The best beekeeping book is Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston. It's a great resource and reference.
Go ahead and get a bee suit. The Tyvec coveralls are cheap, but hotter than balls (but they are stingproof).
I think I use this one :
https://guardianbeeapparel.com/shop/vented-jacket-pro-fit-access-veil/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmN2iBhCrARIsAG_G2i7-QHrzdjb0U3DBUushDBDPG1oGD_2DnjT27TncpwdwkKkdrbo6VugaAnAfEALw_wcB
In Southern summers, the ventilation makes a huge difference. When working bees I wear the bee jacket, goatskin gloves (not needed, but I like them for aggressive/cranky bees), sturdy duck pants (Carhartt or Dickies) and rubber boots with the pant legs tucked in. I've worked them in cheaper shoes and gotten stung through them and I'm wary of having bees climb up my pants legs.
In Alabama, you'll have to worry about small have beetles. They're generally not an issue in strong hives, but nucleus colonies and splits as well as small hives can be overwhelmed quickly. Screened bottom boards with oil traps are pretty common in my area. Swiffer pads and sturdy paper towels can trap some beetles, but I'm not sure how truly effective they are. Small hive beetles (SHB) larvae defecate in honey and it ferments and the bees have a hard time cleaning a big infestation up and can abscond, leaving you slimed out gross frames.
Varroa mites are the biggest threat to honeybees though. Management varies, but my mentor and beek friends use oxalic acid vaporization to control them. It's expensive to get started (vaporizer, deep cycle battery) but oxalic acid is cheap and pretty safe.
Getting a mentor or joining a club is a tremendous asset, so good job on the apprenticeship.
My mentor said that he's making a small fortune from beekeeping. He just started with a big fortune. It's an expensive hobby, but your own honey is delicious and seeing the bees coming in and out is an interesting and peaceful experience.
I'll hang around and talk about bees for a while. I've got the kids today, so I'll be in and out.
One lesson that I refuse to learn (because I'm an inattentive dumbass) is bears. Bears love honey and brood.
If you have bears, get an electric fence. You're risking your money and hard work if you don't.
There is a break point for how many bees you need (and in what region) for keeping to be profitable. You need A LOT of bees for it to be profitable.
...however, a cheap way to make money on bees is to contract with orchards to maintain a mason bee population. Why more people don't do this is kind of amazing considering how cheap and easy mason bees are to propagate and how much better they are at pollinating orchards than honey bees.
My mentor said that he's making a small fortune from beekeeping. He just started with a big fortune. It's an expensive hobby, but your own honey is delicious and seeing the bees coming in and out is an interesting and peaceful experience.
I'll hang around and talk about bees for a while. I've got the kids today, so I'll be in and out.
One lesson that I refuse to learn (because I'm an inattentive dumbass) is bears. Bears love honey and brood.
If you have bears, get an electric fence. You're risking your money and hard work if you don't.
https://rentmasonbees.com/
Forgot the site. Mason bees are insanely better pollinators than honey bees.
Oh yeah, the money's in pollination, not honey. I've never heard of migratory mason bees, that sounds interesting.
Most of the people in my circle raise bees for the fun of it, maybe sell a little honey on the side. It's hard to compete with the big migratory operations out west.
I have bees because I like the honey and self sufficiency. I just think they're neat.
1 year ago
Anonymous
They aren't migratory. You build nests for the client and re-seed them every year. In the off-season you propagate the next years bees.
Electric fencing has made it a lot easier to keep livestock or protect crops and animals, before we had only old wood posts and barbed wire, but there is nothing like an old long wooden fence as well.
We used hoodie style tops, with the face opening covered with mesh, worked well
The old bloke who’d done it all his life would just wear a flanny, no veil at all, but he was a hard c**t
Get your CDL.
The contract keepers I know use a 50 foot flat bed to service customers. You also need to make a friend with a small time orchard/flower grower that lets you park your bees there when not working for a client.
The bees need a home base that will feed them when not deployed to a work site.
I don't think I am who you clearly think I am.
I listen to entomologists that I personally know and commercial bee owners, who I also know.
If you have to look up what an entomologist is you probably shouldn't give bee advice.
>All I know is Bee keepers children allways have an allergy to Bee's
Well that’s pure bullshit, the guys I worked for were sixth generation bee keepers, none of them allergic
I just finished painting two langstroth hives yesterday. Getting my nucs this week. First year doing it. Been guerilla gardening clover, bachelor buttons around the neighborhood.
If managing these doesn't push over my already limited time and they seem to be feeding well I'll probably get more.
I maine
Checked my hives today. For some reason my split didn't produce a queen and one of my swarm catches has also went queen less. So I just had to overnight order 2 queens so there goes $120 bucks. Had a third hive that seems queen less as well but has a good population so I dropped in a frame of capped brood and half a frame of eggs from a strong colony.
Advice for new people is to realize you're going to spend more than you expect too on bee shit.
I have 2 hives of bees and i have only been stung once. I know this sounds odd but i believe bees understand intentions. If you approach the bees with intensions of hurting them they will hurt you, but if you approach them with friendly vibes they will chill with you. This is just what I've noticed myself.
I own 8 hives of bees and I get stung all the time. I'm immune to the venom now. But they don't give a damn about my intentions
Sometimes my hives will africanize and become "killer bees" in the spring. They follow you for a half mile down the road just for bumping the hive.
Bust your ass and learn as much as you can, enjoy the success of your hard work and knowledge, as well as the great outdoors. Bees can be pretty tricky honestly and difficult for a number of farms to do better than break even, or make a solid income.
Advice for someone looking to break into the hobby but rents an apartment? I was thinking of reaching out to clubs near me or a college campus that has a few hives, or asking if I could have one at a community garden, but the last time I did that I was just complete ignored.
Just show up and start doing it. No one is in charge of community gardens and if you're not taking up plot space no one should care. If someone b***hes about bee allergies tell them they shouldn't be gardening.
Just show up and start doing it. No one is in charge of community gardens and if you're not taking up plot space no one should care. If someone b***hes about bee allergies tell them they shouldn't be gardening.
This OP. Nature is for all and beekeeping is based. If some limp wristed homosexual gets mad just open carry an AR everytime you go and make sure they see you noting down their license plate number.
join a club and learn by helping older folks who can't climb a ladder or lift their 60 - 100 lb bee boxes anymore.
https://i.imgur.com/ZgAJLzD.jpg
And here they are being biochar bucket enjoyers
My swarm seems to be doing well, and they like their pissed on biochar and copper plates. Can say whether they care about the magnets I put on the hive but at least it’s not hurting. If these bad boys can survive the coming winter all on their own without me doing anything except blocking off the hive entrance from mice, they are gigachads and I’ll be excited. there was a mouse nest in it when they moved in, I only opened the hive out of curiosity one time and noticed it in the top box and pulled most of it out, but they have been cleaning metric tons of crap out of the hive so they have their work cut out for them.
https://files.catbox.moe/23rnrs.mov
I have similar I use as piss bucket outside my door and bees always visit.
The bees probably dont care too much, but having no possibility to manipulate anything inside the hive doesn't sound too convenient.
If you want to go cheap, just build your own top bar or warre hives. If you want to see whats going on, include an observation window.
you are going to get stung a lot in commercial production
the first five or ten stings of the season usually dont get a reaction
but eventually one of those stings will cause a major reaction
once you get over the hump it will be better
at the beginning of the season i deliberately sting myself to get over the hump
never eat bananas, smells just like the attack pheromone
its very heavy work, moving the hives during pollination, back brace helps
no gloves is better than gloves. youll get stung more, but youll also kill less bees
less bees killed, less attack pheromones, calmer yard
the less time you spend in the hive, the calmer it will be, but try to move slower than bee speed
take all your work clothes off before you go in the house or youll get beeswax all over your floor
what do you mean by legit? sure it exists but does it have all the magical healing properties it's said to have? probably not. plus a lot of manuka honey on the market is mixed with normal honey and only a fraction of it is actual manuka.
easy and cheap to build and you dont have to lift and stack boxes, everything is easy to access. works very well if you want a handful of hives.
if you want high production, a big number of hives and easy transport, langstroth is better.
you have to harvest by crushing and straining too, since the comb is to fragile for centrifuging, so have to harvest the wax every time too and cant give empty comb back to the bees to refill.
Hawaii is expensive, so you should be able to get a good price for your honey. Check local prices and substract taxes and profit margin of the shop. If you sell directly to the consumer, you'll get more, but it will be a lot of work moving 5digits worth of honey.
If you get 10$/kg wholesale, you've got to sell 1000kg for 10k$ of revenue.
If you harvest an average of 20kg per hive, thats 50 hives.
So if you aim for 100 hives, you should be able to hit your goal after considering all costs.
You can get additional income from wax and wax products, propolis (tincture) and pollen. Whole honeycomb can fetch very high prices too.
Building up to that many hives and building experience will of cause take some time, so it would be more of a hobby for 5 years or so. You should be able to pay for your equipment and build up a costumer base though.
Is beekeeping viable in suburbs or near industrial zones? I've read bees can travel as far as 5 miles, and I'm worried about getting bees only for them to make some pollutant and pesticide/herbicide filled honey.
Usually the most contamination with pesticides comes from agricultural areas. Farmers use more of it than anyone else. Urban honey often has much better test results, but it also depends what kind of neighbours you have. Industry might not be a big problem either, depending on what kind it is.
You wont be able to avoid contamination these days though, its just everywhere. Unless you get somewhere out innaforest with no farms or neighbours for miles or the ones that are there work 100% organic. If you use foundation, make your own from your own wax. A lot of pesticides are soluble in wax. Also helps to renew combs before they get too old. I wouldnt worry too much, your no normal supermarket food is probably worse, especially the honey.
I set up some used hives in my back yard and that’s it. I just had a wild swarm move into one of the hives, so that’s cool. I will literally do nothing from them except this. The copper makes sense to me, the magnets - eh, can’t hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCNBsi8HehY
Thx. I added a copper plate and the magnets. They don’t seem to mind it, at least.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard of other strange strategies to (possibly) help the bees?
Two years ago I had them coming to buckets of wet biochar all day every day. Was interesting, they appeared to be gathering something, and not just drinking water.
Thx. I added a copper plate and the magnets. They don’t seem to mind it, at least.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard of other strange strategies to (possibly) help the bees?
Two years ago I had them coming to buckets of wet biochar all day every day. Was interesting, they appeared to be gathering something, and not just drinking water.
No experience, but a friend of mine has some hives and uses the japanese Yakisugi method to treat the wood used for hive construction. It serves as a barrier against parasites.
Pretty cool book/audiobook on bees is 'Honeybee democracy'. Explains the behaviour and nesting/hive building patterns of the swarms, their ideal homes and how they communicate etc.
If you stand at 180 degrees to hive enterance, or even just 90 degrees with a calm hive, the bees will just let you chill and you can often get within 1/2 meters of the hive and observe for long times. Get used to doing this.
Keep calm when you open the hive - wear good gear, then just breath and move slowly, and you will have a great time.
Frantic movements/nervousness and fast breathing just amp up energy of the hive and make the experience worse.
>Pretty cool book/audiobook on bees is 'Honeybee democracy'. Explains the behaviour and nesting/hive building patterns of the swarms, their ideal homes and how they communicate etc.
this is a great book.
"Scientific beekeeping" is also a good website to look at if you need to deal with v. mites or other parasites.
But honestly biggest thing is talk to other local folks - find the local beekeeping group in person or online/discord, and share info.
Example: Where I am its really humid in the winter, so certain extra precations are suggested or you have dead outs in winter (I learned the hard way). I was able to talk to other local folks (a hobby beekeeper who's dayjob is highschool science teacher) who gave me great suggestions to work around this in our climate zone.
>getting bees
Theres a few ways.
1. You could catch a swarm. You need to be lucky to find one and then have equipment ready to capture it. A lot more likely if you are already keeping bees, since your more likely to find your own swarms than a random wild one and people might call a beekeeper, if they see a swarm.
2. Set a couple baithives up. Swarming bees will look for a new home, so if they find your baithive and like it, they will move in by themselves. This
Pretty cool book/audiobook on bees is 'Honeybee democracy'. Explains the behaviour and nesting/hive building patterns of the swarms, their ideal homes and how they communicate etc.
book is really good for learning about that process.
3. Getting a split from a local beekeeper. Very good option for making contacts and having someone experienced for helping you get started and troubleshooting.
4. Buying a package of bees online. You get a box full of bees and just pour them into a hive.
The three first options are better imo, because you'll get locally adapted bees. >forest
Depends. Probably not the best idea. You could build some kind of hive to screw to a tree, but theres always the danger of people or animals finding and destroying the hive. You'll also be around less often, so wont be able to react to issues very fast and you've got to carry in everything you need every time. Forests are also often not the most abundant with flowers, especially conifer forests. If there is any way to set it up at home or with family or friends, thats much better. If you dont have a garden, a balcony or rooftop can work.
Beekeeper of 3 years. In my peak season I extracted 900 lbs of honey.
Tips:
1. Learn to work bare handed adap. Once you get used to the bees and how they react to your actions you won't get stung.
2. Smokers are way overused. It's very easy for new beekeepers to over smoke their bees. Too much smoke will agitat bees and make them go into panic mode. I only used smoke reactively (not preventatively).
3. The current paradigm in the US for beekeeping is the following: maximize production at the detriment of bee survival and buy more bees in the spring. This is an unsustainable practice and it should be stopped. However, if you are in it for the money, it's difficult to compete if you practice good stewardship.
>What type of crops do you primarily service with your bees or do you have a static hive just for honey..?
I only run my hives for honey, never for pollination.
>Silly question but have you noticed if you eat certain foods your chance of getting stung go up?
Never heard of this before. No I have not noticed whether diet influences bee stings. Time of day and weather are the biggest factors influencing bee aggression.
