Bees

[steev]

Having seen loose swarms several times on the farm, I took up a neighbor's offer of free bee-keeping equipment that he doesn't use; I've not yet seen what he has to offer, but I'm sure that if I build it, "they will come".

The valley's beekeeper took all his hives to the almonds in the Central Valley a couple weeks ago; I hear they're getting $200/hive for a month, these days.

[glenn10]

That documentary I spoke of (its on Netflix) shows the whole process of transporting bees to some of these almond and fruit orchards. Looks like a pretty stressfully transition to me getting transported and getting fed I think corn syrup to keep them happy till they get to work.
I have lots of bumbles and other various bee species here that's seem to be making a great comeback for in recent years I went the whole summer without seeing a single one. I am not very old(turning 35 on Saturday) but when I was a kid at our farm when the apple orchard was in bloom the trees just hummed there were so many. They are making a comeback slowly here every year there are more and more.
I would really like to do honeybees though as something "fun" I can start doing with my family. We already do a little bit of maple syrup in the late winter but it would be nice to also have this other little bee treat in the summer.

[greenfinger]

Take a peek at beesource.com forums. We started 2 hives last year after the spring necter flows. They still produces enough honey to feed themselves thru winter and were both still alive last week. I can't wait to get my head back in the hives come spring. Addictive little bugs.
According to the commercial guys at beesource, colony collapse disorder is a thing of the past, while there are other reasons for a colony to decide to leave your hive.

[flowerweaver]

I think colony collapse is complex, but many people agree it is from the over-abundance of environmental pesticides and the unnatural trucking of something like half the continent's bees to live in close quarters pollinating a monoculture of almonds in the west.

Colony health also depends on where you live, what kind of bees you have, and how proactive a beekeeper you are. My friends in KY don't have any problems with varroa mites or hive beetles and they use natural practices on gentle bees. We do have them down here in Texas, but the bees suppliers also raise a more aggressive bee (probably some African bees in the lineage thus many states won't let you buy from Texas suppliers) that can fight off hive predators. Gentle bees don't survive here, they succumb to these pests.

Adding too many empty supers (boxes) can create territory for pests to thrive that a hive cannot defend. One of the natural treatments for varroa mite is to dust your bees regularly with powdered sugar. This gives them reason to clean themselves off, thus removing their own mites. Not narrowing your entrance after a honey flow (blooming period when nectar is actively gathered) can induce robbing by other colonies and leave your bees without food. Many inattentive beekeepers will find their hives leave for better digs. If your colony builds up and you don't supply extra supers they will leave.

This is not to say colony collapse isn't real, because it is, but many bees leave for other reasons. I would not let these stories keep you from beekeeping. I would recommend reading as much material as possible first to understand how bee colonies work, join a local beekeepers group and find a mentor to get started.

[flowerweaver]

Here's an interesting article I read this morning about the use of nicotine and caffeine nectar by bees that wards off intestinal parasites which are thought to be part of the colony collapse disorder. I know my bees love the used coffee grounds I pick up at the coffee shop and spread in my garden, finding it in the buckets first. I've often wondered if our honey is caffeinated! I also grow ornamental tobacco, so maybe I need to add more for them.

[steev]

I'm pretty sure caffeine and nicotine helped protect me from intestinal parasites, when I was travelling in Latin America, but it may have been the rum and coke.

I doubt there is much caffeine in used grounds, it being very water-soluble, which is why coffee can be decaffeinated with water without removing much of the less-soluble flavor components. It occurs to me to wonder how caffeinated that expensive poo-coffee is, the beans having passed through the gut of whatever critter ate them.

I always mulch my roses with used coffee-grounds; earthworms love it; I've not noticed them being jittery.

[DarJones]

The bees are probably visiting the coffee grounds because they have water. Bees will collect water from just about any available source if it is not readily available from a stream.

[kyredneck]

Jul 4, 2010 17:08:37 GMT -5 robertb said:

You'd be better with at least two hives. That way, if something goes wrong with one, you can use the other to fix the situation. I've no idea what there is in your neck of the woods (I'm in the UK), but if there's anything like a beekeepers' association, join it. Look for good-tempered local bees, not something bought in from a thousand miles away, and adapted to a different climate.

Good advice. My favorite beekeeping book was written by an Englishman (don't remember the title, my daughter now has it); he had some ingenious methods of manipulating the bees. I had five hives at one time and eventually gravitated to only one stacked with only 90 lb supers as tall as me. We would rob it once a year for several years and always extracted at least 15 gals of honey at a time. Tracheal mites come on the scene and wiped the hive out before we even knew there was a problem. It's too much hassle dealing with the mite problem now for me to fool with keeping a hive. 

[add]

I followed the Englishman's advice on going in and eliminating the queen cells during swarming season each Spring and re-queened (Italian) every two years. It worked very well, it was a very strong colony for 7-8 years.

[reed]

I have often thought of getting bees but never took the plunge.They were nearly gone from here for a while but the past two or three years they have come back a little. Nothing at all like they used to be but at least they are not completely gone. I love honey bees and the ones here are, at least always were, very very gentle little critters. You pretty much have to insist in order to get stung. I hope they stay that way.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I know there are a few bee keepers around that might find THIS interesting!

I've recently got into 3D printing, and i thought that surly someone has tried to print PLA (biodegradable plastic from corn starch) honey combs that bees could use. What i found was even better than i hoped. Here is a better way to harvest honey with bee keeping using 3D printing technology!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbMV9qYIXqM

and here is how it works!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryWC92NT2Eo

(this video shows that you can use it in conjunction with standard wax combs at the same time)

[steev]

Fantastic!

[DarJones]

Like many things in life, it looks fantastic, but is too expensive to justify. Current cost is $400 for 8 frames. I can't justify that kind of expenditure to collect honey given that I would need 3 boxes for each colony. If they get the cost down to $5 per frame, I would have to consider using it.

[reed]

I'm gonna try my hand at beekeeping for the first time next year. I'm thinking of the top bar type as it looks easiest to build. Like lots of things there is the ideal and then there is the doable. I like the idea of progressing to something like this makezine.com/2014/06/16/how-to-mason-jar-beehives/, looks pretty cool, I think and since I don't want anything except bees for pollination and some honey for my own use, it might work. That flow hive though is really cool and bet it becomes common in commercial use. 

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Dec 17, 2015 0:15:44 GMT -5 DarJones said:

Like many things in life, it looks fantastic, but is too expensive to justify. Current cost is $400 for 8 frames. I can't justify that kind of expenditure to collect honey given that I would need 3 boxes for each colony. If they get the cost down to $5 per frame, I would have to consider using it.

Well if you were to buy complete bee houses then yeah it's a bit expensive. Although i dont keep bees i imagine that one does not want or need to harvest all the honey available. If someone did that i imagine the bees would die during winter. However if you were to buy one or two artificial comb standalone pieces like in the second video and put them in a normal bee hive frame, then i imagine that would be somewhat more economical and more practical. The guy mentions in the second video that after harvesting that they chew the wax off and start refilling in a few days, so perhaps instead of bothering the other cells that are left to the bees use you could just keep draining the same one over and over during the summer.

[oxbowfarm]

The Flow hive doesn't appeal to me, although I understand its appeal to many. Our species has been interacting with bees and honey probably since before we evolved into anatomically modern humans. Certainly honey hunting scenes appear very early in African petroglyphs. They are living organisms, not robots to be reprogrammed.