The Honey Factory

[karenerwin]

@duluthralphie I am very impressed with your photos of the bees and egg cells on your frames. I have been too nervous still to even find the queen, let alone take close up pictures of things! Hopefully once it warms up and I have more opportunity to get out there and open the hive I will get more confident.
I did open it the other day to add more sugar water since I am not seeing bees bringing back much in the way of pollen.
Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 80's instead of the 50's and low to mid 60's.

 

[duluthralphie]

As long as you have a way to make sure the queen stays in the hive body, the workers will stay with her.

I was going to say this!!!

 

[duluthralphie]

Does anyone on this thread have a technique for raising a small amount of honey bee queens?

There are a lot of techniques shown on the Internet.
The best ways appear to require you to graft the queen cell before it hatches.

 

[duluthralphie]

I hived my bees last week. But it has been pretty chilly and or rainy since then. I will say it was very nerve wracking to hive them. I've never done this before, but I got it done and did not get stung!

Grats..

Did you take time to sit down and talk to some, pet a few?

 

[duluthralphie]

@duluthralphie I am very impressed with your photos of the bees and egg cells on your frames. I have been too nervous still to even find the queen, let alone take close up pictures of things! Hopefully once it warms up and I have more opportunity to get out there and open the hive I will get more confident.
I did open it the other day to add more sugar water since I am not seeing bees bringing back much in the way of pollen.
Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 80's instead of the 50's and low to mid 60's.

There should be a lot of pollen and nectar down there for them.

I have fruit trees blooming all over up here, I see the black cherries are in bloom now.

I stopped feeding mine a couple weeks ago. They had enough sugar water stored in cells. I wanted to force them to use it before the bloom started.

When I was in the hive yesterday, I pulled all 10 frames in the top super. It was amazing how much nectar and pollen they have stored up.

I did not check the bottom super but I saw a ton of bees down there. I did not see the queen, I looked but that was a lot like playing “where’s Waldo?”.

On the photos, I cheated and used a stylus pen so I wouldn’t have to take my leather gloves off.

 

[electrycmonk]

i need to find some local kayaks for the kiddos at out lake house soon....

 

[electrycmonk]

Just hold your breath when near the smelly end.
Unless...well...
That could be a problem.

As I have known many folks with various lengths of dreads.... those that your talking about are already hygenic education deficits... All that I have known never had the "smeely hair" you joke about.....

 

[karenerwin]

I hope to be able to tell more tomorrow when it is supposed to be in the 80’s.
I did remove the extra beeswax they were building on the under side of the cover andI added the 2nd brooder box.
When I added the additional sugar water Icould tell there was still some (plenty?) in it already. But it was made. If they don’t use it I’ll just dump it.

 

[Clearwater Chicken]

View attachment 2139015
View attachment 2139016I hope to be able to tell more tomorrow when it is supposed to be in the 80’s.
I did remove the extra beeswax they were building on the under side of the cover andI added the 2nd brooder box.
When I added the additional sugar water Icould tell there was still some (plenty?) in it already. But it was made. If they don’t use it I’ll just dump it.

Nice looking bees

 

[duluthralphie]

View attachment 2139015
View attachment 2139016I hope to be able to tell more tomorrow when it is supposed to be in the 80’s.
I did remove the extra beeswax they were building on the under side of the cover andI added the 2nd brooder box.
When I added the additional sugar water Icould tell there was still some (plenty?) in it already. But it was made. If they don’t use it I’ll just dump it.

Why are you only using 7 frames and the feeder? I thought you needed 8 plus the feeder in a brood box.