>What type of crops do you primarily service with your bees or do you have a static hive just for honey..?
I only run my hives for honey, never for pollination.
>Silly question but have you noticed if you eat certain foods your chance of getting stung go up?
Never heard of this before. No I have not noticed whether diet influences bee stings. Time of day and weather are the biggest factors influencing bee aggression.
I was told that ripe bananas smell like the attack-pheromone, so better avoid...
>county inspector
Wut?
Meanwhile, my swarm that’s moved in is still there, and I won’t open the hive or do anything except see if they survive the coming Winter
Ohio has an apiary inspector for almost every county he stops by once a year to check on the health of the hives and make suggestions on treatments of necessary. You don't have to be inspected to sell honey but in order to sell bees you have to be inspected which is something I'd like to do small scale in the next few years.
Just bought my first two families of bees. They don't have much to gather this period, but the sunflower will be in full bloom next month.
It feels a bit overwhelming now and know I have a lot to learn, but I'm also enthusiastic about it. I hope I can keep my bees happy and healthy.
Good luck to all the beekeeping anons! This thread is good.
My dad got into need a couple of years ago. He works with a bee business, and also has a nests at home for fun.
He was telling me the other day how one of his nests got contaminated, so he killed the bees and left the box outside for the ants to eat, but then a new hive has moved in that’s more aggressive and now he can’t replace his gas bottle until they calm down.
My swarm seems to be doing well, and they like their pissed on biochar and copper plates. Can say whether they care about the magnets I put on the hive but at least it’s not hurting. If these bad boys can survive the coming winter all on their own without me doing anything except blocking off the hive entrance from mice, they are gigachads and I’ll be excited. there was a mouse nest in it when they moved in, I only opened the hive out of curiosity one time and noticed it in the top box and pulled most of it out, but they have been cleaning metric tons of crap out of the hive so they have their work cut out for them.
https://files.catbox.moe/23rnrs.mov
I set up some used hives in my back yard and that’s it. I just had a wild swarm move into one of the hives, so that’s cool. I will literally do nothing from them except this. The copper makes sense to me, the magnets - eh, can’t hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCNBsi8HehY
https://i.imgur.com/PmZpABm.jpg
Thx. I added a copper plate and the magnets. They don’t seem to mind it, at least.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard of other strange strategies to (possibly) help the bees?
Two years ago I had them coming to buckets of wet biochar all day every day. Was interesting, they appeared to be gathering something, and not just drinking water.
https://i.imgur.com/wYQlH6H.jpg
There appears to be a lot of variation in their abdomen coloration, seems like a good thing, high genetic diversity?
My swarm seems to be doing well, and they like their pissed on biochar and copper plates. Can say whether they care about the magnets I put on the hive but at least it’s not hurting. If these bad boys can survive the coming winter all on their own without me doing anything except blocking off the hive entrance from mice, they are gigachads and I’ll be excited. there was a mouse nest in it when they moved in, I only opened the hive out of curiosity one time and noticed it in the top box and pulled most of it out, but they have been cleaning metric tons of crap out of the hive so they have their work cut out for them.
https://files.catbox.moe/23rnrs.mov
They didn’t come the first season, but came pretty early this year. It’s a crap shoot on whether a swarm decides your home is good. If it’s a brand new hive, it helps to scent it with some honey, beeswax, apparently lemon grass oil is good. Do some reading on catching swarms. My hives were used so already smelled like bee stuff
You can also capture an active swarm and see if they settle.
https://i.imgur.com/t6gQqmp.jpg
Do my bees know that I love them, bros?
We have one of the oldest relationships in agriculture, so I think so.
https://i.imgur.com/UjUSDN5.png
join a club and learn by helping older folks who can't climb a ladder or lift their 60 - 100 lb bee boxes anymore.
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I have similar I use as piss bucket outside my door and bees always visit.
Well done anon.
>I'm becoming an apprentice to a beekeeper in the next few weeks
how did you find this position
Apply to your local association. Anon. I don't know about the states, but the UK has the BBA, and Canada has provincial bodies that govern. Email them, ask.
I own 8 hives of bees and I get stung all the time. I'm immune to the venom now. But they don't give a damn about my intentions
Sometimes my hives will africanize and become "killer bees" in the spring. They follow you for a half mile down the road just for bumping the hive.
It's a weird one, if you're a commercial operation you can tolerate some more aggression in hives. Since our hives are mainly for educational purposes, aggressive bee's get given away or ultimately we replace the Queen and try to normalise behaviour.
>if you're a commercial operation
Nah. I just like honey and wax and such. My extended family gets all their honey from me and that keeps me good in everyone's books because they are all mad at me for rejecting the ugly chicks they try to set me up with.
I've sold some but I don't care enough to go commercial.
Fair, I can't say I've ever had any issues with aggressive hives. Again if they get too aggressive, just supercede the queen. Also if your hives are close to each other, the drones can spread the aggressive genes to other hives, so you have to be on it.
It's nice being able to produce your own stuff, I really enjoy that aspect of beekeeping and of course spending time with the hives.
I am merely a novice that got lucky and had a swarm move in, but I haven’t been stung and I sit by it, piss in a bucket next to it, help them clean out the hive a bit.
The bees love anything that smells like them. Take a bee, crush it up, and rub it all over your body so that you smell like the bees, and they'll love you. Buzz, buzz!
No, PrepHole troll, this is not the way. I have picked up bees too tired from rain and cold and let them crawl on my, warm up, and clean themselves off then put them back on the hive entrance
The bees love anything that smells like them. Take a bee, crush it up, and rub it all over your body so that you smell like the bees, and they'll love you. Buzz, buzz!
The sole purpose of a drone is to inseminate the queen, they can't even feed themselves and have to be fed by workers. They just leech and don't do any work and can't even sting, so cannot even defend the hive.
A good way to identify the drone is their eyes, they're huge
They aren't useless. They perform a very normal function for the hive, but only for a brief period of time. They fly out in search of queens. A new queen will go on a mating flight, and tries to mate with drones from different colonies to get more genetic diversity into the population.
Once they have served that purpose, they are excluded from the hive as they are excess mouths to feed and serve no further purpose to the hive.
You don’t need a stinger to do something about pests like varroa mites, small hive beetles, or the moth things. The drones should definitely be doing more. I’m going to have a chat with my bees about this, and God is good
You know how when bees sting you, the stinger comes out? Well, the males don't have stingers. If they make it to the front of the orbiter pack chasing the queen during the mating orgy, they are awarded the privilege of a quick thrust and fast ejaculation in which their dick is blown off, pumping what sperm it has into the queen before falling out making room for the next wiener in the carousel. The drone spirals to the ground, dying with a smile on his face and one final thought: "doesn't matter, had sex".
The drones you see being kicked out by their sisters are wizards. They did not successfully mate with a queen. They blew their chance of passing on the hives genetics, and the workers have tired of their neet ways. They will starve to death on the doorstep, dying as virgins.
Hi anon. Congratulations on pursuing the apiarist arts.
Get good kit, and try and learn from an experience beekeeper. Join an association, education is important and seeing things is much easier to learn than just reading books alone.
Are you a small holder, or trying to make money from this? If it's just you trying to keep a few hives, then the costs should even themselves out, but you make money from pollination, not honey or wax. (more like spending money.) Orchards or farms are great places to have hive set ups, but also rooftops in cities. You can get funding from local councils since it preserves bio-diversity.
Bee's will take care of themselves, you really only need to check on them once a week, and make sure of a few things.
a) no signs of varoa mites, or wax moths. Treatments are different, varoa is easy to treat for and should be done regularly. Wax moths, you will need to destroy the frames in question.
b) The Queen is healthy and is laying eggs in the brooding combs, the pupae are healthy pearly white without deformities.
c) Is there any formation of play cups or queen cups. (more a spring time thing.)
Honey is a by product of the work the bees do, and so the healthier the hive, the more honey, you should always aim to leave them the vast majority of the honey they produce for over winter.
If you live in really cold climates, you should under no circumstances open up the colonies in winter, the bee's will keep themselves as warm as possible, they will survive if the honey stores are good and if they have good cover. (positioned near trees or some sort of wind break helps.)
When processing honey, make sure it's in a closed environment, honey smell to bee's is like crack to a crack addict. You can cut out the comb and add new frames, decap comb and add to a centrifuge. You will get some wax content in your honey adds a creamy consistency, it's cool the shits edible and good for you.
Single set honey, IE from a single hive will always have a more intense flavor than mixed honeys, from multiple hives. Forest honey's tend to be darker, and local flowers really do impart particular flavors. The shit you buy in stores, doesn't come close. You can flavor honey, by planting flowers for the bee's in convenient places.
Wax needs to be heated down and refined for wax bars, it will have particulate in it otherwise. The money in wax realistically is in candles, or additions to soaps, etc or once refined and cooled it can be given back to the bees.
If you have a colony collapse, it's unfortunate but these things do happen. Close the entrance, to prevent bee bandits. (they will steal each others shit.) and assess the cause. The honey still can be harvested, the wax refined and then the frames need to be burned and the interior of the box scorched with a torch and cleaned with a scraper before new frames are added and new bee's introduced.
Swarms are how bee's replicate. The hive is the actual expression of a single organism via many individualized parts. The Queen leaves the old colonies to establish a new colony, her daughter inherits the old and hence bee colonies propagate themselves.
Now the dangers of having a new swarmed hive. (You don't know the queen or her genetics if she is not from your stock.) Bee colonies are individualized and some are more placid, some are more aggressive. Africanised bee's are highly aggressive and to be honest, you are better off killing the queen and superceding the colony and breeding more gentle bees. (Her drones can likewise introduce aggression into your colonies.)
Likewise, she might not have strong genetics, be infertile, etc. In such cases the workers will supercede her themselves, using the viable eggs they have left for a new queen, and killing her. (sometimes successful, sometimes not.)
Getting bees! You have three choices.
Shook swarm propogation, swarms, and buying a queen/colony.
So shook swarm is allowing your queen to prepare to swarm by laying queen cups, and then removing the queen to a new hive. The worker bee's will follow, the queen will think it's new hive space, boom new colony. The queen cell will hatch, and if undisputed become new queen, meaning old colony survives under new management, or the two princesses fight to the death winner gets to be queen. She goes out, mates with drones from other colonies, boom 2 hives.
Swarms are the same, except the queen has left her old hive and hasn't found a new nest yet. You see this most in spring when normies shit themselves cause their tree get a ball of bee's. It's easy, you extract the ball put them in a basket lay out a white sheet and then shake them into a new hive space. Any workers still in the basket, lay it down on the white sheet, the workers will follow the queen and she will think she found the perfect new home, boom new colony.
3rd option is just buying a new colony from an established bee keeper.
A few things, talk to your bee's. I do. My bee's know me by the sound of my voice, by my smell, and they know I'm harmless. I always wear a bee hood when interacting, just to keep them off my face, but I only wear a bee suit when it's foreign hives. I've never been stung in my beekeeping work. Just don't stand in front of the entrance of the hive, use smoke liberally and learn how to do things like shaking, or using a bee brush effectively without knocking the hive.
It's also fun to put a small dollop of honey on your hand and let the bee's come and lap it up, fanning and dancing are also real treats to watch for.
Single set honey, IE from a single hive will always have a more intense flavor than mixed honeys, from multiple hives. Forest honey's tend to be darker, and local flowers really do impart particular flavors. The shit you buy in stores, doesn't come close. You can flavor honey, by planting flowers for the bee's in convenient places.
Wax needs to be heated down and refined for wax bars, it will have particulate in it otherwise. The money in wax realistically is in candles, or additions to soaps, etc or once refined and cooled it can be given back to the bees.
If you have a colony collapse, it's unfortunate but these things do happen. Close the entrance, to prevent bee bandits. (they will steal each others shit.) and assess the cause. The honey still can be harvested, the wax refined and then the frames need to be burned and the interior of the box scorched with a torch and cleaned with a scraper before new frames are added and new bee's introduced.
Swarms are how bee's replicate. The hive is the actual expression of a single organism via many individualized parts. The Queen leaves the old colonies to establish a new colony, her daughter inherits the old and hence bee colonies propagate themselves.
Now the dangers of having a new swarmed hive. (You don't know the queen or her genetics if she is not from your stock.) Bee colonies are individualized and some are more placid, some are more aggressive. Africanised bee's are highly aggressive and to be honest, you are better off killing the queen and superceding the colony and breeding more gentle bees. (Her drones can likewise introduce aggression into your colonies.)
Likewise, she might not have strong genetics, be infertile, etc. In such cases the workers will supercede her themselves, using the viable eggs they have left for a new queen, and killing her. (sometimes successful, sometimes not.)
Hi anon. Congratulations on pursuing the apiarist arts.
Get good kit, and try and learn from an experience beekeeper. Join an association, education is important and seeing things is much easier to learn than just reading books alone.
Are you a small holder, or trying to make money from this? If it's just you trying to keep a few hives, then the costs should even themselves out, but you make money from pollination, not honey or wax. (more like spending money.) Orchards or farms are great places to have hive set ups, but also rooftops in cities. You can get funding from local councils since it preserves bio-diversity.
Bee's will take care of themselves, you really only need to check on them once a week, and make sure of a few things.
a) no signs of varoa mites, or wax moths. Treatments are different, varoa is easy to treat for and should be done regularly. Wax moths, you will need to destroy the frames in question.
b) The Queen is healthy and is laying eggs in the brooding combs, the pupae are healthy pearly white without deformities.
c) Is there any formation of play cups or queen cups. (more a spring time thing.)
Honey is a by product of the work the bees do, and so the healthier the hive, the more honey, you should always aim to leave them the vast majority of the honey they produce for over winter.
