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Touchy, I happen to know a USDA bee biologist, so if you have bee questions I can direct you to her. PM me if you need her info.
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Apr 25, 2009 18:37
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I installed the bees today and put in an entrance reducer, but it seems to be hindering their way inside. Should I just remove it?
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Apr 25, 2009 23:53
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100 Years, thanks for the heads up. I'll let you know if I need to get in contact with them. Are they in Utah by chance? Max, I noticed the same thing. I only have a small reducer though. I ended up leaving it on for a day or two but just decided to remove it. The reducer is there to help protect the hive while they have low numbers but if there's nothing for other bees to steal then I'm not sure how important it is.
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Apr 26, 2009 03:12
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Time for an update! I went into the hive last Wednesday to see if the Queen had gotten out of her box. She had just like she was supposed to and I saw my first signs of comb being drawn in my foundationless frames. Yay! However, I discovered today that I made a bit of a mistake. I forgot to put the 10th frame inside the deep when I took out the queen box. I also found that the bees are making bur comb in the gap between the two frames where the 10th frame should be. I also discovered that I don't like top feeders (but I'm also still a giant pussy and cringe every the bees increase in volume so that could be why). The top feeder draws all the bees to the area where I'm trying to work. There's a huge mass of them all over the top of the deep, the bottom of the inside cover and the bottom of the top feeder itself. It's a huge (and intimidating) biomass of bees that are all making the trek to the food right through where I want to be. On top of that the weather today is miserable with a warning of snow this afternoon and evening. All the bees were in the hive and they weren't really in the mood to be monkeyed around with either.
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Apr 26, 2009 16:41
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What's the minimum space I can put a hive in? I have a pretty small backyard, like 20x20 at the most, and it's close to my backdoor.
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Apr 26, 2009 17:34
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I have a pretty small backyard too and it's almost getting out of hand. I wouldn't recommend it if your backyard is that small. You could do it if you don't care about bees running in to you all the time. Touchy, how many days did you wait to check on the queen? I have an entrance feeder and they're going through that crap so quickly I'm going to have to make more syrup tomorrow. I'm not too keen on doing that, cause they're all swarming around the hive. Is it better to inspect a hive in the evening or during the day?
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Apr 26, 2009 21:16
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I checked on the queen ~4 days after the hive was installed. I've read that during the warmer part of the day is the best time to work the hive. Most of the bees will be out and about and they're less likely to be grumpy due to the cold weather. I would think that once the colony is established enough and the weather is nice enough there won't be as many bees hanging out near the hive since a good portion of the workers will be out gathering pollen. Whether that turns out to be the case or not, only time will tell.
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Apr 26, 2009 23:41
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Well I have my bees out where they will be for the summer. I watched them yesterday bringing in loads of pollen. I am still feeding them, and plan to continue to do so until I put on my super. I have no pictures because all my friends are giant pussies and don't want to get near the hive. The bee guy said that the bees were not doing well with the feeder, but I think he didn't refill it. I filled it with probably a gallon and a half of of sugar syrup, and 3 days later its over half gone. I am going to have to make more in the next day or so. My bees have started comb on all 10 frames, and have fully built out 7 or 8 and have about 5 or 6 full of brood or honey. I am waiting for them to fill up 8 before I throw the second deep on. Now I am just waiting for warm weather, they don't like to go out when its cool. Crazy Armed Pilot
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Apr 27, 2009 22:41
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I had to make up another batch of syrup for the bees yesterday. I was at the store and saw a 2 gallon gas can. I cleaned it out with soap and water, then mixed up my syrup in several batches as I don't have a huge pot to make it in and filled that sucker up. I have to drive to my hive and its a great way to transport and store syrup without spilling it all over the place. It also has the added benefit of screwing over anyone that try's to steal my gas again; put that poo poo in your tank.
Crazy Armed Pilot
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Apr 28, 2009 20:36
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walrusman posted:
 Overall, how much money do you think you've spent/will spend? (Taking into account the materials to build the box, the bees themselves, syrup, gloves, etc.) Also, I think my ipod is psychic and trying to tell me something because as I started typing this post it shuffled to "I Got Stung" by Elvis. 
