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

[waddles99]

Nice work! Our top bar has a sheet of insulation board in the lid. I don't know if yours came with one but I think that sheet has really helped them through both the summer and winter.

Thanks a lot! I will have to look into insulation, I didn't have anything like that from the company I bought it from. Is it possible to fit a sheet of insulation from home depot or something in there?

 

[waddles99]

Well, I bought the bees today. A 3 lb package of Italian honeybees. Getting them in was an adventure(to say the least). It was kinda stressful, since I am a newbie beekeeper, but luckily the man we got them from was very knowledgeable and told us exactly what to do. It was fun, too, though. First, we couldn't quite get the metal can out. Finally we did by tipping the package on its side. Then, we finally got it out, but we had a very tough time getting them in the hive. They kept crawling up the sides and we had to keep coating them in sugar water. One crawled down my shirt and around the hood of my sweatshirt, and didn't even sting me! Very docile. Well, we got them all in nice and cozy, and then I realized I forgot to remove the cork on the candy in the queen cage! So we had to remove the top bars again, take out the queen, and then remove the cork. They were really angry with me, we had one casualty(mom got stung). But we got them all nice and tucked in again. I would say 95% are in the hive, the rest are still clinging to the box. I put it right under the entrance hole so hopefully they are all going to find there way in. They have their queen in there and their feeder, hopefully they know thats where home is. I was told not to touch it for 3 days and then see how everything is doing. I will just let nature take its course. When I removed the bar with the queen in order to take the cork out, a ton of bees were clustering, so thats a good sign. I was also told to leave the feeder in there until they have built 10 combs. Is that right? They only have access to 10 bars right now.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

So we had a very busy day Saturday in the garden. The wife and I were working along, clearing and tilling beds, take a break around 4pm and the wife asks "what's in the top of the mulberry tree?" I couldn't see anything, so she gets up, walks over, stops and says "hey, are those bees?"

I get up, yep it's a swarm from my TBH about 20' up the tree, so I call my mentor who catches swarms and is on the Indiana swarm call list, he comes over and as we are trying to catch them and see if he knocked the queen into his contraption we go through the TBH. So this queen not only filled the hive of about 15 bars full of brood, they had at least 10 queen cells capped in it and LOADS of bees still in the hive.

So I had to split it again, even after it swarmed. It's the only TBH that I have so I couldn't just take brood and stores out and put them in a different hive, we had to do a frankenstein job on it. I pulled a out a bar full of brood and bees, cut it to fit into a langstroth frame, affixed it with rubber bands and did that for one of the bars that had 3 queen cells on it. Shook in some more bees and closed it up.

The bees from the swarm that he knocked into a bucket left the hive we put them in, went back to the tree, he missed the queen. He had to leave for work so I had to do the catching alone, the wife is allergic to bees. I put this bucket on an 8' pole, raise it over my head and balance it, put another 8' pole on it and knock the cluster into it. I did this once and hit is a bunch of times, got a large amount of bees and dumped them in a Langstroth hive. Waited a few seconds, put the rest of the frames in and put the inner cover on, dumped more bees on the inner cover and within 5 minutes they all walked into the hive!!! I put three more bucket loads on that inner cover and just checked them yesterday and found the queen!

So I started the year with a weak TBH, bought a package of bees, caught a swarm, and split the TBH, I know have 4 hives!

@Serenashome has pics of the day on her phone, she can upload them.

Wow, what a day. I've had a couple days like that this year. I went from one hive to four but ants killed off one of them.

It is all assembled, i stained the stand, roof, and body separately though, that is why it is apart. All the assembly is done. The fact that all the pieces are precut and drilled make it so much easier.

Looks nice.

Well, I bought the bees today. A 3 lb package of Italian honeybees. Getting them in was an adventure(to say the least). It was kinda stressful, since I am a newbie beekeeper, but luckily the man we got them from was very knowledgeable and told us exactly what to do. It was fun, too, though. First, we couldn't quite get the metal can out. Finally we did by tipping the package on its side. Then, we finally got it out, but we had a very tough time getting them in the hive. They kept crawling up the sides and we had to keep coating them in sugar water. One crawled down my shirt and around the hood of my sweatshirt, and didn't even sting me! Very docile. Well, we got them all in nice and cozy, and then I realized I forgot to remove the cork on the candy in the queen cage! So we had to remove the top bars again, take out the queen, and then remove the cork. They were really angry with me, we had one casualty(mom got stung). But we got them all nice and tucked in again. I would say 95% are in the hive, the rest are still clinging to the box. I put it right under the entrance hole so hopefully they are all going to find there way in. They have their queen in there and their feeder, hopefully they know thats where home is. I was told not to touch it for 3 days and then see how everything is doing. I will just let nature take its course. When I removed the bar with the queen in order to take the cork out, a ton of bees were clustering, so thats a good sign. I was also told to leave the feeder in there until they have built 10 combs. Is that right? They only have access to 10 bars right now.

I remember how scary handling the first package was.

 

[rebrascora]

I have gabled roofs on my top bar hives and I put an old feather pillow on top of the bars for insulation, or a stack of old newspapers or some wool carpet off cuts.... but then I'm a hoarder so there are always plenty of things lying around here that will do the job without buying something.

