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

[Reinbeau]

Put your swarm lured traps 10-15' high - that's the preferred height for the scouts.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Got my beeswax to rub in my hive today along with some bee lure pheromone.

 

[heritagebirds]

Quote:
Good luck!

My girls are in and out of the hive box....

I hope they plan on staying.

 

[SurprisingWoman]

I have a question. I am getting my bees on Saturday. We get a LOT of wind. The trees in my town all bend to the west because I live in a mountain canyon.

I had planned on putting the hive back under the peach tree. http://www.flickr.com/photos/87407543@N00/4542262878/ You can see in the corner of the fence area where the red x is. This are will not get sun until 10:00 or so. It will get shade in the heat of the day. The hive entrance will face the garden (which is fenced off to keep out our free rangers) and the area it will faced will not be worked a lot. It is currently planted in lettuce and spinach.

If morning sun is more important I can put the hive here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/87407543@N00/4541652231/ and face it east. It will be a pain to mow but we can work it out. It will be in the wind and I will have to make a wind break but it should get morning sun.

What is the better choice?

 

[Reinbeau]

Morning sun and afternoon shade (like after 3 pm) is ideal. Bees are like teenagers, they don't get up until a bit later, when it's warm out.

 

[Rainbow Advaya]

I am sorry if this has been discussed, but I made it halfway through this thread and didn't see it.

I was going to start keeping bees this year, but finances were low so I got chickens instead. I already had a building I could use as a coop, but I'd have to buy all new stuff for the bees. Not including the price of the bees.

My main cost though, for bees, is the fact where we live has bears. I was told I would have to run an electric fence around the bee yard. I could not afford that this year, so I postponed it.

However I took a bee keeping class where an inspector with the department of agriculture came to speak and someone asked him about bears and bees and he said if an electric fence was not feasible he recommended a top bar hive hung from a tree branch. He said a bear would swipe at it, but would not be able to get in. I don't know though, bears seem determined. Next year I plan to run several hives, both top bar and conventional, but I plan to fence the area in either way.

My dad was a beekeeper but lost his to mites in the early 90s during the huge pandemic that wiped out many people's bees before they knew what it was. He opened his hive the following spring and had supers full of honey, but dead bees.

 

[noahsgeese]

My bees are coming soon!! I can tell you about them when I get them!!!

 

[heritagebirds]

Quote:
Good luck! Are you getting a package? I had a tough time getting the syrup can out of the box. I finally went out and put my other five frames in. There was a piece of comb that they had built out too far...it fell off and landed on the bottom, I guess they will recycle it? Ms. Queen was moving around, hopefully doing her thing.

 

[SurprisingWoman]

I got my bees today. I ended up putting them where they will get quite a bit of sun but will be shaded in the evening, I think.

My friend is the one that offered to help get me started in bees. He bought 4 lbs of Italian bees and brought them and the hive over this morning.

He told me that wax would be the best foundation for my hive since I am not going to use an extractor. I am good with that decision.

When he got here he had not put the foundation on the frames yet. The frames have the horizontal wires on them and there are no wires in the cut wax foundation.

When he got here he put the wax on the frames by weaving the wax in and out of the wires and putting the wax in the groove but not actually attaching the wax in any way.

When we were dumping the bees into the hive the wax came off of two of the frames. We rewaxed them with two new sheets and closed up the hive.

I was unfamiliar with this process and so I came in to see if there was a better way to do the wax to the frame and I have discovered that the wires should have been embedded into the frame or the wax will slide out of the frames, which is what is probably happening since it happened with at least two while the hive was open.

He won't be back for a week or so and to be honest I am not sure he knows what he is doing.

What should I do? Should I go buy an embedder tomorrow and take out one frame at a time and embed the wire myself? I don't want my bees to leave but I can't even imagine what a mess it is in their hive. I can probably do all the frames if I take them out one at a time. I have two boxes with ten frames each.

Please help me. I am so upset. This is just really disheartening.

 

[heritagebirds]

Sorry to hear about that. My wax foundation came with vertical wires embedded already. If you can get an embedder, that would probably work better. I hope that you have good luck with it. Mine were in for a week with only half the frames, so maybe you have time to embed the wire in the other frames and change them out????