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I have a bunch of hives of good friend keeps along with a bunch of other hives around the city, and after I helped him genocide some for foulbrood, he took 'em and all the other infected ones to get gamma radiation autoclaved, and I wondered how commonly available that is in other places? He stacks 'em up and drives from the ACT to Sydney to the medical sterilisation facility and it costs him (shared with other beekeepers; he's the head of the local society) about $12 AU per box, while the cost of a new box probably pushes fifty and you lose any other additions to 'em
The Peccadillo fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 07:07
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The Peccadillo posted:I have a bunch of hives of good friend keeps along with a bunch of other hives around the city, and after I helped him genocide some for foulbrood, he took 'em and all the other infected ones to get gamma radiation autoclaved, and I wondered how commonly available that is in other places? He stacks 'em up and drives from the ACT to Sydney to the medical sterilisation facility and it costs him (shared with other beekeepers; he's the head of the local society) about $12 AU per box, while the cost of a new box probably pushes fifty and you lose any other additions to 'em I’m in a major city in the US (Chicago) and tried to find a place where I could get it done a few years ago. The closest I could find was in Pennsylvania, some 600 miles away. Doesn’t seem like it’s much of a thing here.
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Feb 23, 2022 07:35
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So what do you do? E:    Trap: 
The Peccadillo fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 05:43
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https://horizontalhive.com/how-to-build/layens-bee-bed-plans.shtml
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Feb 25, 2022 22:00
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My bee guy carries an epipen on his belt at all times and does not gently caress the bees
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Feb 27, 2022 10:11
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The two hives (actually standing next to each other) which I assumed collapsed due to Nosemosis are still alive and kicking, but they are removing brood and dropping it at the doorstep like there’s no tomorrow. I won’t do anything at this time of year, and I still fear they might collapse. Also won’t inspect them yet. But they are clearly breeding against a disease. I know this sounds grim as gently caress, but it’s gonna be interesting to see how they cope. And what I can do. I have no surplus queens at the moment, so they’ll have to stay with the (probably) infected one for now. The rest of the hives is doing WAY better than I expected. I definitely lost one from twenty, but I know why. Protip: if you know someone who is a beekeeper, never, EVER think it’s a good idea to “gift” them two queens bought on the internet in late august as a “happy birthday”-gift. These things are living beings. I’m surprised I managed to keep the other one going. But the second artificial swarm I built just didn’t make it, didn’t take up enough food, never got into proper breeding. Please never gift animals. If the weather forecast is reliable, I guess I’ll open up the hives coming weekend and see what’s up. I’m in a way better mood in regard to the bees than I was couple weeks ago. Sturdy little ladies.
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Mar 15, 2022 09:46
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So one of the hives I suspected with nosemosis didn‘t make it. Doesn‘t surprise me, to be honest. Inspected the box today and yeah, looks like it. Which is kinda a relief in the sense that it‘s not AFB or something that would mean I‘d have to kill off all my hives here. We (me and the local veterinarian) still took a test from the foodcomb to make sure. But everything points out to Nosemosis. The hive next to it is alive and kicking. Seems like couple bees entered the wrong hive when coming back, spreading then disease. All other hives are surprisingly strong, and not in the „they are breeding against collapse“ way of strong. Seem really healthy. Nature and weather is strange, though. Apart from beeing really dry, canola is already blooming, but the stems are way too small. Usually they are at least a meter high here when they bloom. A lot of crops are half of that. I‘m pretty relieved that the winter wasn‘t as bad as I imagined. Actually thinking about completely shutting down the honey selling business (which I only do to recoup the investments I have to do over the year for the bees, there‘s not much profit), because beefood over here seems to nearly hit the honey price from two years ago due to the poo poo going on in Ukraine, and I just can‘t stomach asking my customers for crazy prices for a jar of honey. hosed up situation. Honey prices also skyrocketed here since last year, and will go up more and more. Also there is no longer a…uh….my bad english….permit to use the Varroa treatments in the EU. Until last year, certain treatments like formic acid where allowed if the acid conforms to a certain standard. This was now all lifted, so you actually are no longer allowed to treat your bees in that regard without going rogue. You have to buy the same treatment (acid) from a company that had it‘s own acid verified….which if course means: prices go up uP UP. It‘s exactly the same stuff than the last ten years ago, but a lot of people in between now profit from it. Glad I have at least one year of „you are no longer allowed to use this“-acid in stock. It‘s all so silly. Still happy my little ladies are alive and kicking, and they seem fine. Opening up the hives today, they smelled so good, spring honey coming in, though slowly. If only they‘d make it easier to keep this hobby alive here…
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Mar 27, 2022 16:18
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Well, I'm down to 3 strong hives this year. This weekend I'll make my splits. Hoping to have 6 hives total after the splits. I'm going to keep it small this year - just too much going on to try and get back to the ~14 I was at.
