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

[Amiga]

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.  

I agree - killing the bees is not an option.

Can you contact the beekeeping group n your area and get an experienced bee person to advise?



I understand that if the tree guys know nothing about and are not prepared to work near a hive they have a problem. But killing a hive due to their inexperience? Nope.

Get a nearby bee person or group to help, and postpone the tree work for a little while. You may even find a tree contractor with a beekeeper on staff.

 

[Serenashome]

@waddles99 @Leahs Mom Sorry I didn't see the insulation question sooner. The board looks like this: http://www.lowes.com/pd_15358-46086-451156___?productId=3365576&pl=1&Ntt=insulation+board. It is just foam insulation board. The bees in the top bar can't access it since it is fitted into the lid which is above the bars.

I do not know if there is a more natural method to place inside the hive.

I know some people who have placed straw on top of the hive for insulation and some wrap their hives. The straw worries me due to getting mice and mold with it drawing damp. We have heard a lot of bad effects from wrapping due to it holding in moisture and killing the bees. So I would hesitate to recommend doing that.

 

[Serenashome]

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.

If you call your county extension office they will have a list of people who will remove the swarm safely for you.
Here is the website for you to find your county in Georgia. http://extension.uga.edu/about/county/index.cfm

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Georgia Beekeeping Assoc. has a very long list of people wanting to remove your bees. Find one closest to you and let them take them to their apiary.

http://www.gabeekeeping.com/ProductsAndServices/beeremoval.html

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Anyone else having a heck of a time with bridge comb?

My god, what a pain. I can't replace the queens yet as no idea what they will produce for bee behavior. Fingers crossed they are better than workers in hive now. Nucs we got this year were recently put together with mated queens from the south of the state. Was such a great deal, normal overwintered Nucs are $165 min here and these just made were only $145. I couldn't imagine keeping bees like what's in the apiary where the nucs were put together. More propolis than I'm use to and a lot of bridge comb. One hive closed off a third of the top bars. I've got to build another deep box just to put frames in one at a time to clean up! What a mess.

 

[Beekissed]

When I was building this hive box this spring I read a lot about making sure the frames or bars line up north-south to prevent bridge comb issues. Could that be what is happening...bees trying to line up their comb with that compass position?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

No, same orientation of compass as previous hives. Facing East for sunrise. Didn't have this problem before with Carniolians. It's definitely the bees themselves and crossing fingers the queen gives me better bees. I wont start to see her young for another few weeks then initial bees will die off and be replaced by July 4th. Only then will we know what we ended up with.

That is a interesting theory though. Never heard of it before. Not sure how well it holds up as people have been placing hives in every direction of the compass, 4 to a cluster for a long time. This was Brother Adam's method of placement. Clusters of 3 or 4 and max apiary size of 30ish. If 3 cluster you leave out North facing as that's darkest and would have 10 clusters to a site.

 

[Serenashome]

No, same orientation of compass as previous hives. Facing East for sunrise. Didn't have this problem before with Carniolians. It's definitely the bees themselves and crossing fingers the queen gives me better bees. I wont start to see her young for another few weeks then initial bees will die off and be replaced by July 4th. Only then will we know what we ended up with.

That is a interesting theory though. Never heard of it before. Not sure how well it holds up as people have been placing hives in every direction of the compass, 4 to a cluster for a long time. This was Brother Adam's method of placement. Clusters of 3 or 4 and max apiary size of 30ish. If 3 cluster you leave out North facing as that's darkest and would have 10 clusters to a site.

Before setting up our top bar hive we heard a lot about how we would have cross comb. Our first bees in it were Carniolians. One thing the man who built our top bar had said was make sure it is level. So we dug down and placed cinder blocks into the ground to make sure it was level and stayed level. We have had no issues at all. Could that be the problem? Perhaps your hives have shifted a little?

 

[Beekissed]

I had read that same thing. Observing videos of many hive removals from old houses, under houses, in the walls, etc., I never once heard them mention any cross combing nor did I see anything like that.....makes one get the idea that when bees get a chance to choose their own abode they must choose or place their combs to their own liking more so than we can provide. Could be they choose sites that are naturally level and lined up the way they like? Or they build comb in such a manner as to compensate for that when the site is not exactly level or lined up with the compass? Not sure, but they all seem very neatly done when they choose their own homes.

 

[Serenashome]

It does make sense to me that they need a level surface since when they are building comb they hang down in a string. Should they hang down in a string and touch another bar the comb gets built at an angle (which is actually straight down) rather than what we see as straight down within the hive. In nature this isn't a problem because as they build their first comb they go straight down using gravity and then build each comb next to it the same way. No one has put obstacles in their way like we do in a box.