If you live in really cold climates, you should under no circumstances open up the colonies in winter, the bee's will keep themselves as warm as possible, they will survive if the honey stores are good and if they have good cover. (positioned near trees or some sort of wind break helps.)
When processing honey, make sure it's in a closed environment, honey smell to bee's is like crack to a crack addict. You can cut out the comb and add new frames, decap comb and add to a centrifuge. You will get some wax content in your honey adds a creamy consistency, it's cool the shits edible and good for you.
Thanks for the screenshot anon, second time I've had a screenshot for shit I've said on PrepHole
Just seems like they could and should be doing a lot more
They're ensuring the continuation of the hives and future other hives. (all eggs have the potential to become queens, workers, or drones, depending on what the pupae are fed.)
> treatments
Nope, just not gunna do it. Keep collapsing your colonies lol
Varoa treatment isn't terrible, and it keeps the bee's healthy. We had to use it regularly because we have hives in close proximity to one another, not because of infestation.
I've only ever seen 2 colony collapses, neither related to varoa mites.
1st one, the guy took too much honey from his bee's and they froze to death as a result in winter.
2nd one, was a decision by the beekeeper I was training under to collapse the hive by gassing it. The queen was laying deformed eggs, unhealthy pupae and he chose to not supercede the colony in case it was due to environmental factors.
Took the honey supers. Then at 10pm went out, blocked the front of the hive, and poured petrol in and sealed it up for 48 hours. (I've heard of similar things done with dish soap, which in my opinion is safer and more hygenic.)
Burnt the hive later that day. Sad to see a colony go that way, but it is what it is.
Workers and queens grow from fertilized diploid eggs. Drones from unfertilized haploid eggs. Drones dont have a dad.
Workers can also lay eggs, but since they never mated, they can only lay drone eggs. They will do that if a hive has been queenless for a long time to raise a couple drones and have a chance to pass on the hives genetics.
>queenless hive
One thing I have seen workers do in tis situation, is to raise drone queens. They start feeding queen jelly (special food for queen larvae) to handful of regular young worker larvae. They will grow like queens, form queen cups (much more of those than you would get with true queens) but when they emerge, they will only lay drone eggs.
I guess logic behond is that hive queenless for so long is walking dead anyway. Suicide mission to give it one last attempt at spreading genes is taking one last shot while they still can do it
It wasn't related to the subject of bee's rather environmental stewardship and the difference between actual conservative stewardship and the leftist environmentalist greta/extinction nutjob types. I have rather strong views on real environmentalism vs the luddite version.
Beebros, did I frick up? I noticed several enclosed queen cups in my first hive last week, which was lucky considering I was planning on making a split, so I transferred the frames with cups on them to a new hive, and so far both hives seem lively, but I noticed that I had missed at least one cup that was left in the old hive, which had hatched. Is there a chance that the old queen may have been killed by now?
If a queen hatched, the old one might have swarmed or one killed the other.
Look for eggs, if you got eggs, you're fine. If you dont find a queen or eggs, youve got to give them a new queen or some eggs so they can make a new one.
Hard to say without seeing on the ground, if you've split the hives successfully, did you transfer your old queen to the new hive? Or did you transfer the cups?
If the cup has hatched, it might be a case that your old queen has been superceded, this does happen sometimes. Check and make sure you have a queen in that hive. (this is why I mark queens.) If so, and the queen cup is no more, don't worry about it. Monitor and make sure your queen is laying brood, but aside from that it should be situation normal.
>Eastern Kentucky >What should I look out for?
Republican politicians who are telling you the liberals want to make you communist while simultaneously taking the most amount of federal handouts by any state.
I'm giving you (you) because I like your moxy, sir, and I actually learned some shit from you so.. arigato >This in no way means I won't possibly troll you in another thread
Aspiring beekeeper here, how far will the bees go away from their hive to look for flowers and stuff? Where I want to put a hive we've got a couple flowers but the most flowers we've got are about 40 feet away. Will the beebros make it over there and enjoy our garden or should I try and force the hive to be closer to it
oh I didn't know, thank you beefrens. Is it a deal breaker if I don't have a spot that faces the sun to put my hive? I've got a spot on my house that blocks the morning sun but would really get the sunset. I don't really have a super ideal place that gets sun 24/7
No, they fly out one day to die in peace, not making trouble for the cleaners.
Dead Bees are found in the hive only in winter, otherwise it's a bad signal.
Didasia Dimunata are the best recorded solitary bee's for this kind of behavior.
Pulling supers this week should have a decent haul. Pulled 2 of them earlier in the year and averaged 30lbs of honey per and I'm guessing the 7 I have still to pull will yield more than that
That's a nice haul anon well done.
https://i.imgur.com/rNFM7Xz.jpg
Yesterday I got stung by my bees for the first time. It was my mistake though, and I feel sad that a bee died out of my negligence. How should I repent?
Build a shrine to the fallen bee, pray and burn incense to it every day, if anyone asks you why, say you are recent convert, but now a true bee-liever.
doesn't this happen seasonally towards the end of summer?
End of summer, early autumn. The bee's might go a bit early if they think the weather is going to be poor.
I'm a bit sad today anons, my local educational apiary where I volunteer is shutting down it's services to the public, and their hives are going to be moved off site to another group. Sad days.
Pulling supers this week should have a decent haul. Pulled 2 of them earlier in the year and averaged 30lbs of honey per and I'm guessing the 7 I have still to pull will yield more than that
Yesterday I got stung by my bees for the first time. It was my mistake though, and I feel sad that a bee died out of my negligence. How should I repent?
Harvested 4 medium boxes from 3 of my hives yesterday and ended up with around 120lbs of mostly clover honey. Feels good man.
Started the year with one hive climbed to 11 with splits and swarm catches. So long as winter goes well I should have a really strong harvest of honey this time next year
I’m in Northern Michigan and caught my first swarm this year, they had a lot of work cut out for them cleaning out the old used hive they set up. I’m not opening it or harvesting honey, but they seem to be doing really well on cleaning it out and getting the population numbers up, crossing my fingers they survive the Winter. First time “beekeeper”.
It’s just one hive, but I was planning on not doing anything for Winter, see if they survive without human intervention. Only thing I was going to do is put a block of wood in front of the opening with a tiny outlet for poop flights…. I want bees that take care of themselves. I added that copper plate and wire because I read once about a beekeeper that did that and it helped with disease/varroa control. Whether it helps or not I don’t know, but they seem to like it and prefer walking over the copper to the wood side
You are in northern Mich. If you do not add appropriate insulation to the hive, they'll freeze to death over the winter.
This wouldn't be a big project at all, just need to do it else your bees will freeze.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I’ll do some more reading but I’ve seen some videos of Michael Palmer in Vermont, which is similar climate maybe even gets colder than me, and doesn’t seem to insulate. I’ve read a lot of different opinions but the Warre guy thought insulating was a bad idea too. I’ll do some more reading and watching, but I lean towards them getting acclimated to surviving without insulation. Here’s a video of bees making cleansing flights on a winter warm up day, no insulation and not even protection from the wind, mine are protected from the prevailing winds at least https://youtu.be/jnIMF1Isr-8
9 months ago
Anonymous
You are in northern Mich. If you do not add appropriate insulation to the hive, they'll freeze to death over the winter.
This wouldn't be a big project at all, just need to do it else your bees will freeze.
A lot of research has found that bees seem to use less stores during winter with less (but not poorly implemented!) insulation, although I could imagine that getting the balance between optimal and dead might be hard to get right. Here's a blog post by one of the most respected Finnish beekeepers on wintering: https://naturebees.wordpress.com/2022/11/18/bees-love-cold-in-winter/
9 months ago
Anonymous
Nice, thanks for link. I think we should turn this thread into a general. I really think the copper plate/wire is helping my bees, they seem to love it. If we had a general I could update in Spring if they survive the Winter without doing anything
9 months ago
Anonymous
I'll commit now to making a new thread after this one. It shall be in the general format.
I’ll do some more reading but I’ve seen some videos of Michael Palmer in Vermont, which is similar climate maybe even gets colder than me, and doesn’t seem to insulate. I’ve read a lot of different opinions but the Warre guy thought insulating was a bad idea too. I’ll do some more reading and watching, but I lean towards them getting acclimated to surviving without insulation. Here’s a video of bees making cleansing flights on a winter warm up day, no insulation and not even protection from the wind, mine are protected from the prevailing winds at least https://youtu.be/jnIMF1Isr-8
[...]
A lot of research has found that bees seem to use less stores during winter with less (but not poorly implemented!) insulation, although I could imagine that getting the balance between optimal and dead might be hard to get right. Here's a blog post by one of the most respected Finnish beekeepers on wintering: https://naturebees.wordpress.com/2022/11/18/bees-love-cold-in-winter/
What's the quote? Talk to 3 beekeepers and get 5 opinions.
I'll quote a Frederick Dunn video on winterizing (don't recall which one, he has many) on his process. He's in Pennsylvania. He uses limited materials for winterization, only putting a thermal cover on top, just under the roof. His hives do not have a top entrance for thermal and other reasons. That's largely the extent of his process, outside of clearing the hive's main entrance whenever the snow gets too deep. He puts the normal amount of emergency winter food just below the thermal cover.
His other best practice, which he himself admits is unusual, is that he'll keep something like 100 pounds of honey in the hive. He's said that other PA local beekeepers are fine with 25 pounds of honey, he's just very conservative and he's not into bees for the honey, so no skin off his nose. I should note that come spring, it seems his hives are huge right out of the gate, presumably because the large food stores he keeps for the bees allow for higher survival rates.
Northern Mich is substantially colder and snowier than much of PA. Keep this in mind as you proceed.
It was for me. I managed to get around 150lbs of honey this year and that was off of 4 hives.
I have 10 hives right now but the majority of them I got a bit late in the year so didn't expect to get honey off of them (late swarms and nucs).
Next year is going to be very good hopefully even if I have a few losses this year. Which I shouldn't I've treated and started feeding and I'll give all the hives an oxalic acid treatment probably once a month for the next two months before they're closed completely for winter.
So far this year I've learned. > wild bees are hit or miss I've got some that are huge producers and gentle some that are lazy pricks (those ones got requeened) > Russians are not as aggressive as claimed > carniolians have close to the same temperament of Russians > saskatraz bees are gental as frick but mine are not nearly as productive as expected > peppermints in the hive do help with beetles
Hopefully theymol treatments work as well as formic pro but it was too damn hot here for me to use formic pro when I wanted to treat.
Exactly. I usually sell locally at $10 for a 12oz jar of honey. I'll probably start selling 1 1/2lb jars for $15 next year in order to sell it easier. I also have about 15lbs of wax which I'm going to use to make hand cream and chapstick for sale also.
Then there is the matter of bees themselves. A package is usually $130-200 and nucs usually average $200. So within the next few years I'd like to start selling bees as well.
If you're really interested in making money you can do pollination contracts with local orchards. If you're feeling risky you might be able to get on with a group of beekeepers to send a number of hives out west on trucks for the big pollination contracts. Downside to that is you have to have a lot of hives, there's lots of paperwork and your hives may come back with pests or other issues.
I also make mead so that takes a good amount of honey per batch.
Thanks for the breakdown anon. That's awesome.
Some additional questions: where do you sell? Farmers markets, to businesses, or wholesale?
I have heard that orchards are switching over to carpenter bees, which do not produce honey but are hundreds of times more efficient than honeybees. Is this true? Or is there a honeybee niche?
How do you like making mead? I have heard mead is tasty but the business model is garbage due to the honey expenditure. Supposedly tasty, though.
8 months ago
Anonymous
I sell right now primarily through word of mouth or through family and friends.
I'm not sure about the carpenter bees at orchards I haven't started on pollination yet
I really like making mead and its a big part of the reason I now have bees. Usually it takes around 14-20lbs of honey per 5 gallons but with the price of bees and equipment it's cheaper just to buy honey if you're only making a batch of two a year. Have a mango and habanero mead going right now and I'm about to do just a standard sweet mead using this falls honey.
8 months ago
Anonymous
> mead
It's really unfortunate the economics for mead that rough. I'd love to drink much mead myself but, because there is a such a high percentage of counterfeit honey in the world, I'd only want to drink what I have made using my own honey. >friends and family honey sales
That's a good call. When I get into apiary, I shall do likewise.
Do you know the theoretical limitation on the number of bees you could keep sustainably while running an artisanal operation? I have heard of small farmers with 15-20 hives but have not heard of many who have more. I'd imagine that after you have too many bees and hives, your bees are not able to find food given their limited travel distance abilities.
8 months ago
Anonymous
How do I make good mead? Also I have ginger beer plant and kefir grains.
8 months ago
Anonymous
It varies a lot. Depending on the amount of pollen available within flight distance of your hives.
8 months ago
Anonymous
What's the math? Something like 200,000 flowers to a pound of honey?
While any 1 tree is going to have thousands of flowers, I still can't comprehend how some farmers manage 20 hives and their bees only have a 5 km range.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Density of polinating flowers anon. If you think of plants that produce a multitude of flowers in a smaller space then you can essentially stack the odds in the favour of your bee's. Lilac, lavender, etc all take up a small amount of space, but produce a significant amount of nectar.
8 months ago
Anonymous
> flower density
Of course. Didn't cross my mind. That would make the most sense.
Thank you anon.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Sunflowers. Those big heads are actually many flowers together
Regular people get a stronger/serious allergy to bee stings if they stop getting stung. Don't get stung or keep getting stung until you're immune. But once you're immune and you quit you'll get a serious life threatening allergy. At least according to fudlore.
One of my two hives are nearly empty. I think I might know why...
Hadn't had a chance to check on it for a month.
The other hive is just starting to fill the box I put on top.
With this constant rain they probably had a hard time foraging.
But the local beekeeper don't think there with be a derth this year so wel see why the rest of the season goes.
