The Honey Factory

[OhZark Biddies]

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.

Yeah, Dr Leo is the Ruskie who translated the other Ruskie’s book into gibberish so that I could read it

You might poke around on beesource.com or similar and find some of the success and fail accounts from those that have run a horz hive ... their information is a bit less ‘rose colored glasses’ than Dr Leo ( who is marketing himself, so he can make a living as a speaker at beek clubs and seminars, etc. ) ...

I’m not knocking him, just saying that there is a more complete picture to be had...

 

[OhZark Biddies]

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

Right, Dr Leo’s ‘layens’ frames are their own thing... but many folks just run standard deep Lang’s frames in a horz hive...

The Lazutin hive was based off two deep Lang frames joined together, with the tabs cut off the lower frame, so basically the same as two deep Lang hive

 

[R2elk]

@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?story_fbid=3520125724678676&substory_index=0&id=122938784397404&ref=page_internal&__tn__=*s*s-R

That is actually a decent contest. Unlike BYC, they are not demanding full rights to photos submitted such as in the calendar contests. They are only wanting "the right to publish your photos in our catalog, website, advertisements and social media."

 

[OhZark Biddies]

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.

That’s an interesting idea.... I don’t know that I’ve ever seen where that was done... but my immediate thought goes to a long skinny winter cluster and how that would relate to surface area and heat loss of the cluster... but it would be interesting to try

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

And nobody has bees around here, as far as I know. The only bees would be wild ones.

If the beekeepers bees had foulbrood then its possible to kill other bees by feeding it. So called experts say not to feed other bees honey to other bees for this reason.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

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

If the beek treated the bees with powdered cow poops.... then yes

Of course there are several ways to treat for mites, but I’ve never heard of treatments impacting honey flavor... I’m sure it could though...

but treatments certainly impact the safety and quality of the honey... so I should hope no one is treating bees with a honey super on the hive... or collecting ( and selling) honey that was in the hive while treating...

And just as a ‘btw’ ... I don’t consider dusting with powdered sugar ‘treating for mites’, even though some folks have tried to claim it as a treatment ... sugar dusting for mites is used for getting mite counts, it does little to nothing as far as treating for mites... even if some folks suggest otherwise

But your question did bring one other thing to mind, and that would be smoking the hive...

the smoke can add some off taste to honey depending on what’s being used in the smoker...

I have heard folks talk about using dry horse apples or cow patties in a smoker because it smolders well... so I could imagine that being another possibility of the taste

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Sell it or gift it to someone for bear bait. They take it out in the woods and burn it. The smoke brings bears in.

As I said, to my knowledge we don't have bears around here. Anyway, I don't know anyone who hunts bear. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I have an idea!!!!


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

Bees don't bite... leastways, so I've always been told. They sure do kick awful hard though!

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

As I said, to my knowledge we don't have bears around here. Anyway, I don't know anyone who hunts bear. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Definitely never heard of anyone hunting bear in Missouri or Iowa! You'd be out there for years waiting for one to come through!

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Definitely never heard of anyone hunting bear in Missouri or Iowa! You'd be out there for years waiting for one to come through!

you never know... they’re getting more common.... we had one 1/2 mile from our house less than a month ago...

And this guy was making headlines as he was waltzing through Illinois the other day looking for picnic baskets to swipe
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local...cle_a9e1cbec-6465-511e-b37f-2819b2838d60.html

But MO doesn’t have a bear hunting season at this point, so here you just have to sit and wait for one and then play ‘tag’ like this if one happens by