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

[Beekissed]

So, the problem with the Buckfast bees are that they are too proliferant in the spring and one must provide more room for all that honey production? That's a problem I'm willing to deal with....

I think it would be easier in the TBHs to provide more room and keep them producing. From what I've read, you just remove a few bars of comb now and again and replace those with empty bars. Or you could let them swarm~right into a waiting and empty hive.

There is a discussion on Beemaster right now about letting the bees swarm. Some are of the mindset that, if you have all the hives you wish to have at the moment~let 'em swarm! It's what bees do.

I think that is the kind of beekeeping I want to do. There really isn't any money in beekeeping in my area, nor would I want to go into it to make money.

We use honey as sweetener for nearly everything at our house, so buying honey in those quantities get's a little costly. I want to keep four working hives here at my place to keep my orchard and gardens pollinated, keep me in natural sweet goodness and maybe sell a few jars of natural comb honey at my roadside stand. Not to mention having wax for candles, salves, lip balms, etc.

Top bar hives and letting the bees do just what bees are supposed to do seems to fit my lifestyle and my husbandry style as well.

 

[SamG347]

I feel this really depends a lot more on the queen than it does the RACE anymore. Almost all bees are a mix anymore. Well shouldn't say that but most Italians are. And DONT GET ANY BUCKFAST queens from TEXAS!!! I only trust Canadian breeders for buckfast queens. My apiary right now is soley Italian local mutts. But I plan to add Cordovan, Carniolan, Buckfast, and Russian stock in the future. I know many great chemical free/mite resistant breeders and really looking forward to expanding with their queens. Italians keep a big broodnest and will produce usually on a good year ample amounts of honey. You really cannot go wrong with local bees no matter what the "race." So my first thing if I was you would be look for local breeders producing local queens or nucleus colonies.

 

[Reinbeau]

Buckfasts don't need all that room initially for honey, it's for brood - they build up fast. As for top bar, I have no problem with it, I just don't care for them for our style of beekeeping. It's great to 'let bees be bees', our bees do just that, we just manage them a bit more, because honey production is important to us - we have customers who buy from us regularly now, and we supply a local health food store with local, unprocessed honey. They pay us full price for it, mark it up, and sell it for more! No matter how you deal with your bees, have fun with it!

 

[SamG347]

And you can have healthy bees in both Langstroth hives and Topbar. I have kept/worked with all styles of hive. If you want the best of both worlds try and combo hive. Beewrangle...who use to have a website you could google not sure if he does anymore worked with these. I have two currently. They are topbar in the bottome but can be supered with Lang supers.

 

[Reinbeau]

Yep, I've seen Beewrangler's site - I think it's gone, but you can find it on some of the wayback machine type sites (web archives). I'll poke around and see if I can find it...the only thing that comes up on Google isn't who I think we're talking about.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

My hives that I built are top bar hives. Not that I think they are better but there is no way I can move a full section of a Langstroth hive

 

[Rosalind]

Am starting this year with Italians. Wanted to start last year, but I felt like I needed to get the garden established and plant some more early-spring/late-winter bee food plants. Should be OK now...I hope.

My neighbor down the road got three hives a few years ago. I was hoping his bees would pollinate my garden and orchard, but no such luck--they are lazy bees, I had to go around with a paintbrush in the orchard to get a reasonable amount of apricots and peaches. They come into the garden just long enough to pollinate the Creeping Charlie and then leave.

Seems that peach blossoms, squash, sunflower and basil blossoms are less tasty than the weeds.

I am lazy though, I bought a Langstroth with four supers, more or less pre-assembled (I had to put in the foundation, that's it). Will try a home-built top bar with Russians next year. Read about a zillion books and internet articles, took a short class, have never been allergic, so hoping it will go smoothly. Wanted to get some of the mite-resistant hybrids from a local apiary, but they were sold out of packages and nucs exactly two weeks after they posted on their website that bees were available. Is it suddenly trendy to keep bees? Ah well, next year.

Mostly I am concerned about my dogs. I have two very large furry dogs, and I suspect the bees will think they are bears. My Newfie is especially bear-like and curious. I don't think they will knock over the hives, but I do think they will get multiple stings before they figure out that the bees are not to be trifled with. Hoping that the dogs learn to keep their distance and not act too rowdy in the presence of buzzing. I suspect they are slow learners: last summer, when my neighbor's bees were mucking about in my garden, the dogs kept trying to sniff the bees (do they smell odd to dogs?) and the Pyrenees decided to eat one. I guess he crunched it before it managed to sting his mouth, but he never ate another. He has stepped on them since then, don't know if intentionally or not. I keep the empty hive in their room with some beeswax candles inside, so they could get used to the smell. I'm hoping that will help them find the hive less interesting.

 

[sgtmom52]

Quote:
I have 2 German Shepherds and a Beagle. The Beagle walks all around the hives, ignoring them and the bees do not bother him. My male German Shepherd thinks that bees are flying snacks and catches and eats them. I'm sure he does get stung, however it does not seem to bother him.

If your dog does get stung and you are concerned about reactions, dogs can be given Benadryl for itching & swelling. Typical dose is 1 to 2 mg per pound of body weight ~ example a 50 lb dog can take 50 to 100 mg every 8 hours. http://www.vetpets.net/animaltimes/humandrugs.html

 

[Rosalind]

Thanks sgtmom52--that makes me feel a lot better!

 

[heritagebirds]

NICE! I'm taking a class...got my order together for "hardware" today and get my bees on April 17th!