A BEE thread....for those interested in beekeeping.

[LONDON HENS]

Yippee! A beekeeping thread! DH and I have been keeping bees for over 15 years separately and 4 years together. In fact, bees are what brought us together. We keep around 200 hives and are chemical free having what we call "survivor bees" and keep them in Langstroth hives using PermaComb frames. We are extracting our honey now, looks to be a good harvest here in the middle of nowhere Kansas.
It's really good to see this interest in beekeeping. Now is a good time to be getting ready for bees in the spring. There is equipment to buy and put together, ( or make your own ), books to read, and decisions to made on how to keep these bees. A top bar hive or a Langstroth hive? If Langstroth, 10 frame or 8 frame, deep brood or medium brood boxes, screen bottom board or solid? What type of frames and foundation, beeswax, plastic or foundation-less? And then there is the purchasing of bees, a package, nuc or a starter hive. If you can find bees from a local source that is better than getting bees that are not as adapted to your area. This past spring a truck loaded with 1800 packages coming out of California got caught in a snowstorm and all of the bees perished. That left a lot of people scrambling to find bees and probably a lot of equipment set empty. Find a bee club in your area and see about buying local bees. I suggest getting at least two hives so that you can compare and have back up brood in case you need to strengthen a hive. Study and learn some basic beekeeping words like: apiary, hive, brood, queen, drone, worker, larvae, nectar, pollen, swarm, queen cell, supercedure, queen excluder, capped honey, (honey)super, varroa mites, small hive beetles and the various other pests and diseases that affect the honeybee. Fall and winter are the time to prepare.
London Hens how are your hives doing? Your new queen should be laying by now, you should be seeing eggs and larvae and possibly some capped brood. When a queen goes on a mating flight she tries to mate with as many as 15 drones. The more drones she mates with the more extended her abdomen will become and the longer she will be a viable queen. What happened with your other hive? Did it swarm?
I wish I would have been more prepared when I got my chickens. So much to learn about them....

Hey OkieQueenBee

Thanks for the reply. Yes the hive did successfully produce another queen and she has been laying like a trooper! So we were worried we might lose that hive but its looking really strong now. The other hive we do think swarmed as numbers dropped drastically one week. We are feeding them loads of sugar water at the moment getting them ready for the winter!

 

[howfunkyisurchicken]

I've finally finished this entire thread

And I think its convinced me to take the plunge and get bees this coming Spring. One of my husbands cousins has been raising them for a while and he loves them.

I love honey, and find honey bees to be adorable. Now, I've got LOTS of researching to do!

 

[boskelli1571]

Congratulations! you will find them very therapeutic once you get over the initial nervousness! For reading I really recommend 'the thinking beekeeper' by Christy Hemenway. All about organic top bar bee-keeping. Informative, east to follow, also 'honeybee' by C. Marina Marchese. Lots of incidental info. in this one, also talks about beauty products made with bee products. Enjoy your new hobby/obsession

Sue

 

[howfunkyisurchicken]

Thanks

I'm not particularly nervous around bees. I've been stung a few times throughout my life and I can't remember it being particularly traumatic. Just itchy and annoying. I don't like yellow jackets or wasps though!

And thanks for the reading material! I'm really excited!

 

[SunnySkies]

I'm really thinking about bees for next spring too. Been reading, bought 2 books on top bar hives, read, read, read. I stay up reading bee forums now, lol.

My issue is the local beekeeper clubs' meeting all overlap with swim team and work, so I can't get to any and get networking So I am looking around for local apiaries and thinking about seeing if any of those folks could mentor and/or sell me a package and queen come spring.

I also want top bars. Easier to look through, even though it seems like they take a bit more time.

 

[boskelli1571]

Hi there,
I wouldn't worry too much about getting a mentor right now. If you can e-mail the local beekeepers and let them know of the problem, they will most likely be able to assign you someone to mentor you. I had similar issues, but went ahead without a mentor. Fingers crossed, I have had no real problems yet, after all the bees have been doing this for thousands of years!
I built my top bars using the free plans at biobees.com - I'm not a good carpenter or plan reader, but I found it fairly straight forward.
In getting your bees, there are several online companies that ship bees, but if you want organic bees go to goldstarhoneybees.com. They also have 'how-to' videos on youtube.
My venture for next year is more top bars and I want to experiment with a Warre hive - (beethinking.com & thewarrestore.com).
Good luck to you in your next venture, Sue

 

[sgtmom52]

I recommend "Natural Beekeeping" by Ross Conrad and "The Backyard Beekeeper" by Kim Flottum.

I tried a top bar hive and was not happy with it. Although it is cheaper than a Langstroth hive it does has some issues. They are much harder to overwinter in colder areas. They were first developed for tropical areas. The comb is much more delicate and can break during inspections. Top bars also require the comb to be crushed to extract the honey, requiring the bees to build new comb each year. Producing wax is very labor intensive for bees ~ they must consume about 10 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. If your goal is honey production they are not as efficient as a Langstroth ~ if your goal is just pollination and just to have bees then it is worth a try.

We currently have 20 Langstroth hives in both 10 frame and 8 frame sizes. I recommend the 8 frame hives as they are much lighter in weight when you have to lift boxes.

 

[Beekissed]

I think the issue with using traditional comb frames that get reused is that the concentration of chemicals in that comb over time.

 

[Deb B]

I think the issue with using traditional comb frames that get reused is that the concentration of chemicals in that comb over time.

It's recommended that you recycle your frames every 3 years or 4 years when using Langstroth hives, partly for that reason. Even without any chemicals around, the comb gets quite dark and builds up frass from repeated brood rearing.

 

[sgtmom52]

It's recommended that you recycle your frames every 3 years or 4 years when using Langstroth hives, partly for that reason. Even without any chemicals around, the comb gets quite dark and builds up frass from repeated brood rearing.

We use wood frames with wax foundation. We date the frames and cycle them out as they get old. We do not change them all at the same time.