Bees

[cowgirl8]

After years of struggling to get a hive going, i think i've finally succeeded.
I have 4 hives going now. In Feb, i was at 0. Collected a swarm or two, did some combining. And a few weeks ago, i ordered queens. 3 arrived in perfect condition. Since i have no close bee friends, i'm using Youtube to learn. Watched a few on requeening. I knew i had no queens in my hives, so i was good at just putting them out without having to kill the old queen.
Went out with husband this morning to see if queens were working and i have BROOD! Finally. :banana:
And, one removal i did was contained in a big trashcan. I've had a time with these bees. They are sporadically aggressive. I no longer get confident when working them, they ALWAYS get smoked. So several weeks ago, with hives that are now working, i decided to 'make' them come out of the trashcan. Used the concept of a trapout, put on a bee escape upside down over the trashcan. That way they could go up into a broodbox i set on top, but couldnt go back in. It took several weeks and today when i inspected the frames, it was packed with brood. I didnt bother to look for the queen, she's there. Set the frame back in and the top back on....did a little victory dance and now plan to get rid of the trashcan. I got this removal in Feb....
My last conquest was the leftover foragers a beekeeper left behind. He put a box on its side and a frame in it, the next day it had a billion bees on it. I removed 2/3rds and combined them with 2 other swarms i had going. And against many who said foragers will not tend to queens and the young, i added a queen. The queen came with 5 nurses.....Today, it is packed with brood. So, they do revert back to tending the hive and building comb...
I'd love to have others to bee chat.....so, if any of you keep bees, fill me in on your hives....

 

[Jogeephus]

Neighbor tried to get me interested in bee keeping. He told me how easy it was and pointed out how much food I had for them and how it would benefit me. He took me to his hives to show how docile they were. He told me how they would bump you to warn you before stinging. He told me how not to slap one if I did get stung and how not to run if stung. I got bumped, he got stung and he slapped and ran leaving me to fend for myself with an angry africanized colony. Hats off to you because I love honey but beekeeping is not for me.

 

[Rafter S]

It was almost 20 years ago, but I worked full-time for one of the largest and best-known beekeepers in the US for about 3 years. I don't believe I ever opened up a hive without smoking them first. And the "sporadically aggressive" may have to do with the weather. Bees like warm sunny weather. They will get progressively meaner as it gets colder and/or cloudier.

 

[cow pollinater]

On your trashcan hive, use an empty hive body and a box of frames and a queen excluder . Cut the hive out of the trashcan and put it in the empty brood box with the top box of frames over it. Prop the cutout frames up as best as you can so it's similar to their natural hive. Leave them alone for a few days and then dig in and find the comb with the queen on it and put that in the top box and separate the top and bottom with the queen excluder and then wait. As the brood hatches in the bottom box they will move up to join the queen. Once all the brood is gone in the bottom reduce them back down to just frames and render the wax from the bottom box.
When you do trapouts, it's really hard on the bees. IFFF you get the queen she'll be half starved. About the only way to make trapouts profitable is if you put a weak split near them for the bees that get trapped out to drift to. You won't ever save a hive by trapping it out.
As far as my own bees, I'm around 90 hives right now. I've played with bees for years but decided to make them a viable part of our living when we moved here to Oklahoma. I expect to be running around 200 within two years. They look good enough now that I could probably get there next spring but strong hives are better than more hives.

 

[JMJ Farms]

Neighbor tried to get me interested in bee keeping. He told me how easy it was and pointed out how much food I had for them and how it would benefit me. He took me to his hives to show how docile they were. He told me how they would bump you to warn you before stinging. He told me how not to slap one if I did get stung and how not to run if stung. I got bumped, he got stung and he slapped and ran leaving me to fend for myself with an angry africanized colony. Hats off to you because I love honey but beekeeping is not for me.

:lol2: :clap: :lol2: That's funny Joe. Last time I fooled with any I was with a friend of mine. I was calm. I got stung right between my eyes. I calmly went back towards the truck. Not scared of them at all but really never enjoyed "handling" them either. However, they are very beneficial.

 

[cow pollinater]

It was almost 20 years ago, but I worked full-time for one of the largest and best-known beekeepers in the US for about 3 years. I don't believe I ever opened up a hive without smoking them first. And the "sporadically aggressive" may have to do with the weather. Bees like warm sunny weather. They will get progressively meaner as it gets colder and/or cloudier.

Yes. I don't ever try them without smoke and protective gear. No protective gear is fine 99% of the time but if you go in to enough hives you'll get lit up like a Cristmas Tree from time to time every now and then. Smoke is mandatory.

 

[Rafter S]

It was almost 20 years ago, but I worked full-time for one of the largest and best-known beekeepers in the US for about 3 years. I don't believe I ever opened up a hive without smoking them first. And the "sporadically aggressive" may have to do with the weather. Bees like warm sunny weather. They will get progressively meaner as it gets colder and/or cloudier.

No protective gear is fine 99% of the time but if you go in to enough hives you'll get lit up like a Cristmas Tree from time to time every now and then.

As I said above, I'd always smoke them, but wearing the gear would depend on the weather and what I was doing. When stocking nucs in spring I'd wear all the gear I had, and close up every opening I could find (sleeves, pant cuffs, etc.) with duct tape. Otherwise, when working around the queen production yards I wouldn't wear any gear if the weather was good, other than making sure I had a cap or hat on. For everything else (shaking packages, replacing queens, pulling honey, etc.) I'd wear the hat and veil, and maybe gloves, but usually skip the coveralls.