Any of you have experience with pol-line VSH resistant queens? I got 2 such nucs from Mann Lake this year and they're fricking c**ts. Guard bees are on me the second I open the hive and once I go into the bottom deep they're dive bombing and swarming me. I have a full suit so I just ignore it, but man it's just not enjoyable. I had Carniolans before and I didn't even need to wear protection with them (rip). They're not Africanized as far as I can tell because they aren't aggressive unless I actually open the hive. I can even mow around them without them attacking me. Also, the hives are crowded af. Even at the height of day when all the foragers should be out, I can't remove even an outermost frames from the deep without bees spilling out onto the outside of the hive. These are first year hives so I shouldn't have to split them. It's so strange.
They produce like motherfrickers though. I'm getting honey from each hive this year.
>Any of you have experience with pol-line VSH resistant queens?
I tried saskatraz bees out for a few years. They do better with mites. But I've gotten better at treating hives so I've lost interest in them.
You might hit them with smoke first. Smoke make even my africanized bees mellow out. I know it's falling out of vogue. But I don't work without smoke anymore
Any opinions on this flowhive stuff? what is the catch? Id say the high ptice but I think some chink already made a bootleg decent copy for far less and you can PrepHole the wooden exterior.
I think this is more for the guy who just wants some honey for himself and not for selling, like me
An unnecessary gimmick made the inventor rich. That's about it. Extracting honey is a minuscule part of the job and to be quite honest that's the fun part. Flowhive™ is just a toy for the noob. On the other hand something like pic related is quite hand when shaking bees off the frame especially when you're dealing with tens of hives in a day.
Tl;dr: if you don't want to be bothered by honeycomb processing / your time is more valuable than other people, FHs are an excellent "point-and-shoot" solution that you pay for at higher initial cost. This doesn't mean you can be lazy in bee husbandry, but rather that the FH makes honey extraction easier.
Hello bee anons. I know nothing about bees, but I've found a wild beehive in a building. If I put up my own hive next door, is there a good chance that they'll move into it next spring? Or should I bait my box somehow to convince them to pick me over some random hollow tree?
Also, is there any use for the existing hive other than waiting for it to populate my hives? Thanks.
The bees won’t leave their hive, but if they swarm (split), there’s a chance the swarm will chose your hive. If you want to capture and move the existing hive, the best way to do that I can think of is to relocate their existing hive, plunk it down into an empty box of your hive
They'll swarm only once after winter, right? Which means I have to get the swarm on the first try or wait another year. Will swarm lure do the trick, or would it be safer to try and net the swarm by hand when it splits?
The existing hive is behind some metal siding, so even if I'm courageous enough, I don't think I can capture them without taking apart both the building and the honeycomb.
Look's like you will have to wait unless, you want to get in there anon. Bee's generally do swarm in Spring as part of their colony reproductive cycle.
about to requeen my broodless colony tomorrow (swarmed and new queen didn't come back) any advice?
Make sure she is secure in the Queen cage, general wisdom as I recall is to leave her in there for at least a week until the become accustomed to the new smell of her pheromones and assume she superceded the old Queen.
Just make sure they're feeding her, and you should be good to go.
If you're in the US or northern hemisphere - then its great. If you are an african beekeeper, its the worst thing. Our bees make a lot more propolis to aid heat regulation, so the hive gets gunky. Also, you'll have to extract the honey at night, since our bees get aggressive the moment they get a whiff of open honey. I always wanted one of these, but with my species it's just a bad idea. I envy anyone whose able to use those
Seems like you'd be fine to do it now. Queens are cheap right now and you'll still get a solid brood cycle before it gets too cold and she shuts down for the year. Plus you'll have a young queen for spring.
i would love to try it out, my father used to have a couple dozen hives and got some income out of it for several decades. so i even have some leftover material that i could start with and experiment.
but i have no land, i live in a (smallish) city. do i have to rent or buy land? i'm not sure it would be worth it, properties are quite expensive around here
Gonna get bees within the next year. I just want a few (3-4 max) hives. I read this guy's book and he says that if you use this hive and don't frick with the bees if you don't have to, then they will be very resistant to mites and take care of themselves.
Has anyone had experience with this? Location would be southwest Idaho, whereas I think he lives in like western russia or some shit.
https://lazutinhives.com/
Not familiar with these hives. Keep in mind that bees with a sufficiently insulated hive and enough food can often keep themselves in the winter. Bees ball up and vibrate to generate heat.
See post here :
I'll commit now to making a new thread after this one. It shall be in the general format.
[...]
[...]
What's the quote? Talk to 3 beekeepers and get 5 opinions.
I'll quote a Frederick Dunn video on winterizing (don't recall which one, he has many) on his process. He's in Pennsylvania. He uses limited materials for winterization, only putting a thermal cover on top, just under the roof. His hives do not have a top entrance for thermal and other reasons. That's largely the extent of his process, outside of clearing the hive's main entrance whenever the snow gets too deep. He puts the normal amount of emergency winter food just below the thermal cover.
His other best practice, which he himself admits is unusual, is that he'll keep something like 100 pounds of honey in the hive. He's said that other PA local beekeepers are fine with 25 pounds of honey, he's just very conservative and he's not into bees for the honey, so no skin off his nose. I should note that come spring, it seems his hives are huge right out of the gate, presumably because the large food stores he keeps for the bees allow for higher survival rates.
Northern Mich is substantially colder and snowier than much of PA. Keep this in mind as you proceed.
There are also 25 other uses of the word "winter" in this thread so good advice abounds
The point was less about winter and more about not having to apply any varroa treatment (since the hive is resilient and not stressed due to hive management and hive structure)
Build your own warré hives and read his book bro
Thank you! I will absolutely.
Its funny this reads very similarly to lazutin. Basically some guy fed up with the industrial style of beekeeping and just wanting something easy on himself and easy on the bees, at the cost of production.
I'm not sophisticated enough in this area to opine. I will say that some researchers have noted a likely slow natural selection in American bees resisting such mites.
I got 2 VSH Pol-line hives this year. I didn't have to do any treatments and they produced quite a bit. They are c**ts though and working the hives isn't fun.
8 months ago
Anonymous
How c**ts?
8 months ago
Anonymous
They're very aggressive during inspections.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Not surprised that bees who are aggro / neurotic against mites also act similarly to humans. Smoke work?
enjoy lifting heavy boxes all day
enjoy dealing with aggressive bees all day
enjoy getting stung every week
enjoy having bees fly in your food while your on lunch break
enjoy trying not to kill the queen as you swap them around.
thats a shit job anon.
i was a beekeeper and quit since i was getting paid hourly.
I got a gallon+ of honey out of four frames last week. Not bad for almost no attention to the thing all summer.
Plus none stop rain. Over smoked and added a little flavor to the stuff but it's still tasty.
> thinkg about getting bees as well > do my research > turns out that my local bees are stingless and their honey is top tier. > always tought those were small wasps
what a moron, theres no excuse now. the only thing that worries me is farmers go crazy with the insecticides and may kill them.
Not a beekeeper but like bees. Last thing I read was on beekeeping being wrong, morally, philosophically and scientifically. Although there is still a way to have bees.
TLDR: The view that intensive farming is harming bees, spreading/encouraging disease, making bee population/environment weaker. They prefer to house wild swarms, be non invasive and take only excess from hives.
https://archive.is/6pm9l
FWIW anon, apparently the wild European honeybee no longer exists in continental Europe . In the way that your argument makes sense in a world with both wild and tamed populations, now bees are fully being integrated as a dependent part of human civilization (in Europe, anyway) and will function as our beneficients going forward.
I still see wild bees here.
Big Beekeeping is a threat to bees, and their industrialized hives are proven vectors for disease and wild colony wipeouts.
If this thread was honest with itself it would recognize that majority of beekeepers care about making yields, making money, not disease elimination, not the animals they claim to care for, not the environment.
I appreciate the sentiment anon but the domestication of cattle, chickens into the human ecosystem is a fact and, for better or worse, both species will continue under human sovereignty.
Maybe the AI robots will do the same to us one day, as is their right under Melian rules
hate that way of thinking.same as pollution, the real threats are big multinational businesses, instead of the 20 anons from PrepHole. but of course you are b***hing here.
Most real honey is produced artisanally. Much "honey" found on store shelves today are synthetic Chinese sugar products, quite literally counterfeit honey.
What anon has labelled as Big Beekeeping is the industrial complex behind bee keeping. IE crop pollination/Honey stores.
We currently cannot produce enough honey to meet global demands, and therefore the Chinese in their usual fashion have found ways to undercut the market by introducing sugar water which is made into honey, there is no nectar connection and therefore isn't real honey.
Most of the stuff found in stores is real honey depending on the brand, but even then it is mixed. The intensity of flavor variables from single set honeys are amazing and something most people who do not buy from small hives will ever get to experience. I had one year where lemon balm was abundant and it imparted this amazing lime flavor in the honey that year. Heather honey and Manuka are prized for the same reason, which is why single set is so much more expensive.
>Most of the stuff found in stores is real honey depending on the brand
In the United States, Europe, Japan: this may be true. Go to LATAM and the developing world and counterfeit honey is the rule, not the exception. Even in the USA, walk into any dollar store (shopped at by predominantly poor people, of which America has many) and it's all Chinese fake honey.
The anon screeding about Big Beekeeping and how humans shouldn't enslave bees is a tree-hugging hippie who has quite literally lost his mind. He's trying to ban a natural good because of his weird ideology while the market is being flooded with a substitute that's literal Chinese poison.
If anything, the Western world needs more urban, suburban, and rural honey cultivation in artisan fashion in order to produce real honey and generate more bees, which are essential to natural environments (and have had a bad 20 years due to pesticides).
7 months ago
Anonymous
No I agree anon. If anything we need to encourage more local cultivation. That's also why I no longer buy store honey, I will get it from an individual apiary or association.
You can keep bee's and it's not a moral issue. It just depends on your thinking.
If you are keeping bee's principally as a business, then it could be seen as exploitation, and the vast majority of money in beekeeping is moving the bee's to use for pollination of fruits. This is bad for the bee's, but it's done on an industrial scale.
Where as traditionally, an orchard would have pigs, and bee's and chickens, and each would perform their vital part in the beneficial chain.
Chickens would control other pests, bee's would pollinate and produce honey, pigs would take care of waste products, and all would play their part in the health of the orchard as a greater biome organism.
That said from a personal position, I keep my bee's for my own enjoyment. Honey is never a goal, but it is a benefit as part of our relationship. I get excess honey, wax, propolis, and pollen. They get protection, food guarantees, additional maintenance in terms of mite control, colony health, and beneficial planting to help them gain nectar.
We have a symbiotic relationship, and in an odd way I'm essentially just another worker for the hive just with different responsibilities to the hive than the queen, the drone, and the other worker bees.
https://i.imgur.com/wm9S6wF.jpg
An unnecessary gimmick made the inventor rich. That's about it. Extracting honey is a minuscule part of the job and to be quite honest that's the fun part. Flowhive™ is just a toy for the noob. On the other hand something like pic related is quite hand when shaking bees off the frame especially when you're dealing with tens of hives in a day.
From what I've seen it's just a method for extracting honey directly without dealing with other things like propolis or wax collection. I prefer a more holistic approach, and it's good to occasionally exchange combs for hive health, but to each there own.
https://i.imgur.com/Ie5yLoi.jpg
> thinkg about getting bees as well > do my research > turns out that my local bees are stingless and their honey is top tier. > always tought those were small wasps
what a moron, theres no excuse now. the only thing that worries me is farmers go crazy with the insecticides and may kill them.
There is a lot of diversity in bee's and solitary wasps, each has it's own place in the chain. Try and keep your hives in places that are far away from large crops.
I still see wild bees here.
Big Beekeeping is a threat to bees, and their industrialized hives are proven vectors for disease and wild colony wipeouts.
If this thread was honest with itself it would recognize that majority of beekeepers care about making yields, making money, not disease elimination, not the animals they claim to care for, not the environment.
I've got friends who set up hives and don't extract anything, the bee's are simply there for their own enjoyment. I know someone who has a visual hive in their house window, not everything is about exploitation anon.
thanks for the info. i looked for a hive online local seller (pic rel) and im a cheap frick, it worths something like $90 so im going to PrepHole and see if i can get bees to swarm on in. ive learn a lot from this threads so i'll scorch and put honey on the wood, im just afraid that it gets takeover from small wasps or bees that i dont care about.
>if you're a commercial operation
Nah. I just like honey and wax and such. My extended family gets all their honey from me and that keeps me good in everyone's books because they are all mad at me for rejecting the ugly chicks they try to set me up with.
I've sold some but I don't care enough to go commercial.
> get free honey from anon > repay him with ugly b***hes
very very disrespectful
If you're in the US or northern hemisphere - then its great. If you are an african beekeeper, its the worst thing. Our bees make a lot more propolis to aid heat regulation, so the hive gets gunky. Also, you'll have to extract the honey at night, since our bees get aggressive the moment they get a whiff of open honey. I always wanted one of these, but with my species it's just a bad idea. I envy anyone whose able to use those
damn african beekeeping sounds like hard mode. any stories?
Hey beebros, what's the best go-to bee hive to get? I'm new and want to get into beekeeping and trying to compile an equipment list. I really don't want to get memed into some dorky starter bee hive that locks me out of some theoretical "higher tier" beekeeping later on when I've cut my teeth. I've had that happen before in other hobbies and I'd rather just learn every right from the get go instead of getting some forced training wheels thing. I wanna take care of my beebros as best as possible
Im not a bee keeper but am studying the subject as id like to be inna future....That being said i know Facebook is gay but it can also be a great resource...i found a bee keeping group thats local to my area and i just read people's posts...the community is very responsive and helpful and you can pick up alot of practical know how from just lurking 🙂
I am keeping track of nothing with the wild swarm that moved into my hive. I sometimes use the copper rod, posted elsewhere in this thread, to sweep out some debris for them. Will update the next thread in the spring as to whether they survive with almost zero interventions or molestations besides weird ones not on beekeepers scope
I understand the core idea with the tube and such to let them outside, but do you ever interact with the boxes? I cant seem to picture a way to access them without getting bees all over.
