honey-belly as possible, preparing for an emergency swarm. Thus, using smokers, should be reduced as much as possible. Depending on the hive, we care about them without any smoke at all (using a huge cloth with a cutout for the current frame we have to take care off), and putting some oil of clove (I hope it's the correct translation for Nelkenöl) on it. The bees hate the smell of Nelkenöl, and get away from the clotch, but won't go straight to the food and fill up their honey-belly. My question went more into the direction of: commercial beekeepers feed their hives inside the hive, so how exactly would the fires have influecned that, outside of pollen? Mind you, this is me beeing interested, while the whole situation is loving bad. I think the more we get to know about the reasons, the better.
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Feb 21, 2019 17:41
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Ghostnuke posted:Speaking of varroa: That trend also active in the US? I guess I have to catch up to that. Over here, everyone now seems to use oxalic acid vaporizers, and I hear good things about it. Guess I'll have to test that with a strong hive this year :/
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Feb 21, 2019 17:43
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tuo posted:My question went more into the direction of: commercial beekeepers feed their hives inside the hive, They do?
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Feb 21, 2019 18:09
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I am sitting here reading all this, and the bug is hitting me to restart my apiary. Being in College, having a full time job and a part time internship just leaves no time to do it... I can't wait to be done with this crap so I can get back to making boxes and bitching about dead outs...
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Feb 21, 2019 18:53
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Hasselblad posted:They do? At least over here, most of them do, yeah, and according to what I read/saw from the US, it's the same there??? e: of course, I'm talking about hives that are not solely used for pollenation. But even then, there are some examples out there where the anti-biotics used in large scale operations are fed from withing the box. tuo fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 20:04
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I cannot imagine many that sell the produced honey would be feeding artificially. (beyond cold weather periods)
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Feb 22, 2019 16:44
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Seems like that is a big difference then between beekeepers in the US and over here.
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Feb 22, 2019 16:49
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Hasselblad posted:I cannot imagine many that sell the produced honey would be feeding artificially. (beyond cold weather periods) You would take the honey they produce early, and then feed them while they collect for winter.
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Feb 22, 2019 17:25
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Okay, then it ain't a difference, as we do the very same
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Feb 22, 2019 17:39
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The smoke from the wildfires last year covered a huge portion of the agricultural areas of the state, lasted for weeks, and had lots of horrible toxic poo poo in it aside from the just general toxicity of burnt tree smoke, so I think there is a chance it affected the bees. However, during the summer and fall, the average worker bee only lives a few weeks; aside from the queen, it should be different bees in the hive by wintertime. Also, our winters are very mild, so while feeding during the winter is common, the bees also tend to spend a decent amount of time foraging all winter long, too. And of course, any toxicity of the honey caused by the smoke would be detected through chemical testing of the commercial honey products. I still suspect that colony collapse is due to multiple interacting factors; a high varroa load means more than just that the hive is being hit hard by varroa, it points to additional factors that have weakened the hive's ability to resist varroa.
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Feb 23, 2019 04:02
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I completely buy the early-spring/late winter collapse story. Randy Oliver has a good presentation where he lays out the reasons why the season we're seeing this year might have been so devastating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SvPF7sOd0M
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Feb 23, 2019 06:39
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Finally broke down and have a drill press en route for my frame middle bars. Trying to drill holes in a 1/2" bar at a 45 degree angle with a hand drill was an exercise in heavy drinking. Prototype: (Will likely have 3 holes in the middle bar to act as the "bee highway" that is used in cathedral hive design) 
Hasselblad fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 18, 2019 15:29
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Well lost my first colony this winter. This one is on a friend property so I don't get out to it during the winter. Tapped on the side and didn't get a response. Opened it up and found tons of bees but only a few little patches of honey on the outside frames.
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Mar 29, 2019 18:47
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I had two hives going into the winter. One died. It was a standard langstroth double brood chamber, and after cleanup I am left with about 4 frames of honey and the other 16 are all usable drawn out comb. I also purchased a couple more empty hives from someone who started in august of last year. The hives didn’t build up in time for winter and died. There is a bit of honey left in both hives and about 3-4 frames of drawn comb. I am debating buying packages vs nucs. My original hive was a local swarm given to me by another beekeeper. I split it last year into the second hive (my only live one at this point). I could probably split again this year but thats a couple months off, and I have 3 more new hives and a few nuc boxes to split into if needed. So whats the most cost effective and fastest way to build back up? Package bees are available in about 2 weeks for $135, the soonest I can get nucs is a month for $170-215.
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Mar 31, 2019 03:08
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rdb posted:I had two hives going into the winter. One died. It was a standard langstroth double brood chamber, and after cleanup I am left with about 4 frames of honey and the other 16 are all usable drawn out comb. I don't trust packages at all. splits or nucs all the way.
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Mar 31, 2019 07:02
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I got my girls last night! Caught one sting in the ankle, but that's what I get for wearing shorts I guess.
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Apr 8, 2019 14:52
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I still have over 2 weeks till I pick mine up. The mega-layens hive is nearly completed. Just have to finish the roof, entrance holes and decide if I want to paint or oil the exterior. Leaning toward tung oil if anything. The beast weighs a ton even before frames are put in and roof is on. Once comb, bees and honey are in it, the sucker will need a forklift to move. Will likely put a couple large bolts through the body/legs for better stability under the load. (The legs are 4x4 cedar post.)
Hasselblad fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 16:02
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Ghostnuke posted:I got my girls last night! Caught one sting in the ankle, but that's what I get for wearing shorts I guess. One sting is pretty good for that. I did something similar once....let me tell you it was way more than one sting.
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Apr 8, 2019 16:04
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