The Honey Factory

[duluthralphie]

Okay. Deer I don' mind. Will it hurt them?

Try baking with it and see if you can use it? Or maybe in baked beans or cowboy beans.

or throw it.

I have never found a honey I don’t care for yet. So it’s hard for me to have an answer.

But I have a question for you old experienced guys, the elders of the group..... the ancients..

If the Beek had treated for mites or disease during peak honey production, could that account for the taste of his honey?

 

[duluthralphie]

Okay. Deer I don' mind. Will it hurt them?

We can hope it will kill deer!!!

Deer are a huge pest for me, and the DNR watches them closely....so bad honey sounds good to me

 

[duluthralphie]

I hate for you to have to waste it ... but I don't think I'd dump it outside.
Can't think of anything else to do with it

I have an idea!!!!


Use it as a soothing salve on your bee bites...

 

[duluthralphie]

there are some plants/flowers that can give honey a methane taste and smell...

I had some fall honey one year that had a strong funk to it... I just mixed it with some cleaner honey and it wasn’t bad for use in baking, etc... but I actually prefer a more robust dark honey with a little funk vs bland clear honey... but I know many people prefer light floral honey and don’t like any of the funky tastes

but it might not be the flowers... the bees might have been using composting cow patties or a compost pile or a cattle watering hole to get water, and the high methane content flavored the honey...

I think sometimes they’ll be after the salt and minerals on those things too, but often the composting action makes those things a source of warm water on cool mornings so the bees will sometimes draw the water from those sources if the conditions make it favorable

do you know anyone that would be interested in making mead from the honey? That has become a popular DIY thing lately, and I think the fermentation process would likely reduce the taste, particularly if mixed with a milder honey.. maybe?

And most homemade dark beer tastes like manure do no one would notice..

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Ok, I've been watching videos of horizontal hives and I am intrigued... I like the fact that you don't have to stir the whole nest up if you just want to rob some honey or check a frame or 2. Seems much less disruptive than unstacking their house, tipping them everywhich way, stacking them on the ground in the wrong order, shaking some out on the ground in the process... My only question is if it would be possible to put a queen excluder in one to keep her to one end of the hive so you know you have pure honey on the other end. Then you could possibly make a hybrid hive with flow frames on the honey end and normal ones on the brood end for even easier honey harvest. Could even possibly make it so the flow frames drain down under the hive and make another box under the hive to put the jars in so you could crack the frame and walk away without worrying about a ton of bugs getting in the jars.

I’ve never used one... so take this with a grain of salt ...

But I have intended to build one and try it, and over the years I have read a ton about them from those that have kept them on beek forums... and I’ve talked with beek friends that have had or still have horz. hives...

Many folks build giant coffin length boxes that are unrealistic as far as the queens ability to fill it with brood and/or their local nectar flow’s allowing the bees to fill it with honey...

And it’s common to hear that the bees don’t store honey sideways very well... at least not without some frame management from the beek... so there is a risk of the queen becoming honey bound if the beek doesn’t keep up...

Where they seem to work well is where you shuffle honey filled frames to the outside and replace with empty frames, and then remove the filled frames once capped...

so the honey collection is a bit more like the warre hive in that you take a bit here and there, rather than all at once...

But the idea of getting the bees to stack honey into ten or twenty frames to one end in the same way that they fill supers vertically in a Lang’s hive, seems to be difficult to achieve... at least for most folks in a temperate climate with a fairly long growing season...

And there are proven strategies for shuffling frames in a horz hive particularly in fall and then again in spring... but I forget what those are at the moment

As for queen excluders, I think I’ve seen people use a standard excluder built in a custom frame in a horz hive, but more often a divider board is used with honey frames on the other side... the queen is unlikely to move to the outside of the brood frames across the divider than she is to move up into a honey super on a Lang’s hive... so a traditional queen excluder is probably not needed in a horz hive

I don’t have any experience with ‘flow’ frames... they seemed like a ‘gimmick’ to me but maybe there is something to them, I don’t know?