Just want to point out for my zone 5 bros that borage continues to flower and I see honeybees visiting it. Seems like a nice late season food source for them. Earlier in the year I don’t see them on it, they probably have better things to do. It’s mostly the bumbles.
I've had bees since 2017. Currently have five hives in my backyard. I'm a pretty shitty bee-haver, but I can share my experience.
What are you looking for? Information about having bees? Practical bee handling advice? General info about bees?
Where are you located? Beekeeping is pretty locally oriented.
I'm in Alabama. I'm reading a book called Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping atm. I want just general advice about upkeep, really.
I'm in Arkansas, so not too far from you.
The best beekeeping book is Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston. It's a great resource and reference.
Go ahead and get a bee suit. The Tyvec coveralls are cheap, but hotter than balls (but they are stingproof).
I think I use this one :
https://guardianbeeapparel.com/shop/vented-jacket-pro-fit-access-veil/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwmN2iBhCrARIsAG_G2i7-QHrzdjb0U3DBUushDBDPG1oGD_2DnjT27TncpwdwkKkdrbo6VugaAnAfEALw_wcB
In Southern summers, the ventilation makes a huge difference. When working bees I wear the bee jacket, goatskin gloves (not needed, but I like them for aggressive/cranky bees), sturdy duck pants (Carhartt or Dickies) and rubber boots with the pant legs tucked in. I've worked them in cheaper shoes and gotten stung through them and I'm wary of having bees climb up my pants legs.
In Alabama, you'll have to worry about small have beetles. They're generally not an issue in strong hives, but nucleus colonies and splits as well as small hives can be overwhelmed quickly. Screened bottom boards with oil traps are pretty common in my area. Swiffer pads and sturdy paper towels can trap some beetles, but I'm not sure how truly effective they are. Small hive beetles (SHB) larvae defecate in honey and it ferments and the bees have a hard time cleaning a big infestation up and can abscond, leaving you slimed out gross frames.
Varroa mites are the biggest threat to honeybees though. Management varies, but my mentor and beek friends use oxalic acid vaporization to control them. It's expensive to get started (vaporizer, deep cycle battery) but oxalic acid is cheap and pretty safe.
Getting a mentor or joining a club is a tremendous asset, so good job on the apprenticeship.
My mentor said that he's making a small fortune from beekeeping. He just started with a big fortune. It's an expensive hobby, but your own honey is delicious and seeing the bees coming in and out is an interesting and peaceful experience.
I'll hang around and talk about bees for a while. I've got the kids today, so I'll be in and out.
One lesson that I refuse to learn (because I'm an inattentive dumbass) is bears. Bears love honey and brood.
If you have bears, get an electric fence. You're risking your money and hard work if you don't.
There is a break point for how many bees you need (and in what region) for keeping to be profitable. You need A LOT of bees for it to be profitable.
...however, a cheap way to make money on bees is to contract with orchards to maintain a mason bee population. Why more people don't do this is kind of amazing considering how cheap and easy mason bees are to propagate and how much better they are at pollinating orchards than honey bees.
https://rentmasonbees.com/
Forgot the site. Mason bees are insanely better pollinators than honey bees.
Oh yeah, the money's in pollination, not honey. I've never heard of migratory mason bees, that sounds interesting.
Most of the people in my circle raise bees for the fun of it, maybe sell a little honey on the side. It's hard to compete with the big migratory operations out west.
I have bees because I like the honey and self sufficiency. I just think they're neat.
They aren't migratory. You build nests for the client and re-seed them every year. In the off-season you propagate the next years bees.
>electric fence
Electric fencing has made it a lot easier to keep livestock or protect crops and animals, before we had only old wood posts and barbed wire, but there is nothing like an old long wooden fence as well.
Chad bear cucking the virgin bee slave owner out of his precious honey farm, through supremely based honey piracy.
>bee-haver
are you pronouncing this like behave or be have? im just curious
He should have said bee-hiver
Or if his bees get pollen from weed plants
bee-highver
>Any tips?
Don’t wear bright colours, wear khaki/grey
My first day I wore dark navy blue daks and they all flocked to em
Bees have always flocked to me because I have red hair. I'll probably end up wearing the suit or at least the headpiece to cover my hair too.
We used hoodie style tops, with the face opening covered with mesh, worked well
The old bloke who’d done it all his life would just wear a flanny, no veil at all, but he was a hard c**t
Get your CDL.
The contract keepers I know use a 50 foot flat bed to service customers. You also need to make a friend with a small time orchard/flower grower that lets you park your bees there when not working for a client.
The bees need a home base that will feed them when not deployed to a work site.
They're gonna tell you everything they know so idk you're asking us.
All I know is Bee keepers children allways have an allergy to Bee's
>us
don't assume your ignorance applies to other people.
>all i know is something useless
and yet you posted anyways.. why are reddlters like this.
I've worked for a beekeeper for several years lol, you're going to work as a beekeeper, may aswell just listen to them for starters.
Ask them if they're kids are allergic to bees, do it.
I don't think I am who you clearly think I am.
I listen to entomologists that I personally know and commercial bee owners, who I also know.
If you have to look up what an entomologist is you probably shouldn't give bee advice.
>entomologist
I know what that is its someone who study's giant tree cryptids right?
No its the study of entombed things.
>anon you’re wrong, I talk to beekeepers. Your years of hands on experience means nothing compared to my conversations.
>All I know is Bee keepers children allways have an allergy to Bee's
Well that’s pure bullshit, the guys I worked for were sixth generation bee keepers, none of them allergic
I'd bet it has more to do with pesticides than bees
>I clicked on a thread about something I know nothing about, and its impossible for anyone to know more than me
you need to be 18 or older to post here, moron
I just finished painting two langstroth hives yesterday. Getting my nucs this week. First year doing it. Been guerilla gardening clover, bachelor buttons around the neighborhood.
If managing these doesn't push over my already limited time and they seem to be feeding well I'll probably get more.
I maine
>Guerilla gardening clover for your bees
based as frick
Isn't this illegal?
only if you get caught
Checked my hives today. For some reason my split didn't produce a queen and one of my swarm catches has also went queen less. So I just had to overnight order 2 queens so there goes $120 bucks. Had a third hive that seems queen less as well but has a good population so I dropped in a frame of capped brood and half a frame of eggs from a strong colony.
Advice for new people is to realize you're going to spend more than you expect too on bee shit.
I have 2 hives of bees and i have only been stung once. I know this sounds odd but i believe bees understand intentions. If you approach the bees with intensions of hurting them they will hurt you, but if you approach them with friendly vibes they will chill with you. This is just what I've noticed myself.
I think they can literally smell it my dude.
I own 8 hives of bees and I get stung all the time. I'm immune to the venom now. But they don't give a damn about my intentions
Sometimes my hives will africanize and become "killer bees" in the spring. They follow you for a half mile down the road just for bumping the hive.
Bust your ass and learn as much as you can, enjoy the success of your hard work and knowledge, as well as the great outdoors. Bees can be pretty tricky honestly and difficult for a number of farms to do better than break even, or make a solid income.
Temporary spot. But it'll do for the summer.
Advice for someone looking to break into the hobby but rents an apartment? I was thinking of reaching out to clubs near me or a college campus that has a few hives, or asking if I could have one at a community garden, but the last time I did that I was just complete ignored.
Just show up and start doing it. No one is in charge of community gardens and if you're not taking up plot space no one should care. If someone b***hes about bee allergies tell them they shouldn't be gardening.
This OP. Nature is for all and beekeeping is based. If some limp wristed homosexual gets mad just open carry an AR everytime you go and make sure they see you noting down their license plate number.
>”Nature”
>Referring to livestock animals
join a club and learn by helping older folks who can't climb a ladder or lift their 60 - 100 lb bee boxes anymore.
I have similar I use as piss bucket outside my door and bees always visit.
is this just a meme, or has anyone tried this?
The bees probably dont care too much, but having no possibility to manipulate anything inside the hive doesn't sound too convenient.
If you want to go cheap, just build your own top bar or warre hives. If you want to see whats going on, include an observation window.
you are going to get stung a lot in commercial production
the first five or ten stings of the season usually dont get a reaction
but eventually one of those stings will cause a major reaction
once you get over the hump it will be better
at the beginning of the season i deliberately sting myself to get over the hump
never eat bananas, smells just like the attack pheromone
its very heavy work, moving the hives during pollination, back brace helps
no gloves is better than gloves. youll get stung more, but youll also kill less bees
less bees killed, less attack pheromones, calmer yard
the less time you spend in the hive, the calmer it will be, but try to move slower than bee speed
take all your work clothes off before you go in the house or youll get beeswax all over your floor
beekeeping for over a year now; have 5 hives, 0 stings so far. Just get good gear.
Wow
Why didn't anyone tell my how much stings fricking hurt. Mother frickers I was trying to help you.
I dont find the stings that painfull, but the itching after is unbearable at least for me. like a mosquito bite on steroids.
Probably an allergic reaction anon.
really? i thought allergic reactions were when you almost die or something like that
Is manuka honey a meme or legit?
Do these bee keepers in NZ work a migratory operation like large American ones? Or are they small-scale artisanal?
what do you mean by legit? sure it exists but does it have all the magical healing properties it's said to have? probably not. plus a lot of manuka honey on the market is mixed with normal honey and only a fraction of it is actual manuka.
What are you experts' thoughts on top bar hives?
easy and cheap to build and you dont have to lift and stack boxes, everything is easy to access. works very well if you want a handful of hives.
if you want high production, a big number of hives and easy transport, langstroth is better.
you have to harvest by crushing and straining too, since the comb is to fragile for centrifuging, so have to harvest the wax every time too and cant give empty comb back to the bees to refill.
How many hives would you actually need to make a 10-20k on? I live in Hawaii and supposedly have the highest honey production in the US.
Hawaii is expensive, so you should be able to get a good price for your honey. Check local prices and substract taxes and profit margin of the shop. If you sell directly to the consumer, you'll get more, but it will be a lot of work moving 5digits worth of honey.
If you get 10$/kg wholesale, you've got to sell 1000kg for 10k$ of revenue.
If you harvest an average of 20kg per hive, thats 50 hives.
So if you aim for 100 hives, you should be able to hit your goal after considering all costs.
You can get additional income from wax and wax products, propolis (tincture) and pollen. Whole honeycomb can fetch very high prices too.
Building up to that many hives and building experience will of cause take some time, so it would be more of a hobby for 5 years or so. You should be able to pay for your equipment and build up a costumer base though.
Is beekeeping viable in suburbs or near industrial zones? I've read bees can travel as far as 5 miles, and I'm worried about getting bees only for them to make some pollutant and pesticide/herbicide filled honey.
Usually the most contamination with pesticides comes from agricultural areas. Farmers use more of it than anyone else. Urban honey often has much better test results, but it also depends what kind of neighbours you have. Industry might not be a big problem either, depending on what kind it is.
You wont be able to avoid contamination these days though, its just everywhere. Unless you get somewhere out innaforest with no farms or neighbours for miles or the ones that are there work 100% organic. If you use foundation, make your own from your own wax. A lot of pesticides are soluble in wax. Also helps to renew combs before they get too old. I wouldnt worry too much, your no normal supermarket food is probably worse, especially the honey.
NTA but thanks anon. Insightful
Beekeeping is the single most noble pursuit a man can aspire to.
What breed of bee do you beekeepers keep?
Which one's the best for beginners and experts?
> not domesticating Africanized bees and colonizing existing hives
how can i make my bees racist?
Bumping for the bees, a delightful and noble creature
I have experience,
Cos ur Sister BE KEEPIN DEEZE BALLS
Hope this helps anon
Thumbs down, poor form
I meant in her mouth
how do you live on beekeeper apprentice wages?
I set up some used hives in my back yard and that’s it. I just had a wild swarm move into one of the hives, so that’s cool. I will literally do nothing from them except this. The copper makes sense to me, the magnets - eh, can’t hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCNBsi8HehY
Very cool anon, good luck with your bees
Thx. I added a copper plate and the magnets. They don’t seem to mind it, at least.
I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard of other strange strategies to (possibly) help the bees?
Two years ago I had them coming to buckets of wet biochar all day every day. Was interesting, they appeared to be gathering something, and not just drinking water.
And here they are being biochar bucket enjoyers
Neat photos
There appears to be a lot of variation in their abdomen coloration, seems like a good thing, high genetic diversity?
Are these bees?
No experience, but a friend of mine has some hives and uses the japanese Yakisugi method to treat the wood used for hive construction. It serves as a barrier against parasites.
Yakisugi deez nuts anon
Bees?
Pretty cool book/audiobook on bees is 'Honeybee democracy'. Explains the behaviour and nesting/hive building patterns of the swarms, their ideal homes and how they communicate etc.
Thanks anon
If you stand at 180 degrees to hive enterance, or even just 90 degrees with a calm hive, the bees will just let you chill and you can often get within 1/2 meters of the hive and observe for long times. Get used to doing this.
Keep calm when you open the hive - wear good gear, then just breath and move slowly, and you will have a great time.
Frantic movements/nervousness and fast breathing just amp up energy of the hive and make the experience worse.
>Pretty cool book/audiobook on bees is 'Honeybee democracy'. Explains the behaviour and nesting/hive building patterns of the swarms, their ideal homes and how they communicate etc.
this is a great book.
"Scientific beekeeping" is also a good website to look at if you need to deal with v. mites or other parasites.