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Apr 28, 2009 21:05
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imaginaryfriend posted:Overall, how much money do you think you've spent/will spend? (Taking into account the materials to build the box, the bees themselves, syrup, gloves, etc.) Since no one else has posted, I will re-post the list from earlier and make some additions to it: 2 Deeps - 13.25/ea <- This is where the bees live 2 Western Supers - 10.25/ea <- This is where the bees put honey 2 Deep frame packs - 11.35/ea <- These are what the comb goes in 2 Super frame packs - 11.35/ea 2 Deep foundation - 12.00/10 <- This is what the bees build comb on 2 Super foundation - 9.35/10 1 Inner cover - 9.75/ea <- This is a cover on top with a small home 1 Telescoping cover - 22.00/ea <- This goes over the inner cover 1 Bottom board - 9.00/ea <- This is what it all sits on 1 Queen Excluder - 7.25/ea <- This keeps the queen in the deeps 1 Maxant hive tool - 11.95/ea <- This is the magic wand that makes bees make honey The bees were $65 The bee hat was $27.50 The smoker was $14.95ish Crazy Armed Pilot
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Apr 29, 2009 22:06
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Crazy Armed Pilot posted:$$$ Thank you!
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Apr 29, 2009 23:00
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Well, I apparently have mono, so I'll be taking a few days of semi-voluntary unpaid leave from work. However, I still feel well enough to poke around at my bees, as long as it's nice outside and I sit down and take breaks every five minutes, so it gives me an opportunity to get to know them a little better. Since I dug up some leather gloves, I am much more comfortable pulling frames and having faith that I'm not going to get the poo poo stung out of me. These pictures were all taken from 20+ feet away with a 55-200 lens, because I only have one hood.   Here we see my hive, still just one deep strong, with a bunch of bees coming and going. They're so goddamn cute.  It's like a little airport out front. They were extremely busy today, and I even noticed a couple distinct colors of pollen on their legs as they came home. I heard in the class that CAP and I took, that hazelnut pollen is gray...even though hazelnuts are supposed to be over by now, I could swear I saw some little gray legs this afternoon. There were also a few different shades of orange, from a deep reddish, all the way down to a bright yellow. I didn't get any pictures of this, but it's kinda neat.  Here I am, smoker in hand, hive tool in pocket, ready to piss off some bees. I'm leaving the feeder on top for now, because CAP is doing it and I tend to trust his judgement on things like this.  Smokey smokey. This is the first time I've used my smoker, and I must say, I was impressed. The bees were significantly more docile and seemed less inclined to kill me. I had some minor difficulty getting it fired up and keeping it lit, but some dry leaves, a couple twigs and some newspaper seemed to be a good combination. A++ would smoke again.  When I talked to CAP a couple days ago, he said his bees had drawn comb on all ten frames already. He's been feeding his a little more than I have, so that makes sense I suppose. Here we see the last frame that they've drawn any appreciable comb on, which leaves two (the two to the left in this picture) still to be filled. Get to work, lazy bees!  At least the frames they've filled look like they really mean business. I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but there are larvae in the open cells, and you can tell that a fair few of them are capped. Awesome.  This is the frame the farthest to the right. It's looking decent right now, but they still have some work to do. Seeing how much work they had left to do, and seeing that the weather is going to be iffy for the next few days, I decided to help the little fellows out. I whipped up a small batch of syrup -- maybe a gallon, or slightly less -- and fed that to them a couple hours ago. I'll go back out tomorrow and check on the level, and if it looks like they're eating it, I'll head to the store and get supplies for a couple more gallons. Gotta keep them happy so they'll make me honey!
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May 1, 2009 00:31
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I'm really worried because I just inspected the hive today and I couldn't find the queen anywhere, even though she's marked. I saw a lot of cells with clear liquid in them, some bright orange, but no capped cells (honey?). And I took the queen cage out and there wasn't anyone in there, so she definitely got out, I just have no idea where she is.