 

[Bigfoot]

Lot of the Amish around me fool with bees. The honey they sell, comes in big drums, and they repackage it. Quit the racket.

 

[Rafter S]

The honey they sell, comes in big drums, and they repackage it.

Much of the honey we produced locally wasn't table honey, such as the Chinese Tallow honey in late summer. We also put it straight into 55-gallon drums, and it was sold for commercial use, such as flavoring breakfast cereal and baked goods. We'd also send bees to North Dakota in summer to work the alfalfa, sunflowers, and clover. That also went into barrels, but was then bottled for table use.

 

[cowgirl8]

I'm not sure where i'm going with bees. At first i just wanted one hive. We had bees back in the 80s, but i had young kids so my husband tended to the bees. When my inlaws moved here, MIL freaked out at the amount of bugs. She covered her yard and flowers with 7 dust. Our bees were close to where they were living and im betting thats what killed them. All the bee equipment went into the attic at the barn where it sat till 2015.
A tree fell that had bees in it and thats what got me into thinking maybe i'll break out the bee stuff. Had those bees for a few months, but they just vanished. I have a friend who lives in the dallas area who comes out here for the weekends to their cabin. She has bees there, but is still learning herself. She let me come with her to some removals. Thats how i got into that. The trashcan was a removal in Bedford, drove a long way to get that. I just shut the lid and taped the holy heck out of it and loaded it up... SInce, i do removals around here. Once i get hives going, the removals will make more sense. You dont always get a queen, so you either buy one or merge the removals with another hive.
My biggest hurdle has been getting over my fear. Until i started with honey bees, my only experience has been being swarmed by bumble bees, ground hornets and red wasp. The one time the trashcan bees swarmed me, almost put an end to it all. Most frightening thing i've experienced, hit every sense smell, sight, touch, taste and sound. Thank goodness i had a suit on or i would have been stung hundreds of times. I have finally evolved into working the bees and not even seeing them. I've had bees get into my suit, sting me though my suit, i have them loose in my car while i'm driving. Doesnt bother me at all. Hadnt been stung in 40 years by a honey bee, but have now and found its like a fire ant sting..nothing to panic about.
Not sure where i'm going with it, maybe making custom ready to use hives... 4 hives will make lots of honey, more than i'll ever use so something will have to be planned. Right now i'm conquering my fears and learning the bees..........

 

[shaz]

Do bees benefit the cow pasture in any way?

 

[Jogeephus]

Do bees benefit the cow pasture in any way?

Not sure but clover sure makes for some good honey.

 

[backhoeboogie]

In 2015 my berries had very little polination. We were looking in to getting bees. This year the berries were crawling with bees. First saw them on the wild plums. The berries budded out about three weeks after the wild plums and the bees found them. I have picked around 53 gallons

 

[cowgirl8]

Do bees benefit the cow pasture in any way?

Where i live there is so much pollen and so many pollinators. I'm not sure if having extra bees where i am helps any. I know they have no problem getting pollen.

 

[callmefence]

We had a Beehive a couple years back. It was in a old water heater in the back pasture. Boys roped it and drug it home. Cut it open with a axe and got a pretty good haul of honeycomb.........not the same kinda thing I guess.

 

[msplmtneer]

Orange honey is also good. There are bee keepers here that move with the blooms on the orange trees and I think they may charge a small fee for providing bees, and one year a truck transporting about 40 hives and wrecked on the interstate that was a big mess. My grandfather had bees and he only used the hat and netting and smoke, bee stings didn't seem to bother him.

 

[Jogeephus]

Orange blossom honey is one of my favorites.

 

[JMJ Farms]

Orange honey is also good. There are bee keepers here that move with the blooms on the orange trees and I think they may charge a small fee for providing bees, and one year a truck transporting about 40 hives and wrecked on the interstate that was a big mess. My grandfather had bees and he only used the hat and netting and smoke, bee stings didn't seem to bother him.

My grandfather said they didn't hurt him either. He said if you have ever had "bee fever" which I understood to be a fever resulting from bee stings, that the stings didn't hurt anymore. IDK. I took his word for it.

 

[Texas Gal]

I don't have any but the next door neighbor does......and he shares!! Nothing beats a biscuit hot out of the oven with butter and honey.

The neighbor has tried to get us interested. I like the honey but I don't have time for another hobby. Maybe when I retire a couple of years.

 

[cowgirl8]

I don't have any but the next door neighbor does......and he shares!! Nothing beats a biscuit hot out of the oven with butter and honey.

The neighbor has tried to get us interested. I like the honey but I don't have time for another hobby. Maybe when I retire a couple of years.

With all the hurdles i've jumped so far to get hives going (and its because i'm cheap and want to build my own without buying one already set up and technically i'm leaning more this way than if i just bought a working hive), my mom suggested, "Wouldnt it be easier to just pick up a jar of honey at the grocery store." lol, well, yeah.
One of the one things that has me wanting to conquer this bee business is this. I have a couple of grand kids that just might be interested in it when they get older. They are 3 and 1 right now, so its not because they've told me they've always been interested in bees. Its because their last name is Buzbee.. I mean really, with a name like that the bee business would be a no brainer. LOL...... If i ever get enough honey to jar, i'll have labels made with a picture of the 1 yr old and i'll name my business Baby Buzbee Honey... So, this is a little of what drives me. And if in the future they want to get a bee business going, i'll be happy to past it on....