I have misgivings about feeding packages so much syrup. I must admit that I have no personal experience of them (I only work with swarms) but the only real difference between a package and a swarm is that the bees in a swarm have filled their bellies with honey before they leave, to sustain them for a few days whilst they find and start setting up a new home. That honey can amount to no more than one pound maximum, probably considerably less, and very rarely do I need to feed a swarm unless it is a late (August) small cast swarm. The gallons of syrup that people pump into their bee packages does not seem to equate to that pound of honey that a swarm works from. Surely it is better for them to obtain whatever they need naturally from flowers than have syrup pumped into them, although I accept they do need some syrup to get started. I just don't understand why there is this urgency to see 10 combs built in a matter of a few weeks. Bigger is not always better and some recent research by Prof Tom Seeley of Cornell University suggested that small colonies actually survive better treatment free than larger ones. I certainly find that the colonies I have in small "conservation" hives, which probably equate to the size of one deep Langstroth brood box and no supers... approx. 8-9 combs, are my healthiest happiest colonies, come out of winter strongest and swarm earlier. They produce about 3 viable swarms each a year and then settle down to the job of building up bees and stores for winter. Of course I don't get to harvest any honey from these hives but I gain lots of new colonies. I have other hives for producing honey.

Anyway, I'm just saying that by all means feed a package some syrup to get them started but if there are flowers and nectar available in your area and the weather allows the bees to forage, then don't feel that you have to keep topping that feeder up beyond the first week.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

I can't remember what they are called but was chatting with a beekeeper other day who is trying out a "new" type of hive. It's like a shed and the bees are in the "wall" of it. Now that I'm trying to look it up can't find anything as I'd forgotten what it's called. Anybody heard of this?

She was saying when they went south a few states to check them out it was impressive. By the lay out bees are simply that much more manageable. Noting how feisty this persons bees were the day before moving some from a langstroth to this other type hive she was impressed how docile they'd become and believes it's due to the set up. It's intriguing and wanted to research it more before too much expansion of apiary. Working bees in the rain and many other benefits is worth looking into.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I think you may be talking about the eastern European bee houses?


https://brookfieldfarmhoney.wordpre...from-eastern-europe-to-oak-harbor-washington/


I do know a guy here in Northern Indiana that tried putting his hives inside his pole barn over one winter. He said it was a disaster as it was about 40 degrees warmer in the barn so that they thought it was warm enough for flight and would go outside and freeze before they could get back to the hives.

I know the European hives are not made to be warmer on the inside, but it is definitely something you want to think about if you're in a cold area and be sure there isn't a huge temperature difference atmosphere-wise in the shed.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Yeah, that's it! Cabinet doors with all the frames right there. Looking at it I see it's set up for constant honey removal or they'd swarm. Would think it would be about the same temp as if you put black wrap around hives and insulation on inner cover, better insulated and entrance is right there to elements. That's how we winter langstroth up here. Biggest problem here is winter thaws; they get active and run out of food stores. People tend to forget about the bees in winter then find them starved out in spring. That and were overrun by varroa if they didn't do a count and treat pre winter. That ones becoming very common.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@Egghead_Jr

Here's something I posted earlier in the thread you might enjoy looking at:

******************

Check these out - very interesting and seem like the style would be easy to work with. Like opening a kitchen cupboard!

So... Maybe we'll see some folks repurposing kitchen cupboards

http://www.keepingbackyardbees.com/the-slovenian-beehive-arrives-in-the-us/

 

[Egghead_Jr]

That's near what the European shed hive is about. I'd have to see how the frames slide out for attachments before taking the plunge. Bees we picked up this year are making more propolis than I've dealt with before. If not careful I could see putting a lot of effort into something that doesn't function. The idea is sound though and would make for much easier management. Now that I've seen some images on it have determined it's nothing I'd use for production hives. For an area to winter nucs and raise queens it has me thinking hard. Would make for the constant in and out of hives and moving frames to this hive and then that...some futzing about when raising a lot of queens and not just doing spring splits. Easy access frames and a shed is very appealing. I can see myself moving in the direction of selling northern survivor queens and over wintered nucs.

Thanks for the link and photo of cupboard set up. I'll have to find more stuff on the Euro and cupboard system. It will be a few years before I'm raising queens but it's good to be thinking ahead. Will be even longer before selling nucs. Want to get up to near 100 hives. Have use of two large parcels in the country without any apiaries around them. Believe each could support 50 without slowing production. Drawing a circle of 3 miles on a map it's all fields, woods, farms and waterways.

 

[katsdar]

I need your HELP I am the one who had the swarm of bees a month or so back, I need to have the tree trimmed and the tree company told me I have to kill the honey bee's before they can do any limb cutting, now the question, I do not want to kill these bee's, so I need your suggestions, can I put something over the hole in the tree to keep the bee's in? Or would someone come out and get the bee's or is there anything to make the bee's less aggressive when we are messing around their house? Can you tell I'm not a bee keeper so I have no idea what to do, just know I don't want to kill them, understand the impact on nature and the importance of bee's, besides they are really doing a nice job with my garden

but these limbs on the huge oak tree have to come off, old tree and stress cracks, but cutting above the hive and leaving the base of the tree so they can stay.