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Apr 2, 2022 01:26
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Hi bee thread. I'm getting boxes/kit this weekend and hopefully a nuc this spring. I plan to start with an 8-frame deep and an 8-frame medium. Should I add an additional deep right away since the nuc is already going to have 5 full frames?
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Jan 4, 2023 19:03
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Conventional wisdom is to wait until the bees expand until they're using everything but the two outside frames before adding another body. But I dunno, my bees never read any of the literature I do. Make sure you have the new box ready to go when they need it. It's a pain not to have it when you open the hive and it's bulging with bees and the ag store is backordered and the price of 2x12 pine boards is  Not that this has ever happened to me, of course.
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Jan 4, 2023 19:32
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HAIL eSATA-n posted:Hi bee thread. I'm getting boxes/kit this weekend and hopefully a nuc this spring. I plan to start with an 8-frame deep and an 8-frame medium. Should I add an additional deep right away since the nuc is already going to have 5 full frames? If they come with 5 full frames and you're using 8 frame equipment, that leaves 3 frames. Except, they often don't work the outside frames as much, so really less than 3 frames. I'd give them more space right away. Eventually, you can get more efficient utilization (get them to fill all the frames instead of leaving the sides empty) if you swap things around so the empties are closer to the middle, where they like to work, but you won't be doing that immediately--let them settle and grow and whatnot.
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Jan 5, 2023 02:15
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The beekeeper I learned from was a big proponent of just using follower boards for the outside two boards. We also used three mediums instead of two deeps for our hive body, and that worked well. However I think a lot of this advice is locality-specific... the local climate and the times of the year and amounts of nectar available, how humid it is in particular, may affect these decisions. Putting follower boards on the outside allowed for more airflow inside the hive during our hot mid and late summer in California, for example, but might not matter wherever you live.
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Jan 5, 2023 02:56
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I am in hot and dry (well not at dry this exact moment) CA and I remember reading your follower board advice before we got our hives last year. Ultimately we didn’t go that way, but I wonder if we’ll have more issues with heat/airflow this year when they hives are full strength. We started with packages last year so I assume they will have more potential this year. I did take some classes from a honeybee researcher and she didn’t seem to think airflow was a big issue, but she is also from the midwest, not around here. I will say we had multiple water sources out all summer and man, you could see the bees using them heavily.
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Jan 5, 2023 04:14
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Alright, I’ll see if i can get an additional deep this weekend. I’m in the PNW so don’t need to worry about heat. I watched a U of Arkansas beekeeping course and am currently reading The Backyard Beekeeper. I hope my bees like me (survive).
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Jan 5, 2023 04:43
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Leperflesh posted:
Interesting idea. I might try that if we get hit by another heat dome like we had a couple of summers ago. It was a little disconcerting to find melted frames in the hives, not something I'd seen before up here. HAIL eSATA-n posted:Alright, I’ll see if i can get an additional deep this weekend. I’m in the PNW so don’t need to worry about heat. - me, slightly over two summers ago. 
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Jan 5, 2023 05:05
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Any beeks who read this thread happen to live in the NJ area? I'm looking to get a hive or two started in my backyard next spring and just wondered if anyone might be local-ish and interested in sharing regional advice or meeting up at some point in the future to talk bees. Also curious about local equipment and bee sources for reasonable cost. Considered Mann Lake hive bodies/boxes but maybe there's more competitively priced gear around these days?
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Feb 6, 2023 04:19
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I'm trying to get a local 4-H club set up with bees. I know a bit, but I've never had a hive. I think we'll want 8-frame hives, preferably with shallow supers so the kids can lift them easier. So like the previous poster(s) I'm interested any recommendations for what to get and where to get it. They've already got some kid-size bee suits (they had bees before, but the adult volunteer started running the hives as a commercial operation so they made him leave), and I'll buy my own adult one, but I assume we're going to need everything else.
