The girls are back!

[rubato]

We give honey to the neighbors when we have a hive. Paperwhites in years that we don't. If you keep bees you expect to get a few stings now and again and it is a reminder why 'bee sting' is a metaphor for a trivial injury. I love gardening barefoot which leads to trouble.

We control the bee genetics to keep them sweet by re-queening with mated queens. If they ever became really aggressive we would just smother them.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Rube, you're a lying bastard, I'd rather choke on a broccoli sprig...

Do you really want to go down this road?

[liberty]

Did I say 8? 9-frame supers.

The queen is out but I didn't actually get to see her. The candy plug in the queen cage was gone so they let her out. I pulled a few frames and they're busy making wax and stocking the cells with nectar and pollen.


yrs,
rubato

Do you make your own hive boxes? Why did you have to buy new bees? What happened to the last ones?

[liberty]

I have been thinking of going into the business of raising bees. But I know very little about it except I believe the services of the critters might be in great demand in the near future. I would appreciate any real life bee raising experience that anyone here might have.

[rubato]

Did I say 8? 9-frame supers.

The queen is out but I didn't actually get to see her. The candy plug in the queen cage was gone so they let her out. I pulled a few frames and they're busy making wax and stocking the cells with nectar and pollen.


yrs,
rubato

Do you make your own hive boxes? Why did you have to buy new bees? What happened to the last ones?

I've both made and bought hive boxes. You can order the parts online from Dadant and then nail them together.

The last hive failed a few years ago. It retrospect it was probably foulbrood but that is not certain.

The ways to get a new hives worth of bees and a mated queen are: capture a swarm. Have someone give them to you. Order it and they will deliver to your door. I could drive and get them too but its easier to have them delivered. Ordering was easier to schedule.

[rubato]

I have been thinking of going into the business of raising bees. But I know very little about it except I believe the services of the critters might be in great demand in the near future. I would appreciate any real life bee raising experience that anyone here might have.

I don't get the impression that its all that lucrative unless you have a lot of bees. Our postman when we got the first bees was a beekeeper who was about to retire from the USPS and he had over 100 hives. There is some physical work involved when you have that many hives and some capital investment in building a honey house, buying an uncapping machine, powered extractor, materials for a lot of hives. You'll want equipment to move the hives too. And he spent a lot of time on weekends marketing his honey to stores and at farmer's markets. Honey prices are held down by cheap imports from China but with some effort you might get a higher price by marketing it as a higher-value local honey.


yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Communist honey???

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Guinevere]

Locally raised honey is $12-15/pound here, at a minimum.

[Econoline]

I don't get the impression that its all that lucrative unless you have a lot of bees. Our postman when we got the first bees was a beekeeper who was about to retire from the USPS and he had over 100 hives. There is some physical work involved when you have that many hives and some capital investment in building a honey house, buying an uncapping machine, powered extractor, materials for a lot of hives. You'll want equipment to move the hives too. And he spent a lot of time on weekends marketing his honey to stores and at farmer's markets. Honey prices are held down by cheap imports from China but with some effort you might get a higher price by marketing it as a higher-value local honey.

This jibes well with my own recollections of my brother-in-law's small beekeeping business in southwestern Michigan some years ago. IIRC he had several dozen hives, maybe about a dozen on the 80 acres that we co-owned with them, the rest on various farms throughout the county. (BTW, he was rarely stung; I helped him out a couple of times while adding or removing supers and was stung just once, because he didn't have an extra pair of those big beekeeper's gloves and a bee flew up my shirt sleeve and I panicked. )

[rubato]

After extracting the combs are pretty shredded and the frames are covered with a thin film of sticky honey. I put both of the boxes back on the hive and by a week later they had cleaned them up and consolidated the residual honey into a few frames. Yesterday I took the boxes off and shifted frames until I had one box with almost completely empty comb. I took that box off and wrapped it in plastic with a couple of moth balls to keep the wax moths at bay. While I had the two honey supers off I opened up the top brood box and had a look. A lot of capped honey, some stored pollen, and much less brood than in the spring. The hive is packed with bees now and they don't need more with winter approaching. There were some drone cells, but no queen cells so swarming is unlikely. With the nearly empty honey super they have plenty of room for now. I'll check in a month and if there is enough honey I might extract one more time. The bottlebrush, sage, and rosemary are blooming so there is still a flow. I have a lot of thyme in the yard and the next time I open the hive I'll distribute a generous amount across the tops of the frames. Thymol is a natural treatment for varroa mites. The bees are naturally hygenic and they will cut up the thyme and take it through the hive to dispose of it outside, spreading the effects of thymol.

After handling hive equipment your hands are coated with propolis, wax and honey. The propolis smell persists for hours later even after scrubbing and its pleasant and subtle.

My sweetie said she will bottle honey tomorrow ( 6oz and 4oz jars ).

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Rube, you're a lying bastard, I'd rather choke on a broccoli sprig...

Do you really want to go down this road?

I have pointed this out elsewhere. Before you accuse someone of lying you should ask what motive they might have for lying. If there is no motive then lying is implausible. Here, I am saying that I would do what any beekeeper would do if they have a hive in their yard. It is as common as saying " if I am thirsty I would drink". If you have fractious bees you re-queen. I have re-queened, all of the beekeepers I know have done so. If the hive is so aggressive that you cannot wait, and they are in my yard where I garden every week, you smother the hive and re-start next year. The hive was being preyed on by skunks one time and became more defensive but putting anti-skunk measures in place sweetened their disposition back to normal.

The malignant hatred you nurture makes you unintelligent and boring.

yrs,
rubato

[Beer Sponge]

Kudos for the beekeeping rubato! Every bee matters on this planet. Thanks for providing a home for our valuable pollinating friends!

[rubato]

The viscosity seems a little lower this year but a pretty amber color and my wife insists on filling them past the shoulder 'because it looks nicer that way'. Five cases of honey in the jar. 60 jars, Two sizes. The 'honey list' needs a lot of work or we'll have too much left over. My goal is to have no more than two jars left for us but if we can give some away next year that will be ok too. And I need to get busy and print labels for all of them. One of my least favorite things to do is figure out software that I'll use once and not need again until after I've forgotten it.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

[Econoline]

A little apiary humor, if you haven't already seen this one...


http://xkcd.com/1439/