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May 1, 2009 01:52
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Maximusi posted:I'm really worried because I just inspected the hive today and I couldn't find the queen anywhere, even though she's marked. I saw a lot of cells with clear liquid in them, some bright orange, but no capped cells (honey?). And I took the queen cage out and there wasn't anyone in there, so she definitely got out, I just have no idea where she is. She's most likely in there somewhere. If she had left I think you'd have a mostly empty hive and if she had died you'd be able to spot drone cells all over the place from a laying worker. If you're cetain she's missing though you'll want to requeen ASAP before your colony completely dies. Beautiful pictures Walrusman! Just and FYI, the reason why your veil strings are so long is so you can tie them under your arms, like so. You may know that already from your class but I couldn't figure it out until I came across those instructions.
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May 1, 2009 04:08
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Well, our bees are now in the hive, no problems with the transfer. Am looking forward to checking their progress in a couple of days
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May 9, 2009 01:02
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what kind of bees did you get?
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May 9, 2009 01:43
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Finally have an update. Sorry the pictures are so crappy, my brother was kinda far away.   The rest are too far away to notice anything. I saw a lot of larva in various stages of development, and they'd drawn comb on about 4 frames. I hope they fill up the box by next week.
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May 12, 2009 03:37
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I am trying my hand at gardening, and a few weeks into tending to my plants, I realized a large amount of honeybees around. Much to my surprise, their home was just a couple feet away! They have taken a liking to the tree right by my peppers. I have no intention of killing them, and am very happy they are there. So, I am pseudo beekeeping. Anyway, I came here mostly to post my favorite picture of them. Incoming Bees! It reminds me of watching planes land at an airport.
osukeith161 fucked around with this message at 03:47 on May 27, 2009 |
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May 26, 2009 20:33
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You could probably get in contact with a local beekeeping group and tell them that you have a swarm - the one around here has a list of people that are willing to go out and catch rogue colonies, and give them a good home.
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May 26, 2009 23:25
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Simkin posted:You could probably get in contact with a local beekeeping group and tell them that you have a swarm - the one around here has a list of people that are willing to go out and catch rogue colonies, and give them a good home. That looks like a pretty happy little hive to me, rather than a swarm. I'd just leave them. I might be getting ready to put my first honey super on soon. My bees were going apeshit today. I might throw on my veil and go check them once the sun goes behind the trees.
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May 27, 2009 00:31
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^^ But ... but ... free bees.  I got in late on the local bee provider's lists, and so won't be getting my first beeeees until tomorrow night. Then we're getting another two nucs on Thursday. Baptism by fire? gently caress yeah.
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May 27, 2009 06:18
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3 hives all at once? Not too shabby. I'd actually read a couple of people recommend starting with more than 1 hive. The thinking was that it gives you a chance to compare if one hive is weaker than the other. I'm also guessing that it gives you twice the chance to survive a screw up which may be the more important part. So for everyone who's already started, how are things going? Having any troubles, run into any snags? Anybody still feeding, adding equipment or anything like that? On my hive, I noticed the bees had stopped using the sugar water and had actually begun drawing comb in the entrance to the top feeder. Only 4 of the 10 frames had any comb on them and none of them were full but I went ahead and pulled the feeder anyway. That was a few weeks ago and I haven't touched the hive since but I'm headed back in today to see how things are progressing.
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May 27, 2009 14:20
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I am getting a mixed response to the bees in my backyard. Should I just let them be (I resisted the urge to get punny there)? Or call local beekeepers? They have a couple acre field behind my yard. It is a watershed area, so it just grows freely. There are lots of wildflowers. I have no problem with them in the tree, but would it be best for their propagation, survival, etc. to call a beekeeper?