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Feb 27, 2023 04:30
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Roughly whereabouts are you located? If you're American Mann Lake frequently gets mentioned as a mail order supplier. Local farm & feed stores could probably direct you to local suppliers and bee clubs. The Beesource forum has local area discussion groups that could point you in the right direction too.
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Feb 28, 2023 00:24
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It is a very very good idea to find the bee supplier most local to you. They will have the lore about your local ecology and what are the right bees to get, right equipment to use, when to do seasonal things, etc. And you can also get your hands on the equipment and figure out what is likely to work for you. For example, depending on how old these kids are they may or may not be directly hefting boxes of frames regardless. There is little reason for most of the season to lift or move the hive body unless you have localized dearths or are moving your hive between farms or something, so having two deeps or three mediums for that is probably fine, and using shallows for honey supers is pretty normal regardless. Maybe if you handle some deeps, mediums, shallows, depending on the kids' ages, you might decide that it's fine to just have nothing but mediums, which gives you a lot of flexibility in setting up multiple hives. Depending on how many kids you have, getting full hoods and gloves etc. for a bunch of kids could be costly. Can they share? I'd also caution you to be sure that you are ready for a medical emergency from a kid getting stung. An allergic reaction is not so uncommon that you can ignore the possibility and many kids/their parents won't actually know they're allergic. When we got our bees, knowing we had kids as next-door neighbors, we got an epi-pen to have available and talked to our neighbors too. And eventually everyone who directly handles beehives is going to get stung. You can do everything right and still get one trapped in your clothes or in your hair or whatever.
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Feb 28, 2023 00:30
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I'm in the San Francisco area.Leperflesh posted:For example, depending on how old these kids are they may or may not be directly hefting boxes of frames regardless. There is little reason for most of the season to lift or move the hive body unless you have localized dearths or are moving your hive between farms or something, so having two deeps or three mediums for that is probably fine, and using shallows for honey supers is pretty normal regardless. Maybe if you handle some deeps, mediums, shallows, depending on the kids' ages, you might decide that it's fine to just have nothing but mediums, which gives you a lot of flexibility in setting up multiple hives. Good points, and I don't really intend to have kids working with bees without adults around. 4-H emphasizes making sure the kids are the ones doing the thing, but it's probably ok to draw the line at 10 year olds hefting full supers. quote:Depending on how many kids you have, getting full hoods and gloves etc. for a bunch of kids could be costly. Can they share? The person I spoke to said they already have some kid-sized gear. I intend that the hives & gear will be at the club farm, and whoever's working with the bees will grab a suit from the club's stock. It sounds like between club fundraising and external grants, the club should be able to pay for equipment pretty easily; I may order my own personal bee-suit though. I was thinking about allergies too... we'll definitely want to have an epi-pen on hand, but it's a big club and they seem well-stocked so they may already keep them on hand. Makes sense anyway, given that they have a variety of animals on the site and you never know when a kid will turn out to be allergic to chickens or whatever. Hexigrammus posted:Roughly whereabouts are you located? If you're American Mann Lake frequently gets mentioned as a mail order supplier. Thanks, I'll look into these.
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Feb 28, 2023 00:56
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Oh you're around here! I got all my supplies at Beekind up in Sebastopol. They're good folks, they also do classes and you can order your package bees from them for April. https://www.beekind.com/ They also buy honey wholesale so if you have two hundred pounds of harvest to spare and nothing to do with it you can sell it to them, I guess. (It lasts for thousands of years so just buy more jars IMO.)
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Feb 28, 2023 02:10
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Leperflesh posted:Oh you're around here! I got all my supplies at Beekind up in Sebastopol. They're good folks, they also do classes and you can order your package bees from them for April. Ooh, they look great! I could easily make a run up to Sebastopol on a weekend and grab the gear. Looks like $200 for a basic starter hive and $175 for bees, plus probably another $100 worth of various tools, a veil, some gloves. If the club is ok with $500 start-up cost I think we could be off to a good start... small stuff I'm happy enough to pick up out of my own pocket after we get started.