In any case, I’d still like to build a horz hive one of these days, just to put some theory into practice...

Be sure to pay attention to folks on the internet that have been running a horz for multiple seasons vs. all the internet ‘look at my new horz hive’ information ... I think they can work, but not really any better than a vertical hive... other than the point you make about not disturbing the brood nest as much

 

[OhZark Biddies]

And most homemade dark beer tastes like manure do no one would notice..

I don’t know, I think the mead crowd seems to be more like wine snobs in that they like to pontificate about ‘undertones’ and discuss important things like that... but I think some of the homemade beer folks like to do that too

I’ve only ever had just a sip of mead, but it did have a mild taste honey taste

 

[OhZark Biddies]

@R2elk

I got on here this morning to point you to a ‘bees on flowers’ photo contest that I saw in an email that one of the beek suppliers sent me...

I thought you could enter, so we could be excited when you won!

I swore it was Mann Lake, but I seem to have lost the email and can’t find it on their website ... if I see it I’ll post back

Edit: found it on Facebook... but I’m not on there and have trouble navigating it... so hopefully this link works

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?st...2938784397404&ref=page_internal&__tn__=*s*s-R

 

[duluthralphie]

Ok, I've been watching videos of horizontal hives and I am intrigued... I like the fact that you don't have to stir the whole nest up if you just want to rob some honey or check a frame or 2. Seems much less disruptive than unstacking their house, tipping them everywhich way, stacking them on the ground in the wrong order, shaking some out on the ground in the process... My only question is if it would be possible to put a queen excluder in one to keep her to one end of the hive so you know you have pure honey on the other end. Then you could possibly make a hybrid hive with flow frames on the honey end and normal ones on the brood end for even easier honey harvest. Could even possibly make it so the flow frames drain down under the hive and make another box under the hive to put the jars in so you could crack the frame and walk away without worrying about a ton of bugs getting in the jars.

I have been thinking about this also.

I think it would be easy to “adjust” the size of the excluder.

I am wondering about making the horizontal hive the same width as the langstroth is long. Basically, setting a langstroth on its side. The extra depth would mean custom making the frames, but would also help put airspace around wintering bees.

I could use the excluder for the langstroths then.
Also at that size I could attach a medium and deep frame together and would be the right depth (almost). I could then use foundation or existing comb. Also it would fit into the spinner for extraction.

I have no opinion on the free flow frames, I have read good and bad about them.

 

[Kusanar]

I’ve never used one... so take this with a grain of salt ...

But I have intended to build one and try it, and over the years I have read a ton about them from those that have kept them on beek forums... and I’ve talked with beek friends that have had or still have horz. hives...

Many folks build giant coffin length boxes that are unrealistic as far as the queens ability to fill it with brood and/or their local nectar flow’s allowing the bees to fill it with honey...

And it’s common to hear that the bees don’t store honey sideways very well... at least not without some frame management from the beek... so there is a risk of the queen becoming honey bound if the beek doesn’t keep up...

Where they seem to work well is where you shuffle honey filled frames to the outside and replace with empty frames, and then remove the filled frames once capped...

so the honey collection is a bit more like the warre hive in that you take a bit here and there, rather than all at once...

But the idea of getting the bees to stack honey into ten or twenty frames to one end in the same way that they fill supers vertically in a Lang’s hive, seems to be difficult to achieve... at least for most folks in a temperate climate with a fairly long growing season...

And there are proven strategies for shuffling frames in a horz hive particularly in fall and then again in spring... but I forget what those are at the moment

As for queen excluders, I think I’ve seen people use a standard excluder built in a custom frame in a horz hive, but more often a divider board is used with honey frames on the other side... the queen is unlikely to move to the outside of the brood frames across the divider than she is to move up into a honey super on a Lang’s hive... so a traditional queen excluder is probably not needed in a horz hive

I don’t have any experience with ‘flow’ frames... they seemed like a ‘gimmick’ to me but maybe there is something to them, I don’t know?

