The Honey Factory

[Apis mellifera]

Your right, I don't have the same weather as you. It gets much colder up here in the Adirondacks than in Minnesota.

 

[duluthralphie]

Your right, I don't have the same weather as you. It gets much colder up here in the Adirondacks than in Minnesota.

On that night my thermometer read -68. But it was not official, some nearby had -70 to -72.

 

[Apis mellifera]

Those are fake temps, just like here to get the lowlanders to come up to the mountains. Are temps are closer to Vostok.

 

[CaliMaine]

I have just started my very own honey factory.

I was going to have two hives but decided to just buy one batch of bees, in case I kill them instead of two.

I can use advice from anyone and everyone with experience.

I do not plan to over winter my bees. I will use them as protein for the birds when their work is done.
My bee box:


View attachment 2078027View attachment 2078028

I have it level side to side and and 1/8th bubble high on the back side.

Here are my new workers;View attachment 2078032View attachment 2078033View attachment 2078034

this was right after I moved them into their new home.

I was out and visited them a little bit ago. There were 50-100 bees crawling on the box above the door. I hope that’s normal.

I have Saskartraz bees. I think that’s because the Sasquatch developed them.

@R2elk might know more. As I said these are my first ones.

I know they were friendly and would purr when they sat on my arm, so I could pet them.


It was a tad intimidating to have a box of bees clumped together and buzzing like mad in my hands. I was not sure how getting them into the box would go.

It was not bad, I took the queen out first. She assured me we would get along fine and she had no hostility towards me. Hopefully, she pays her rent.

Her box had a wood plug and not a candy plug in it. I popped the plug out and put a marshmallow into the hole.

I hung her box between two supers, then dumped the rest into the box and replaced the supers I had removed to make space to dump them.

All of this was accomplished without a sting!

I am a tad nervous they won’t like my box and leave tonight.

I gave them a pollen patty and a jug of sugar water inside the box and I have a chick waterer set up outside the hive for them.

They have been here 4 hours. I will check on them in an hour or so.

Ok back-up. First, welcome to bee land, honey. Lol. We have two hives, in our third year. Last spring was a complete wash- lost all the bees and little honey produced. very sad. Hoping to do better this year. My question: you mentioned bees for protein- did you feed them to chickens? Can you feed dead bees to chickens? Just curious. (Newbie chicken coop-er here).

 

[R2elk]

Ok back-up. First, welcome to bee land, honey. Lol. We have two hives, in our third year. Last spring was a complete wash- lost all the bees and little honey produced. very sad. Hoping to do better this year. My question: you mentioned bees for protein- did you feed them to chickens? Can you feed dead bees to chickens? Just curious. (Newbie chicken coop-er here).

My chickens never bothered the dead bees but guineas might like them.

 

[duluthralphie]

Ok back-up. First, welcome to bee land, honey. Lol. We have two hives, in our third year. Last spring was a complete wash- lost all the bees and little honey produced. very sad. Hoping to do better this year. My question: you mentioned bees for protein- did you feed them to chickens? Can you feed dead bees to chickens? Just curious. (Newbie chicken coop-er here).

I have not fed them to the chickens. I have no idea if you can.

 

[Apis mellifera]

My question: you mentioned bees for protein- did you feed them to chickens? Can you feed dead bees to chickens? Just curious. (Newbie chicken coop-er here).

Sorry for the loss of your bees, its a sinking feeling when you lose hives. On the plus side if you take care of the drawn comb its great to start new hives with.
Some beekeepers use drone trap frames as a part of their Integrated Pest Management. When drone brood is capped they will pull the frame, freeze it, then put it back into the hive for bees to clean up the dead drone brood and mites within the cells. Others pull the frames and lay them out for their chickens. Chickens will gladly eat up brood, but it does damage the comb. Workers will repair it in most cases. Whole adult bees chickens wont bother eating, dead or alive.

 

[jerryse]

Opened up my 2 hives . Looking good on the June hive . About 8 1/2 frames of capped honey in the upper deep . Bottom brood box about 5 frames being used . July hive is holding steady at 5 frames being used . So basically a nuke going into winter . They both had to draw comb .

 

[karenerwin]

I looked at my 2 hives today too. The split hive which has been weak all along was dead and gone.

As you can see all that was there were these dead bees on the bottom screen.
I think they probably starved. The frames are allempty.

I did not collect honey or anything. I will freeze these frames and use them next spring.
The original hive seems to be alright. I took off both supers and gave them a 2 to 1 sugar water mixture. i don’t really feel like they have enough honey reserves either but we will see.

 

[R2elk]

I finished bottling the honey today. Better than last year's no honey but not by much. A whole 9 lbs. 12 oz.