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Feb 28, 2023 06:30
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Thanks for the suggestions all, I ended up getting a Mann Lake hive, unpainted so I could check out the condition of the wood as I read some not so great things about their craftsmanship since the pandemic. Decided to just give in and start this spring. Definitely wasn't cheap, and I'm not entirely thrilled about the quality, more splintering and splits from staples at the joints than I had hoped for. However there were very few knots or imperfections on the wood itself so I suppose that it'll do. Filled stuff with exterior wood glue and started painting them. They also gave me 'natural' Rite-Cell foundation for the deeps, which is irritating. Going to have to get really good at egg spotting and fast. Nucs are definitely more expensive here in the northeast, which is also a bit upsetting but that's just the way things go. Unless I decide to catch swarms in the suburbs, which is probably not a good idea for first year with no real world experience. Definitely don't want aggressive overly swarmy bees going after my neighbors or my family. Also, I don't know of it's me or unlucky with the places I've researched but shipping costs for anything beekeeping related, no matter how small or light, are absolutely INSANE. Like just straight up making up absurd costs to compensate for a struggling business. One place, I think it was BetterBee or Blythewood (Maybe Premiere?), was estimating $140 for UPS ground shipping on something as small as a single super with frames. Definitely limited my search to a few places like Mann Lake and cheap Chinese brands on Amazon. Anyhow, I'm pumped for starting this hobby!
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Feb 28, 2023 21:56
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I think the high shipping is perhaps representative of suppliers for agricultural beekeeping outfits that order a lot of stuff at once and is more of a bottom/floor cost that doesn't make sense when you're ordering one object. There's also surely been some significant cost jumps. I think the package bees we ordered in ~2011 were about $45 including the queen, to be picked up at Beekind; $175 is a bigger jump than just inflation. It might be that suppliers are now basically pricing in how many bees they lose every winter, whereas back then even though sudden colony collapse was in the news and already a big deal probably suppliers were still charging about what they'd charged the previous few years. Shipping for hive bodies is far lower if you're willing to assemble yourself, though, because precut wood shipped flat is way cheaper than making up a big box and properly padding it to ship a whole deep. $140 for UPS ground still sounds pretty steep I guess!
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Mar 1, 2023 02:28
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The girls have not been outside of my remaining hive on the sunny mildish days. I have a feeling I am back to square 1. May take a year off and get the hives all reorganized.
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Mar 2, 2023 14:20
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We've had snow on the ground for the last three weeks, not typical early March West Coast weather. There was a fresh dump overnight and I need to stick my ear against the hives today and listen for any signs of life. We checked a few weeks ago and the two big production hives seemed to be okay. Not sure about the one super hive and I'm pretty sure we lost the two nucs. Ah well, just need one to survive long enough to split, I guess. We were worried the smaller hive and nucs didn't have enough supplies to overwinter successfully so we used fondant for the first time earlier this winter. I think that was a mistake in our climate. It's obviously hygroscopic so the small hives have a moisture problem now even though I improved their ventilation last fall. Vivaldi boards on the big hives cured their problem a couple of years ago so I guess I need to make some miniature Vivaldis to get the nucs through winter without mildew coating everything.
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Mar 6, 2023 16:02
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Hi Beekeeping thread. We're looking at getting into this and I had a hive question. I want to go into this and not set myself up for failure later. I'm in Zone 4/5 and see some harsh winters. Is it worth spending the extra money to get hives from somewhere like Mann or Dadant? Is the $125 Amazon special hive acceptable? Are the starter kits a good deal, or am I buying a bunch of crap I don't need? There's a local beekeeping club that has a meeting coming up that we're going to attend. One of the members sells "mutts" locally that are highly regarded for winter survivability around here so we plan on getting that.
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Mar 14, 2023 21:07
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Yooper posted:Hi Beekeeping thread. We're looking at getting into this and I had a hive question. I want to go into this and not set myself up for failure later. I'm in Zone 4/5 and see some harsh winters. If you have access to decent tools and are handy with woodworking, you can build something like a long langstroth that is a heck of a lot thicker wood/insulation than a standard hive you see in those catalogs. A heck of a lot easier to work to boot. (no lifting boxes)
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Mar 15, 2023 03:33
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Hasselblad posted:If you have access to decent tools and are handy with woodworking, you can build something like a long langstroth that is a heck of a lot thicker wood/insulation than a standard hive you see in those catalogs. A heck of a lot easier to work to boot. (no lifting boxes) That looks really cool, I was just reading about the top bar hives. Similar set up with the long langstroth except you get the benefit of the langstroth frames? I've been planning to get a nucleus for my first bees, so I assume if I build it to Langstroth sizing that these will still drop in?