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May 27, 2009 16:50
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Well, to get at the bees, they'd have to expose the majority of the colony, which would entail cutting the tree apart. I don't imagine it's the healthiest tree around, if it has a void large enough for a colony, but not everyone's keen on tree removal. If they're not being a problem (building a nest in the side of your house, being really aggressive), then I would probably just enjoy them as they are. Touchy: We'd originally planned on only getting two hives (I really, really want lots of honey for mead  ), but my parent's next door neighbour keeps bees as his retirement business/hobby, and offered to hook us up with an extra queen and some bees. I'm not sure if he's got any capped brood to go along with her, or if it will just end up being more like a bee package than a nuc. The other two hives will be actual nucs - four frames of Has anyone else planted things for late summer nectar sources? I've picked up some bulk buckwheat, and plan on broadcasting that, as there is apparently a dearth of nectar late in the summer around here, and this should ameliorate the situation.
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May 27, 2009 18:00
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I won't be able to keep bees this year, but I want to plan for next year. This year I'm planting grass seed with lots of clover seed interspersed, I want berry (saskatoon, raspberry, cherry trees) bushes, fruit trees (apple, cherry), lilac hedge and maybe a few flower beds, but not a lot. Plus the vegetable garden. Given western Canada's climate, and the Alberta prairie in particular, do you guys think this will provide an adequately balanced diet for the bees? I have 1 acre to work with, minus the house and workshop once they get built. There are other houses in the area also with gardens and flower beds, but I don't know what exactly they have.
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May 27, 2009 23:17
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I wouldn't worry too much about having a balanced diet. As long as it flowers, they can use it. Also keep in mind that bees will travel something like up to 2 miles looking for blossoms to harvest. Sounds like a good plan though!
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May 28, 2009 02:37
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I should have said a flowering period balance I suppose. I don't really know much about plants and their flowering periods. Do you think this will offer the bees enough flowers throughout the growing season?
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May 28, 2009 03:22
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I added a second body to my hive last week. I'm going to check them on Saturday and take pictures. Has anyone else added a second hive body? How long does the pollen/nectar flow last? I'm wondering if I will be able to get a honey super up in time. It's almost the end of May but my bees keep on bringing craploads of pollen.
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May 28, 2009 22:25
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My queen is apparently not doing well. They are making supersede cells to replace the queen. I'm not sure if I should let them do it or order a new queen. It's been five weeks and they still haven't filled up the first box so I just took off the second one.   This really sucks...Advice is appreciated. I don't know how I'm ever going to find the queen anyways.
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May 30, 2009 21:19
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drat, that's too bad. We finally got our bees today, bright and early(ish). Took them home, shuffled the hives into the approximate location where we wanted them, and then started unboxing one of the nucs. After gently lifting one of the frames out, into the brood super, we came to the realization that ... something was amiss. Turns out, the guy supplying bees raises them on deep frames, and we only have Dadents.  Fooortunately, our parent's next door neighbour keeps bees as a retirement business/hobby, so I popped down, and it turned out that he'd retired all of his deep supers a while back - which meant that he had two, nicely clean and ready to go. I took them back up, swapped the frames into the proper depth super, placed the inner cover on the first hive, and stood back to marvel in it all. gently caress yeah, bees.  The second nuc went into its respective super without much fuss, although by that time, they were a little more active. Throughout the whole operation, not a single person was stung, despite the fact that I was only wearing a set of painting coveralls (yay for $8 bee gear), with latex gloves. My sister was wearing the only veil, and they definitely weren't acting aggressively towards her at all. We're going to have to replace most of the frames in the deep with proper depth ones (there's just regular Dadent frames in it to fill up the space), but hopefully they don't start drawing burr comb before we get the chance to do that. We also need to figure out a better spot for them that won't involve them getting the full blast of the afternoon sun, as apparently that might be a concern.  Oh, also, the bees were being kind of retarded and playing around on the loose ends of the duct tape, from the packaging - it almost looked like a dozen or so had trapped themselves, but I think they were just ...  They also apparently like to commit seppuku in the provided dish of sugar syrup, so means of escape were provided.
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May 31, 2009 01:02
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On my land there is a hive of bees that lives under a mattress. How viable is it for me to build or buy some bee boxes like I see under orchards and get them to move into the new home? How DO you entice bees to move? I want honey dammit!