But honestly biggest thing is talk to other local folks - find the local beekeeping group in person or online/discord, and share info.
Example: Where I am its really humid in the winter, so certain extra precations are suggested or you have dead outs in winter (I learned the hard way). I was able to talk to other local folks (a hobby beekeeper who's dayjob is highschool science teacher) who gave me great suggestions to work around this in our climate zone.
Good luck!
NTa but thanks
Bee cool friends
Where do I get bees from, and can I put the hives in the forest?
>getting bees
Theres a few ways.
1. You could catch a swarm. You need to be lucky to find one and then have equipment ready to capture it. A lot more likely if you are already keeping bees, since your more likely to find your own swarms than a random wild one and people might call a beekeeper, if they see a swarm.
2. Set a couple baithives up. Swarming bees will look for a new home, so if they find your baithive and like it, they will move in by themselves. This
book is really good for learning about that process.
3. Getting a split from a local beekeeper. Very good option for making contacts and having someone experienced for helping you get started and troubleshooting.
4. Buying a package of bees online. You get a box full of bees and just pour them into a hive.
The three first options are better imo, because you'll get locally adapted bees.
>forest
Depends. Probably not the best idea. You could build some kind of hive to screw to a tree, but theres always the danger of people or animals finding and destroying the hive. You'll also be around less often, so wont be able to react to issues very fast and you've got to carry in everything you need every time. Forests are also often not the most abundant with flowers, especially conifer forests. If there is any way to set it up at home or with family or friends, thats much better. If you dont have a garden, a balcony or rooftop can work.
For the bees
Yes
Beekeeper of 3 years. In my peak season I extracted 900 lbs of honey.
Tips:
1. Learn to work bare handed adap. Once you get used to the bees and how they react to your actions you won't get stung.
2. Smokers are way overused. It's very easy for new beekeepers to over smoke their bees. Too much smoke will agitat bees and make them go into panic mode. I only used smoke reactively (not preventatively).
3. The current paradigm in the US for beekeeping is the following: maximize production at the detriment of bee survival and buy more bees in the spring. This is an unsustainable practice and it should be stopped. However, if you are in it for the money, it's difficult to compete if you practice good stewardship.
What type of crops do you primarily service with your bees or do you have a static hive just for honey..?
Silly question but have you noticed if you eat certain foods your chance of getting stung go up?
>What type of crops do you primarily service with your bees or do you have a static hive just for honey..?
I only run my hives for honey, never for pollination.
>Silly question but have you noticed if you eat certain foods your chance of getting stung go up?
Never heard of this before. No I have not noticed whether diet influences bee stings. Time of day and weather are the biggest factors influencing bee aggression.
I was told that ripe bananas smell like the attack-pheromone, so better avoid...
It's Isoamyl acetate
Just want to wish you the best of luck, you're doing a bit of God's work there as long as the bees are happy.
My six Hives all checked healthy with the county inspector. Supers are filling up and I'm picking up 3 more nucs this week. Feels good man
>county inspector
Wut?
Meanwhile, my swarm that’s moved in is still there, and I won’t open the hive or do anything except see if they survive the coming Winter
Ohio has an apiary inspector for almost every county he stops by once a year to check on the health of the hives and make suggestions on treatments of necessary. You don't have to be inspected to sell honey but in order to sell bees you have to be inspected which is something I'd like to do small scale in the next few years.
Just bought my first two families of bees. They don't have much to gather this period, but the sunflower will be in full bloom next month.
It feels a bit overwhelming now and know I have a lot to learn, but I'm also enthusiastic about it. I hope I can keep my bees happy and healthy.
Good luck to all the beekeeping anons! This thread is good.
>be like the bee
Beesado
My dad got into need a couple of years ago. He works with a bee business, and also has a nests at home for fun.
He was telling me the other day how one of his nests got contaminated, so he killed the bees and left the box outside for the ants to eat, but then a new hive has moved in that’s more aggressive and now he can’t replace his gas bottle until they calm down.
Whoa
My swarm seems to be doing well, and they like their pissed on biochar and copper plates. Can say whether they care about the magnets I put on the hive but at least it’s not hurting. If these bad boys can survive the coming winter all on their own without me doing anything except blocking off the hive entrance from mice, they are gigachads and I’ll be excited. there was a mouse nest in it when they moved in, I only opened the hive out of curiosity one time and noticed it in the top box and pulled most of it out, but they have been cleaning metric tons of crap out of the hive so they have their work cut out for them.
https://files.catbox.moe/23rnrs.mov
If I have empty bee box would the bees just move in it because of it's shape?
Yes, that’s how I got my bees
They didn’t come the first season, but came pretty early this year. It’s a crap shoot on whether a swarm decides your home is good. If it’s a brand new hive, it helps to scent it with some honey, beeswax, apparently lemon grass oil is good. Do some reading on catching swarms. My hives were used so already smelled like bee stuff
You can also capture an active swarm and see if they settle.
We have one of the oldest relationships in agriculture, so I think so.
Well done anon.
Apply to your local association. Anon. I don't know about the states, but the UK has the BBA, and Canada has provincial bodies that govern. Email them, ask.
It's a weird one, if you're a commercial operation you can tolerate some more aggression in hives. Since our hives are mainly for educational purposes, aggressive bee's get given away or ultimately we replace the Queen and try to normalise behaviour.
>if you're a commercial operation
Nah. I just like honey and wax and such. My extended family gets all their honey from me and that keeps me good in everyone's books because they are all mad at me for rejecting the ugly chicks they try to set me up with.
I've sold some but I don't care enough to go commercial.
Fair, I can't say I've ever had any issues with aggressive hives. Again if they get too aggressive, just supercede the queen. Also if your hives are close to each other, the drones can spread the aggressive genes to other hives, so you have to be on it.
It's nice being able to produce your own stuff, I really enjoy that aspect of beekeeping and of course spending time with the hives.
I want bee's so bad it's my driving factor in becoming a land owner.
>rent a home near a golf course now
>can't eat golf course run off honey...
Maybe next year will be the year.
Do my bees know that I love them, bros?
bees are apparently loving of helpful humans
I am merely a novice that got lucky and had a swarm move in, but I haven’t been stung and I sit by it, piss in a bucket next to it, help them clean out the hive a bit.
No, PrepHole troll, this is not the way. I have picked up bees too tired from rain and cold and let them crawl on my, warm up, and clean themselves off then put them back on the hive entrance
The one time I wore I beekeeping suit I almost passed out from heat exhaustion
it's fricking hot in those things, be careful I am serious
I have a very thin one, but probably not very good for angry bees
The bees love anything that smells like them. Take a bee, crush it up, and rub it all over your body so that you smell like the bees, and they'll love you. Buzz, buzz!
Are these gigachad bees that are almost twice as big drones? Why do bee keepers think drones are worthless?
The sole purpose of a drone is to inseminate the queen, they can't even feed themselves and have to be fed by workers. They just leech and don't do any work and can't even sting, so cannot even defend the hive.
A good way to identify the drone is their eyes, they're huge
I just can’t believe they are that useless. And I see them flying in and out of the hive?
They aren't useless. They perform a very normal function for the hive, but only for a brief period of time. They fly out in search of queens. A new queen will go on a mating flight, and tries to mate with drones from different colonies to get more genetic diversity into the population.
Once they have served that purpose, they are excluded from the hive as they are excess mouths to feed and serve no further purpose to the hive.
Just seems like they could and should be doing a lot more
You don’t need a stinger to do something about pests like varroa mites, small hive beetles, or the moth things. The drones should definitely be doing more. I’m going to have a chat with my bees about this, and God is good
> can't believe nature would evolve a specialized role that results in brief existence
Nature is hardcore
"Nature" didn't make anything. God did.
Nature is an expression of God's will. It's also hardcore.
True?
my bees just kicked out the drones from the hive. I feel bad for them...
Shall they die in the wild or find a new hive with the traveling queen they mated with?
You know how when bees sting you, the stinger comes out? Well, the males don't have stingers. If they make it to the front of the orbiter pack chasing the queen during the mating orgy, they are awarded the privilege of a quick thrust and fast ejaculation in which their dick is blown off, pumping what sperm it has into the queen before falling out making room for the next wiener in the carousel. The drone spirals to the ground, dying with a smile on his face and one final thought: "doesn't matter, had sex".
The drones you see being kicked out by their sisters are wizards. They did not successfully mate with a queen. They blew their chance of passing on the hives genetics, and the workers have tired of their neet ways. They will starve to death on the doorstep, dying as virgins.
doesn't this happen seasonally towards the end of summer?
Hi anon. Congratulations on pursuing the apiarist arts.
Get good kit, and try and learn from an experience beekeeper. Join an association, education is important and seeing things is much easier to learn than just reading books alone.
Are you a small holder, or trying to make money from this? If it's just you trying to keep a few hives, then the costs should even themselves out, but you make money from pollination, not honey or wax. (more like spending money.) Orchards or farms are great places to have hive set ups, but also rooftops in cities. You can get funding from local councils since it preserves bio-diversity.
Bee's will take care of themselves, you really only need to check on them once a week, and make sure of a few things.
a) no signs of varoa mites, or wax moths. Treatments are different, varoa is easy to treat for and should be done regularly. Wax moths, you will need to destroy the frames in question.
b) The Queen is healthy and is laying eggs in the brooding combs, the pupae are healthy pearly white without deformities.
c) Is there any formation of play cups or queen cups. (more a spring time thing.)
Honey is a by product of the work the bees do, and so the healthier the hive, the more honey, you should always aim to leave them the vast majority of the honey they produce for over winter.
If you live in really cold climates, you should under no circumstances open up the colonies in winter, the bee's will keep themselves as warm as possible, they will survive if the honey stores are good and if they have good cover. (positioned near trees or some sort of wind break helps.)
When processing honey, make sure it's in a closed environment, honey smell to bee's is like crack to a crack addict. You can cut out the comb and add new frames, decap comb and add to a centrifuge. You will get some wax content in your honey adds a creamy consistency, it's cool the shits edible and good for you.
Single set honey, IE from a single hive will always have a more intense flavor than mixed honeys, from multiple hives. Forest honey's tend to be darker, and local flowers really do impart particular flavors. The shit you buy in stores, doesn't come close. You can flavor honey, by planting flowers for the bee's in convenient places.
Wax needs to be heated down and refined for wax bars, it will have particulate in it otherwise. The money in wax realistically is in candles, or additions to soaps, etc or once refined and cooled it can be given back to the bees.
If you have a colony collapse, it's unfortunate but these things do happen. Close the entrance, to prevent bee bandits. (they will steal each others shit.) and assess the cause. The honey still can be harvested, the wax refined and then the frames need to be burned and the interior of the box scorched with a torch and cleaned with a scraper before new frames are added and new bee's introduced.
Swarms are how bee's replicate. The hive is the actual expression of a single organism via many individualized parts. The Queen leaves the old colonies to establish a new colony, her daughter inherits the old and hence bee colonies propagate themselves.
Now the dangers of having a new swarmed hive. (You don't know the queen or her genetics if she is not from your stock.) Bee colonies are individualized and some are more placid, some are more aggressive. Africanised bee's are highly aggressive and to be honest, you are better off killing the queen and superceding the colony and breeding more gentle bees. (Her drones can likewise introduce aggression into your colonies.)
Likewise, she might not have strong genetics, be infertile, etc. In such cases the workers will supercede her themselves, using the viable eggs they have left for a new queen, and killing her. (sometimes successful, sometimes not.)
Getting bees! You have three choices.
Shook swarm propogation, swarms, and buying a queen/colony.
So shook swarm is allowing your queen to prepare to swarm by laying queen cups, and then removing the queen to a new hive. The worker bee's will follow, the queen will think it's new hive space, boom new colony. The queen cell will hatch, and if undisputed become new queen, meaning old colony survives under new management, or the two princesses fight to the death winner gets to be queen. She goes out, mates with drones from other colonies, boom 2 hives.
Swarms are the same, except the queen has left her old hive and hasn't found a new nest yet. You see this most in spring when normies shit themselves cause their tree get a ball of bee's. It's easy, you extract the ball put them in a basket lay out a white sheet and then shake them into a new hive space. Any workers still in the basket, lay it down on the white sheet, the workers will follow the queen and she will think she found the perfect new home, boom new colony.
3rd option is just buying a new colony from an established bee keeper.
A few things, talk to your bee's. I do. My bee's know me by the sound of my voice, by my smell, and they know I'm harmless. I always wear a bee hood when interacting, just to keep them off my face, but I only wear a bee suit when it's foreign hives. I've never been stung in my beekeeping work. Just don't stand in front of the entrance of the hive, use smoke liberally and learn how to do things like shaking, or using a bee brush effectively without knocking the hive.
It's also fun to put a small dollop of honey on your hand and let the bee's come and lap it up, fanning and dancing are also real treats to watch for.
Helpful posts, thank you
>Single set honey, IE from a single hive will always have a more intense flavor than mixed honeys, from multiple hives.
My bees get into the Brazilian pepper trees around here. It’s an interesting flavor.
Ours had a bumper crop of lemon balm to forage from, and the honey had this really great lemon/lime flavour as a result.
> treatments
Nope, just not gunna do it. Keep collapsing your colonies lol
>Wax moths, you will need to destroy the frames in question.
You just need to freeze them for 24 hours.
Posting for others to easily share, thank you Bee Anon
Ty for image
Thanks for the screenshot anon, second time I've had a screenshot for shit I've said on PrepHole
They're ensuring the continuation of the hives and future other hives. (all eggs have the potential to become queens, workers, or drones, depending on what the pupae are fed.)
Varoa treatment isn't terrible, and it keeps the bee's healthy. We had to use it regularly because we have hives in close proximity to one another, not because of infestation.
I've only ever seen 2 colony collapses, neither related to varoa mites.