In any case, I’d still like to build a horz hive one of these days, just to put some theory into practice...

Be sure to pay attention to folks on the internet that have been running a horz for multiple seasons vs. all the internet ‘look at my new horz hive’ information ... I think they can work, but not really and better than a vertical hive... other than the point you make about not disturbing the brood nest as much

The ones I have been watching are a guy with reasonably new horizontal hives, but he hooked up with Dr. Leo, who is the guy that runs horizontalhive.com and I believe is also the Russian guy that was mentioned in this thread a while back. Dr. Leo is currently doing the hive checks for them on video and explaining everything while he is checking and doing everything. So, new bee owner and new hives, but experienced beek actually doing the care at this point.

He recommends going into the hive once in the spring and once in the fall and leaving them alone the rest of the time. The ones he is helping maintain are in their first spring, one was bought bees, the other was a captured swarm. He split both at the spring check as they were both getting ready to swarm already due to doing so well, one of them had 4 capped queen cells. When he did the splits, he took 2-3 frames of brood with the nurse bees plus a frame with a decent amount of resources (pollen and nectar / honey) for each split, then he put an empty frame or 2 back on the door end as that end is where the brood is.

The hives they are working with have I believe 14 frames, so not huge, and they aren't the big square frames but are wider than they are tall.

Another bonus is that you only have to lift a frame at a time, not an entire box full of bees unless you are doing a split and needing to move the 5-6 frames you are taking out to the new hive.

He also recommends with a new baby hive to put a plywood divider in the hive and kind of box them in on the door end and give them access to a few more frames at a time as they can handle the space to make it easier for them to climate control.

 

[Kusanar]

I’ve never used one... so take this with a grain of salt ...

But I have intended to build one and try it, and over the years I have read a ton about them from those that have kept them on beek forums... and I’ve talked with beek friends that have had or still have horz. hives...

Many folks build giant coffin length boxes that are unrealistic as far as the queens ability to fill it with brood and/or their local nectar flow’s allowing the bees to fill it with honey...

And it’s common to hear that the bees don’t store honey sideways very well... at least not without some frame management from the beek... so there is a risk of the queen becoming honey bound if the beek doesn’t keep up...

Where they seem to work well is where you shuffle honey filled frames to the outside and replace with empty frames, and then remove the filled frames once capped...

so the honey collection is a bit more like the warre hive in that you take a bit here and there, rather than all at once...

But the idea of getting the bees to stack honey into ten or twenty frames to one end in the same way that they fill supers vertically in a Lang’s hive, seems to be difficult to achieve... at least for most folks in a temperate climate with a fairly long growing season...

And there are proven strategies for shuffling frames in a horz hive particularly in fall and then again in spring... but I forget what those are at the moment

As for queen excluders, I think I’ve seen people use a standard excluder built in a custom frame in a horz hive, but more often a divider board is used with honey frames on the other side... the queen is unlikely to move to the outside of the brood frames across the divider than she is to move up into a honey super on a Lang’s hive... so a traditional queen excluder is probably not needed in a horz hive

I don’t have any experience with ‘flow’ frames... they seemed like a ‘gimmick’ to me but maybe there is something to them, I don’t know?

In any case, I’d still like to build a horz hive one of these days, just to put some theory into practice...

Be sure to pay attention to folks on the internet that have been running a horz for multiple seasons vs. all the internet ‘look at my new horz hive’ information ... I think they can work, but not really any better than a vertical hive... other than the point you make about not disturbing the brood nest as much

Ooh, I also forgot, a horizontal hive doesn't mean the frames are horizontal, they hang exactly the same as a normal frame, it's just 14 frames in a line rather than 5 or so frames in a line stacked 3 deep