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Jun 3, 2009 07:49
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http://www.beemaster.com/site/honeybee/swarms.html It's not overly complex, but you may want to have a more experienced beekeeper on hand to just help you out with things. You can build the boxes (supers), if you're handy with woodworking, although some parts you're better off just buying (from a time/cost standpoint). The supers are pretty straightforward, as are the inner/outer cover, and bottom board - frames are really fiddly, though, and also require foundation material, which would be a pain to make. tl, dr: Find a local beekeeping club, beg/borrow/buy some used kit, and enlist the help of someone to help catch the swarm. Everything that I've been hearing around here paints the Hawaiian honey bees as being pretty chill, and they've been importing them (queens) into the region for a while. Pro tip: DON'T loving INSTALL BEES BY FLASHLIGHT My friend installed his bees a day after I did, only he did so after dark. The bees, of course, were totally disoriented, and cold, so where do you think they went? Onto the person standing nearest the hive. Poor little girls, only wanting a warm place to curl up on a cold night.
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Jun 3, 2009 08:56
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I have a small yard in Seattle, and have been doing lots of gardening this year. MY girlfreind and I have been putting large yard waste in a pile near a corner of the house( some tree branches and large weeds and stuff that doesn't fit in the compost. We were moving the pile today when all of a sudden a bunch of angry bees started flying out from the pile. We got out of there pretty fast with no stings. What should we do with these guys? We don't want bees right now, not in a pile of yardwaste. We also don't really want to hurt them either. The pile is small, maybe 5' x5' or smaller. I'll try to get some pictures later if you guys need them. Edit: Double checking find out that it is a wasp. I'm looking into how to handle that right now. fizban7 fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jun 8, 2009 |
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Jun 7, 2009 23:40
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Well, if you need to move the pile, then you're definitely going to want to move the bees. Pictures would be helpful. In other news, it looks like I might have some larvae/pupae that have been killed off by chalk brood.  How this could happen, when it's in a dry spot, and we've not had rain since I installed the buggers is a mystery to me. I'm hoping that it's just something that was in the food I was leaving for them, and that removing that element will fix things. 
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Jun 7, 2009 23:54
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Simkin posted:Well, if you need to move the pile, then you're definitely going to want to move the bees. Pictures would be helpful. Might be a result of the trays you traded with your neighbor
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Jun 9, 2009 20:10
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It could be - the neighbour came by yesterday and checked, and said that it just looked like they were cleaning out old/dead brood, and that it didn't look like it was any endemic thing like a brood disease. Looking a little closer at the description of chalkbrood, they don't quite fit the description, and it certainly doesn't fit the conditions. In other news, I'm thinking about packing one of the hives up and moving it to my house (rather than my parent's), since there appear to be almost zero honeybees anywhere nearby, and plenty of vegetable gardens. My only concern is that since it's deep, dark suburbia, that everyone will be using a metric fuckton of pesticides. 
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Jun 9, 2009 20:44
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I'm glad that I found this thread. I really enjoyed reading melodywise's thread last year, and beekeeping is something I really would like to try my hand at. I think it's a bit late to get started this year, and I have a lot going on as it is, but hopefully next year. There is a local beekeeping association whose meetings I keep forgetting to go to, but I am certainly going to try to make the next one. The laws in my city require a hedge or fencing near the hive, and the cost of installing that alone would be cost prohibitive to me. Fortunately my in-laws live not too far away but also out in the sticks where they don't have such silly rules. For you guys that started out this year, when do you expect to make your first harvest of honey?
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Jun 10, 2009 20:31
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Quite honestly I have no idea. I installed mine late, and there's also a large (like month long) gap in readily available nectar sources through July. If nothing else, the hives will be ready to make short shrift of the blackberries when they really open up in early August. So, if I get any, it likely won't be until August.
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Jun 11, 2009 08:33
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I'm expecting August as my first harvest as well. I actually need to get my second deep on the hive but haven't been able to due to something like 2 weeks of rain and chilly weather. I'm getting concerned that my hive is going to swarm but I've got a big mess to clean up in there and I don't want to expose them to the nasty weather for too long.
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Jun 11, 2009 13:52
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