1st one, the guy took too much honey from his bee's and they froze to death as a result in winter.
2nd one, was a decision by the beekeeper I was training under to collapse the hive by gassing it. The queen was laying deformed eggs, unhealthy pupae and he chose to not supercede the colony in case it was due to environmental factors.
Took the honey supers. Then at 10pm went out, blocked the front of the hive, and poured petrol in and sealed it up for 48 hours. (I've heard of similar things done with dish soap, which in my opinion is safer and more hygenic.)
Burnt the hive later that day. Sad to see a colony go that way, but it is what it is.
Workers and queens grow from fertilized diploid eggs. Drones from unfertilized haploid eggs. Drones dont have a dad.
Workers can also lay eggs, but since they never mated, they can only lay drone eggs. They will do that if a hive has been queenless for a long time to raise a couple drones and have a chance to pass on the hives genetics.
>queenless hive
One thing I have seen workers do in tis situation, is to raise drone queens. They start feeding queen jelly (special food for queen larvae) to handful of regular young worker larvae. They will grow like queens, form queen cups (much more of those than you would get with true queens) but when they emerge, they will only lay drone eggs.
I guess logic behond is that hive queenless for so long is walking dead anyway. Suicide mission to give it one last attempt at spreading genes is taking one last shot while they still can do it
>second time I've had a screenshot for shit I've said on PrepHole
pls post the first one
It wasn't related to the subject of bee's rather environmental stewardship and the difference between actual conservative stewardship and the leftist environmentalist greta/extinction nutjob types. I have rather strong views on real environmentalism vs the luddite version.
pls post
As you wish.
NTA but thanks
Knowledge sharing is essential
thanks
Beebros, did I frick up? I noticed several enclosed queen cups in my first hive last week, which was lucky considering I was planning on making a split, so I transferred the frames with cups on them to a new hive, and so far both hives seem lively, but I noticed that I had missed at least one cup that was left in the old hive, which had hatched. Is there a chance that the old queen may have been killed by now?
If a queen hatched, the old one might have swarmed or one killed the other.
Look for eggs, if you got eggs, you're fine. If you dont find a queen or eggs, youve got to give them a new queen or some eggs so they can make a new one.
Hard to say without seeing on the ground, if you've split the hives successfully, did you transfer your old queen to the new hive? Or did you transfer the cups?
If the cup has hatched, it might be a case that your old queen has been superceded, this does happen sometimes. Check and make sure you have a queen in that hive. (this is why I mark queens.) If so, and the queen cup is no more, don't worry about it. Monitor and make sure your queen is laying brood, but aside from that it should be situation normal.
Bee kind
Bee polite
Shut the frick up you moronic homosexual
No
Bee grateful for bees
Eastern Kentucky here,
I've got a small farm. I need to either assist the pollinators, or make my own.
What should i look out for?
>Eastern Kentucky
>What should I look out for?
Republican politicians who are telling you the liberals want to make you communist while simultaneously taking the most amount of federal handouts by any state.
Bait
aatched this and made me interested and you can learn from another's mistakes
Bumping for the bees
I'm giving you (you) because I like your moxy, sir, and I actually learned some shit from you so.. arigato
>This in no way means I won't possibly troll you in another thread
Aspiring beekeeper here, how far will the bees go away from their hive to look for flowers and stuff? Where I want to put a hive we've got a couple flowers but the most flowers we've got are about 40 feet away. Will the beebros make it over there and enjoy our garden or should I try and force the hive to be closer to it
>40feet
kek
they forage up to 3km away
oh I didn't know, thank you beefrens. Is it a deal breaker if I don't have a spot that faces the sun to put my hive? I've got a spot on my house that blocks the morning sun but would really get the sunset. I don't really have a super ideal place that gets sun 24/7
Bees ttlravel miles
Is this acosphaera apis? What do? I have only a frame with spots of this on both sides, I've seen it a few days ago, should I take action immediately?
Bump, Ascosphaera apis*
Seems like it. Burn the frame.
Does every single bee return to the hive? I don't wanna leave any left behind
No, they fly out one day to die in peace, not making trouble for the cleaners.
Dead Bees are found in the hive only in winter, otherwise it's a bad signal.
Bees are one of the few invertebrate that have been recorded to sleep. Between 5 -8 hours day, they will usually link legs when doing so.
Solitary bee's will sleep in flowers.
>solitary bees will sleep in flowers
I’ve never personally witnessed this nor can remember reading something like this, sauce?
Didasia Dimunata are the best recorded solitary bee's for this kind of behavior.
That's a nice haul anon well done.
Build a shrine to the fallen bee, pray and burn incense to it every day, if anyone asks you why, say you are recent convert, but now a true bee-liever.
End of summer, early autumn. The bee's might go a bit early if they think the weather is going to be poor.
I'm a bit sad today anons, my local educational apiary where I volunteer is shutting down it's services to the public, and their hives are going to be moved off site to another group. Sad days.
bunnop for bees
Pulling supers this week should have a decent haul. Pulled 2 of them earlier in the year and averaged 30lbs of honey per and I'm guessing the 7 I have still to pull will yield more than that
Yesterday I got stung by my bees for the first time. It was my mistake though, and I feel sad that a bee died out of my negligence. How should I repent?
Sorry to hear anon. Hopefully you will bee merciful to your apiary-dwelling friends
Harvested 4 medium boxes from 3 of my hives yesterday and ended up with around 120lbs of mostly clover honey. Feels good man.
Started the year with one hive climbed to 11 with splits and swarm catches. So long as winter goes well I should have a really strong harvest of honey this time next year
Nice anon
Very good, anon. Heard that everyone east of the Mississippi is having a great year for honey. True?
I’m in Northern Michigan and caught my first swarm this year, they had a lot of work cut out for them cleaning out the old used hive they set up. I’m not opening it or harvesting honey, but they seem to be doing really well on cleaning it out and getting the population numbers up, crossing my fingers they survive the Winter. First time “beekeeper”.
This is lovely anon. Check out Frederick Dunn's YouTube videos if you have not already. Best in the business for education and advice.
You'll probably want to put in some serious work on infrastructure to prepare these hives for winter.
It’s just one hive, but I was planning on not doing anything for Winter, see if they survive without human intervention. Only thing I was going to do is put a block of wood in front of the opening with a tiny outlet for poop flights…. I want bees that take care of themselves. I added that copper plate and wire because I read once about a beekeeper that did that and it helped with disease/varroa control. Whether it helps or not I don’t know, but they seem to like it and prefer walking over the copper to the wood side
You are in northern Mich. If you do not add appropriate insulation to the hive, they'll freeze to death over the winter.
This wouldn't be a big project at all, just need to do it else your bees will freeze.
I’ll do some more reading but I’ve seen some videos of Michael Palmer in Vermont, which is similar climate maybe even gets colder than me, and doesn’t seem to insulate. I’ve read a lot of different opinions but the Warre guy thought insulating was a bad idea too. I’ll do some more reading and watching, but I lean towards them getting acclimated to surviving without insulation. Here’s a video of bees making cleansing flights on a winter warm up day, no insulation and not even protection from the wind, mine are protected from the prevailing winds at least https://youtu.be/jnIMF1Isr-8
A lot of research has found that bees seem to use less stores during winter with less (but not poorly implemented!) insulation, although I could imagine that getting the balance between optimal and dead might be hard to get right. Here's a blog post by one of the most respected Finnish beekeepers on wintering: https://naturebees.wordpress.com/2022/11/18/bees-love-cold-in-winter/
Nice, thanks for link. I think we should turn this thread into a general. I really think the copper plate/wire is helping my bees, they seem to love it. If we had a general I could update in Spring if they survive the Winter without doing anything
I'll commit now to making a new thread after this one. It shall be in the general format.
What's the quote? Talk to 3 beekeepers and get 5 opinions.
I'll quote a Frederick Dunn video on winterizing (don't recall which one, he has many) on his process. He's in Pennsylvania. He uses limited materials for winterization, only putting a thermal cover on top, just under the roof. His hives do not have a top entrance for thermal and other reasons. That's largely the extent of his process, outside of clearing the hive's main entrance whenever the snow gets too deep. He puts the normal amount of emergency winter food just below the thermal cover.
His other best practice, which he himself admits is unusual, is that he'll keep something like 100 pounds of honey in the hive. He's said that other PA local beekeepers are fine with 25 pounds of honey, he's just very conservative and he's not into bees for the honey, so no skin off his nose. I should note that come spring, it seems his hives are huge right out of the gate, presumably because the large food stores he keeps for the bees allow for higher survival rates.
Northern Mich is substantially colder and snowier than much of PA. Keep this in mind as you proceed.
NTA but thanks
It was for me. I managed to get around 150lbs of honey this year and that was off of 4 hives.
I have 10 hives right now but the majority of them I got a bit late in the year so didn't expect to get honey off of them (late swarms and nucs).
Next year is going to be very good hopefully even if I have a few losses this year. Which I shouldn't I've treated and started feeding and I'll give all the hives an oxalic acid treatment probably once a month for the next two months before they're closed completely for winter.
So far this year I've learned.
> wild bees are hit or miss I've got some that are huge producers and gentle some that are lazy pricks (those ones got requeened)
> Russians are not as aggressive as claimed
> carniolians have close to the same temperament of Russians
> saskatraz bees are gental as frick but mine are not nearly as productive as expected
> peppermints in the hive do help with beetles
Hopefully theymol treatments work as well as formic pro but it was too damn hot here for me to use formic pro when I wanted to treat.
Wow, that's wild anon. What do you do with all that honey? Sell it?
As a non-beekeeper (someday, hence why here), any amount above 50 gallons seems industrial.
Exactly. I usually sell locally at $10 for a 12oz jar of honey. I'll probably start selling 1 1/2lb jars for $15 next year in order to sell it easier. I also have about 15lbs of wax which I'm going to use to make hand cream and chapstick for sale also.
Then there is the matter of bees themselves. A package is usually $130-200 and nucs usually average $200. So within the next few years I'd like to start selling bees as well.
If you're really interested in making money you can do pollination contracts with local orchards. If you're feeling risky you might be able to get on with a group of beekeepers to send a number of hives out west on trucks for the big pollination contracts. Downside to that is you have to have a lot of hives, there's lots of paperwork and your hives may come back with pests or other issues.
Thanks for the breakdown anon. That's awesome.
Some additional questions: where do you sell? Farmers markets, to businesses, or wholesale?
I have heard that orchards are switching over to carpenter bees, which do not produce honey but are hundreds of times more efficient than honeybees. Is this true? Or is there a honeybee niche?
How do you like making mead? I have heard mead is tasty but the business model is garbage due to the honey expenditure. Supposedly tasty, though.
I sell right now primarily through word of mouth or through family and friends.
I'm not sure about the carpenter bees at orchards I haven't started on pollination yet
I really like making mead and its a big part of the reason I now have bees. Usually it takes around 14-20lbs of honey per 5 gallons but with the price of bees and equipment it's cheaper just to buy honey if you're only making a batch of two a year. Have a mango and habanero mead going right now and I'm about to do just a standard sweet mead using this falls honey.
> mead
It's really unfortunate the economics for mead that rough. I'd love to drink much mead myself but, because there is a such a high percentage of counterfeit honey in the world, I'd only want to drink what I have made using my own honey.
>friends and family honey sales
That's a good call. When I get into apiary, I shall do likewise.
Do you know the theoretical limitation on the number of bees you could keep sustainably while running an artisanal operation? I have heard of small farmers with 15-20 hives but have not heard of many who have more. I'd imagine that after you have too many bees and hives, your bees are not able to find food given their limited travel distance abilities.
How do I make good mead? Also I have ginger beer plant and kefir grains.
It varies a lot. Depending on the amount of pollen available within flight distance of your hives.
What's the math? Something like 200,000 flowers to a pound of honey?
While any 1 tree is going to have thousands of flowers, I still can't comprehend how some farmers manage 20 hives and their bees only have a 5 km range.
Density of polinating flowers anon. If you think of plants that produce a multitude of flowers in a smaller space then you can essentially stack the odds in the favour of your bee's. Lilac, lavender, etc all take up a small amount of space, but produce a significant amount of nectar.
> flower density
Of course. Didn't cross my mind. That would make the most sense.
Thank you anon.
Sunflowers. Those big heads are actually many flowers together
I also make mead so that takes a good amount of honey per batch.
>be boardmember of local beekeeping association
>mostly grumpy old men
Never knew people could be so difficult to work with holy shit
Regular people get a stronger/serious allergy to bee stings if they stop getting stung. Don't get stung or keep getting stung until you're immune. But once you're immune and you quit you'll get a serious life threatening allergy. At least according to fudlore.
One of my two hives are nearly empty. I think I might know why...
Hadn't had a chance to check on it for a month.
The other hive is just starting to fill the box I put on top.
With this constant rain they probably had a hard time foraging.
But the local beekeeper don't think there with be a derth this year so wel see why the rest of the season goes.
Good luck anon
>I'm becoming an apprentice to a beekeeper in the next few weeks
how did you find this position
Is this a role that's paid for by the government? Or more like a weekend volunteer thing?
Bump for bees
Good on ye
Ty
Any of you have experience with pol-line VSH resistant queens? I got 2 such nucs from Mann Lake this year and they're fricking c**ts. Guard bees are on me the second I open the hive and once I go into the bottom deep they're dive bombing and swarming me. I have a full suit so I just ignore it, but man it's just not enjoyable. I had Carniolans before and I didn't even need to wear protection with them (rip). They're not Africanized as far as I can tell because they aren't aggressive unless I actually open the hive. I can even mow around them without them attacking me. Also, the hives are crowded af. Even at the height of day when all the foragers should be out, I can't remove even an outermost frames from the deep without bees spilling out onto the outside of the hive. These are first year hives so I shouldn't have to split them. It's so strange.