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Mar 15, 2023 14:58
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Yooper posted:That looks really cool, I was just reading about the top bar hives. Similar set up with the long langstroth except you get the benefit of the langstroth frames? I've been planning to get a nucleus for my first bees, so I assume if I build it to Langstroth sizing that these will still drop in? Top bar can be either awesome or a mess, dependent on if your girls build straight down or tend to cross comb. Once they begin the latter it is a real pain in the rear end to clean up.
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Mar 16, 2023 13:00
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Whelp, I guess I've hit the big time this spring. Professional beekeepers on Vancouver Island have been running 30-50% winter kill over the last few years. The worst I've had was 30% and I usually do better getting the girls through to spring. This spring 100% mortality - 3 production hives and 2 nucs.  Even worse than Saskatchewan's 80% last year. Guess I get to find out what stratospheric price nucs are going for this year. 
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Mar 18, 2023 23:47
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ouch, what do you think was the cause? what’s the mite situation like in bc?
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Mar 19, 2023 02:30
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I'm leaning towards mite-borne viruses. Varroa's here and a problem, we monitor and treat regularly. Feral swarms don't survive in the wild anymore. All the hives were treated with formic acid in August when the mite counts started going up but I missed a final oxalic acid treatment in November. Could be be that my bees robbed out a declining mite bomb in the neighbourhood in September and brought a lot of mites back home after we thought we were safe and quit monitoring. The clusters were still alive in early January and they had lots of stores. Very few died head down in a cell like they were starving. No signs of wing or other deformities which is supposed to indicate varroa viruses. I'm going to throw a sample in alcohol and see if I can get them looked at for tracheal mites. Those are here as well but I don't think anyone worries much about them. I probably shouldn't get too obsessed about it, even the professionals are scratching their heads over the high winter mortality lately. Really feels like I need a microscope though. Add that to the cost of 2 new nucs in May. Also pencil in oxalic acid treatments in October as soon as the last brood hatches and again in November.
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Mar 19, 2023 21:21
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While researching winter kill I ran into this middle bar frame idea, basically taking a standard deep frame and running a pair of dowels across the middle to encourage the bees to build foundationless comb in an organized manner. Anyone familiar with this system or is it just another gimmick that works in a limited number of situations? Video is a bit cringe but she has the clearest view of how the frame is constructed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9KLR23Ckfs Tangentially, wtf is a barn hive and why would I ever want one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EegbR81Fmsg
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Mar 26, 2023 21:57
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First peek inside the hive now that it's warming up to see if they made it through the winter. Good morning! I was worried they wouldn't have enough supplies to make it, as there was a drought all summer, and it was hard to say if the supplemental feeding was enough. But they look alright!
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Mar 27, 2023 19:04
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Picked up a NUC this morning and put the bugs in their new box They were really chill, but it's also ~50f and raining a bit. I assume that's why they're not doing orientation flights. I added a mason jar feeder with 1:1 sugar/water and a pollen patty to the top of the bars, with an empty super around them, then the inner cover and finally telescoping cover. I couldn't find consensus on whether to put the inner cover over or under the food.  Next week I'll see how they're progressing and, if needed, add frames to the super and place oxalic acid strips between supers.
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Apr 16, 2023 01:48
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I like that hive stand - simple and effective!
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Apr 16, 2023 04:19
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thanks, I wanted room for a potential second hive
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Apr 16, 2023 05:28
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my bees swarmed while i was painting a second hive and about to make a split. they've been 50ft up a tree for 2 days now.  i placed the second hive and baited it with lemongrass oil. some bees have shown interest, but the swarm hasn't moved. if they don't relocate to a place i can capture them i'm going to split the remainder of the hive once i see fresh eggs, then hopefully they can rebuild before winter.   2 months from a NUC to swarming out of a double deep. i'm impressed
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Jun 19, 2023 18:25
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HAIL eSATA-n posted:my bees swarmed while i was painting a second hive and about to make a split. they've been 50ft up a tree for 2 days now. I’m just the assistant beekeeper but my gf says don’t split!! She thinks you should wait and see if they rebuild by fall. That advice is just based on my reading her your post and showing her the picture though, and she says she’s full of bad advice so I probably shouldn’t hit post but oh well Good luck!!! I love your photo
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Jun 19, 2023 21:23
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