They produce like motherfrickers though. I'm getting honey from each hive this year.
>Any of you have experience with pol-line VSH resistant queens?
I tried saskatraz bees out for a few years. They do better with mites. But I've gotten better at treating hives so I've lost interest in them.
You might hit them with smoke first. Smoke make even my africanized bees mellow out. I know it's falling out of vogue. But I don't work without smoke anymore
Oh I use a smoker. It almost seems like it agitates them. Yes it is cool white smoke.
Any opinions on this flowhive stuff? what is the catch? Id say the high ptice but I think some chink already made a bootleg decent copy for far less and you can PrepHole the wooden exterior.
I think this is more for the guy who just wants some honey for himself and not for selling, like me
Game changer?
An unnecessary gimmick made the inventor rich. That's about it. Extracting honey is a minuscule part of the job and to be quite honest that's the fun part. Flowhive™ is just a toy for the noob. On the other hand something like pic related is quite hand when shaking bees off the frame especially when you're dealing with tens of hives in a day.
> repeating the same FUDD every >40 year old beekeeper has been saying since 2017
Fred Dunn runs FHs alongside his traditional Lang boxes and the benefits / detriments are clear.
His 15 minute presentation to Cornell's bee lab covers it all nicely (link at the top):
https://www.fredsfinefowl.com/theflowhiveexperience.html
Tl;dr: if you don't want to be bothered by honeycomb processing / your time is more valuable than other people, FHs are an excellent "point-and-shoot" solution that you pay for at higher initial cost. This doesn't mean you can be lazy in bee husbandry, but rather that the FH makes honey extraction easier.
Hello bee anons. I know nothing about bees, but I've found a wild beehive in a building. If I put up my own hive next door, is there a good chance that they'll move into it next spring? Or should I bait my box somehow to convince them to pick me over some random hollow tree?
Also, is there any use for the existing hive other than waiting for it to populate my hives? Thanks.
The bees won’t leave their hive, but if they swarm (split), there’s a chance the swarm will chose your hive. If you want to capture and move the existing hive, the best way to do that I can think of is to relocate their existing hive, plunk it down into an empty box of your hive
They'll swarm only once after winter, right? Which means I have to get the swarm on the first try or wait another year. Will swarm lure do the trick, or would it be safer to try and net the swarm by hand when it splits?
The existing hive is behind some metal siding, so even if I'm courageous enough, I don't think I can capture them without taking apart both the building and the honeycomb.
Look's like you will have to wait unless, you want to get in there anon. Bee's generally do swarm in Spring as part of their colony reproductive cycle.
Make sure she is secure in the Queen cage, general wisdom as I recall is to leave her in there for at least a week until the become accustomed to the new smell of her pheromones and assume she superceded the old Queen.
Just make sure they're feeding her, and you should be good to go.
Don't forget to use your smoker
good luck anon
about to requeen my broodless colony tomorrow (swarmed and new queen didn't come back) any advice?
Good luck anin
If you're in the US or northern hemisphere - then its great. If you are an african beekeeper, its the worst thing. Our bees make a lot more propolis to aid heat regulation, so the hive gets gunky. Also, you'll have to extract the honey at night, since our bees get aggressive the moment they get a whiff of open honey. I always wanted one of these, but with my species it's just a bad idea. I envy anyone whose able to use those
Interesting anon. Would European bees in a place like South Africa work? Sounds like you just need cooler weather and the right bees.
Can you talk to us more about African beekeeping?
Checking in on my requeen colony fingers crossed she is laying. Wish me luck bros
Good luck anon
Is it a bad idea to requeen this late in the season? I don't like how aggressive these b***hes are. Should I wait until spring?
Seems like you'd be fine to do it now. Queens are cheap right now and you'll still get a solid brood cycle before it gets too cold and she shuts down for the year. Plus you'll have a young queen for spring.
i would love to try it out, my father used to have a couple dozen hives and got some income out of it for several decades. so i even have some leftover material that i could start with and experiment.
but i have no land, i live in a (smallish) city. do i have to rent or buy land? i'm not sure it would be worth it, properties are quite expensive around here
Nope you only need the square footage to fit the hive down. The bees do t need permission to use the land around you.
> land situation
Check your state laws via Google. Some states have a fair amount of regulation (mandatory certs, fences, master-beekeeper annual check ins)
Gonna get bees within the next year. I just want a few (3-4 max) hives. I read this guy's book and he says that if you use this hive and don't frick with the bees if you don't have to, then they will be very resistant to mites and take care of themselves.
Has anyone had experience with this? Location would be southwest Idaho, whereas I think he lives in like western russia or some shit.
https://lazutinhives.com/
Not familiar with these hives. Keep in mind that bees with a sufficiently insulated hive and enough food can often keep themselves in the winter. Bees ball up and vibrate to generate heat.
See post here :
There are also 25 other uses of the word "winter" in this thread so good advice abounds
The point was less about winter and more about not having to apply any varroa treatment (since the hive is resilient and not stressed due to hive management and hive structure)
Thank you! I will absolutely.
Its funny this reads very similarly to lazutin. Basically some guy fed up with the industrial style of beekeeping and just wanting something easy on himself and easy on the bees, at the cost of production.
> anti-mite setup
I'm not sophisticated enough in this area to opine. I will say that some researchers have noted a likely slow natural selection in American bees resisting such mites.
Any literature on this? Getting anti-mite bees would be clutch.
I got 2 VSH Pol-line hives this year. I didn't have to do any treatments and they produced quite a bit. They are c**ts though and working the hives isn't fun.
How c**ts?
They're very aggressive during inspections.
Not surprised that bees who are aggro / neurotic against mites also act similarly to humans. Smoke work?
Nope
Build your own warré hives and read his book bro
being a beekeeper fricking sucks
here is the real advice. get a real career
enjoy lifting heavy boxes all day
enjoy dealing with aggressive bees all day
enjoy getting stung every week
enjoy having bees fly in your food while your on lunch break
enjoy trying not to kill the queen as you swap them around.
thats a shit job anon.
i was a beekeeper and quit since i was getting paid hourly.
"apprentace to a beekeeper " lmaoo
that job is full of meth addicts where im from
Bees??
>Any tips?
dont put your penis in the bee hive
I got a gallon+ of honey out of four frames last week. Not bad for almost no attention to the thing all summer.
Plus none stop rain. Over smoked and added a little flavor to the stuff but it's still tasty.
Love to see it, congratulations
> thinkg about getting bees as well
> do my research
> turns out that my local bees are stingless and their honey is top tier.
> always tought those were small wasps
what a moron, theres no excuse now. the only thing that worries me is farmers go crazy with the insecticides and may kill them.
Sorry bros 🙁
Not a beekeeper but like bees. Last thing I read was on beekeeping being wrong, morally, philosophically and scientifically. Although there is still a way to have bees.
TLDR: The view that intensive farming is harming bees, spreading/encouraging disease, making bee population/environment weaker. They prefer to house wild swarms, be non invasive and take only excess from hives.
https://archive.is/6pm9l
FWIW anon, apparently the wild European honeybee no longer exists in continental Europe . In the way that your argument makes sense in a world with both wild and tamed populations, now bees are fully being integrated as a dependent part of human civilization (in Europe, anyway) and will function as our beneficients going forward.
I still see wild bees here.
Big Beekeeping is a threat to bees, and their industrialized hives are proven vectors for disease and wild colony wipeouts.
If this thread was honest with itself it would recognize that majority of beekeepers care about making yields, making money, not disease elimination, not the animals they claim to care for, not the environment.
I appreciate the sentiment anon but the domestication of cattle, chickens into the human ecosystem is a fact and, for better or worse, both species will continue under human sovereignty.
Maybe the AI robots will do the same to us one day, as is their right under Melian rules
hate that way of thinking.same as pollution, the real threats are big multinational businesses, instead of the 20 anons from PrepHole. but of course you are b***hing here.
>big beekeeping
Is this a psyop by Monsanto or something?
Most real honey is produced artisanally. Much "honey" found on store shelves today are synthetic Chinese sugar products, quite literally counterfeit honey.
What anon has labelled as Big Beekeeping is the industrial complex behind bee keeping. IE crop pollination/Honey stores.
We currently cannot produce enough honey to meet global demands, and therefore the Chinese in their usual fashion have found ways to undercut the market by introducing sugar water which is made into honey, there is no nectar connection and therefore isn't real honey.
Most of the stuff found in stores is real honey depending on the brand, but even then it is mixed. The intensity of flavor variables from single set honeys are amazing and something most people who do not buy from small hives will ever get to experience. I had one year where lemon balm was abundant and it imparted this amazing lime flavor in the honey that year. Heather honey and Manuka are prized for the same reason, which is why single set is so much more expensive.
>not real honey!
meanwhile burgers put HFCS in everything and pretend it's sugar
>Most of the stuff found in stores is real honey depending on the brand
In the United States, Europe, Japan: this may be true. Go to LATAM and the developing world and counterfeit honey is the rule, not the exception. Even in the USA, walk into any dollar store (shopped at by predominantly poor people, of which America has many) and it's all Chinese fake honey.
The anon screeding about Big Beekeeping and how humans shouldn't enslave bees is a tree-hugging hippie who has quite literally lost his mind. He's trying to ban a natural good because of his weird ideology while the market is being flooded with a substitute that's literal Chinese poison.
If anything, the Western world needs more urban, suburban, and rural honey cultivation in artisan fashion in order to produce real honey and generate more bees, which are essential to natural environments (and have had a bad 20 years due to pesticides).
No I agree anon. If anything we need to encourage more local cultivation. That's also why I no longer buy store honey, I will get it from an individual apiary or association.
You can keep bee's and it's not a moral issue. It just depends on your thinking.
If you are keeping bee's principally as a business, then it could be seen as exploitation, and the vast majority of money in beekeeping is moving the bee's to use for pollination of fruits. This is bad for the bee's, but it's done on an industrial scale.
Where as traditionally, an orchard would have pigs, and bee's and chickens, and each would perform their vital part in the beneficial chain.
Chickens would control other pests, bee's would pollinate and produce honey, pigs would take care of waste products, and all would play their part in the health of the orchard as a greater biome organism.
That said from a personal position, I keep my bee's for my own enjoyment. Honey is never a goal, but it is a benefit as part of our relationship. I get excess honey, wax, propolis, and pollen. They get protection, food guarantees, additional maintenance in terms of mite control, colony health, and beneficial planting to help them gain nectar.
We have a symbiotic relationship, and in an odd way I'm essentially just another worker for the hive just with different responsibilities to the hive than the queen, the drone, and the other worker bees.
From what I've seen it's just a method for extracting honey directly without dealing with other things like propolis or wax collection. I prefer a more holistic approach, and it's good to occasionally exchange combs for hive health, but to each there own.
There is a lot of diversity in bee's and solitary wasps, each has it's own place in the chain. Try and keep your hives in places that are far away from large crops.
I've got friends who set up hives and don't extract anything, the bee's are simply there for their own enjoyment. I know someone who has a visual hive in their house window, not everything is about exploitation anon.
thanks for the info. i looked for a hive online local seller (pic rel) and im a cheap frick, it worths something like $90 so im going to PrepHole and see if i can get bees to swarm on in. ive learn a lot from this threads so i'll scorch and put honey on the wood, im just afraid that it gets takeover from small wasps or bees that i dont care about.
> get free honey from anon
> repay him with ugly b***hes
very very disrespectful
damn african beekeeping sounds like hard mode. any stories?
Wonderfully put. My father goes early in the morning to his apiary just to watch in awe of his bees go fly.
Wholesome as all get out. Glad to see he enjoys God's beauty so much.
Hey beebros, what's the best go-to bee hive to get? I'm new and want to get into beekeeping and trying to compile an equipment list. I really don't want to get memed into some dorky starter bee hive that locks me out of some theoretical "higher tier" beekeeping later on when I've cut my teeth. I've had that happen before in other hobbies and I'd rather just learn every right from the get go instead of getting some forced training wheels thing. I wanna take care of my beebros as best as possible
Im not a bee keeper but am studying the subject as id like to be inna future....That being said i know Facebook is gay but it can also be a great resource...i found a bee keeping group thats local to my area and i just read people's posts...the community is very responsive and helpful and you can pick up alot of practical know how from just lurking 🙂
Most online beekeeping infrastructure runs on 90s and 00s rails, largely due to most beekeepers being older in age.
BEEZ? BEEZ NUTS
What factors do you have to keep track of with a hive? Temperature seems obvious but what else?
I am keeping track of nothing with the wild swarm that moved into my hive. I sometimes use the copper rod, posted elsewhere in this thread, to sweep out some debris for them. Will update the next thread in the spring as to whether they survive with almost zero interventions or molestations besides weird ones not on beekeepers scope
Moisture is a killer far more than temp. Get wet and it drops your internal temp; same happens to bees.
Make sure they are warm (but not too hot) and dry.
No shit?
just wishing OP luck in his apiarist adventure
This does look very interesting. Sadly I'm too moronic to even know how to make my own honey.
Invest the time, it's better than buying honey on Walmart
Walmart's closer to my home. I don't have to get literal bees to get my honey.
You could go to a farmer's market too if you live close to one
No one close near me
not an excuse
Wtf am I looking at?
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it's BEES
> he doesn't know
No, I don't know. Enlighten me.
It's an indoor hive
I understand the core idea with the tube and such to let them outside, but do you ever interact with the boxes? I cant seem to picture a way to access them without getting bees all over.
Either there's also a hatch outside. Or it's just more of a fish tank.
Just want to point out for my zone 5 bros that borage continues to flower and I see honeybees visiting it. Seems like a nice late season food source for them. Earlier in the year I don’t see them on it, they probably have better things to do. It’s mostly the bumbles.
Thank you anon