bees

[The Future]

I got the doc too.  69 secs 

[Beeherder]

 

Hancocs, if you liked the Warre' link here are some more you'll likely enjoy:

http://www.bwrangler.com/

be sure to scroll down to the bottom of his site for the best reasoning I've yet found for adopting these methods

and for the old school come to new school try:

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/

Then there's my favorite periodical:

http://www.beeculture.com/

 

[hancocs]

Thanks again for the additional links.

I think the Warre method would work best for me. I remember when I first stated out my bee's swamed and went to my neighbors yard. 20,000 + bees in their backyard....They were not happy, added another super and they swamed again this time about a mile away. The lady that sold me the bees got the call and she knew they were mine. It was easy to get them back but a bit embarssing. It seems the Warre method it much more safer and alot less chance that your bees would swam.

[Beeherder]

 
Well kinda yes and kinda no. 

The bees reproduce the superorganism by swarming. When the queen lays an egg she is producing offspring but she is not reproducing the superorganism, the hive. The hive reproduces when the workers decide its time for a new (take your pick) home, queen, or neighborhood. As beekeepers its our job to give them a good neighborhood (sorry out to sea is not a bee friendly neighborhood) and an adequate structure free of vermin and filth. Its the bee's job to take care of what goes on inside the hive. They will decide when and why to make a new queen, though modern commercial beekeeping would have you believe that humans should decide to give the new queen to the workers, usually every year. Give me a break. It must have been some queen breeder that came up with this bit of foolishness in order to increase their orders/sales. My bees have swarmed from every hive, every year until this year. Most probably because I didn't get enough supers on soon enough but maybe not. I don't know how to get them to speak up in a language that I understand.

Anyway, if they swarm and you can capture them just put them in a new home. I caught my first wild swarm this year from another beekeepers apiary 10 miles down the hill. Cut the branch off the tree, dropped it in a big plastic tub with a cover, drove home, put them in a new box, and viola! my third hive.

If you try to put them back in the same hive they usually won't accept that. After all they did decide to leave in the first place. You can put them in a new box right beside the old hive provided the neighborhood is a good bee environment they may stay. They are wild livestock so let them bee.

[Dame]

When bees find an adeequite environment, the hive may hapily stay in the same place for years.  The most recent one we are aware of is a swarm that settled into the walls of an uninsulated outbuilding on an unoccupied homestead.  It appeared to have winterkilled after about 6 years.  From watching them come and go there were probably 130K bees in thier.  No one wants to take the building apart to see how much honey is in the walls, By fall the ants and other bees will probably have robbed it clean.

[Beeherder]

 

Hey Hancocs if you find yourself sailing that boat in the southern ocean there is a New Zealand transplant running a disease free queen breeding operation on Vanuatu. You probably know that's 3500 miles southwest of Hawaii between Fiji and Australia. He's been there since 1974, has 90 clean hives. Says here in this latest issue of Bee Culture magazine (not in the on-line archive yet)

"Tropical Vanuatu, composed of some 80 islands stretching 500 miles, is slightly larger in area than Connecticut. Inhabited are more than 1,000 species of lush vegetation, including orchids. Its low population of 214,450 makes the favorable, wide-open ration of land-to-people attractive for queen raisers and business investors."

"For more information contact Gilbert Gibson at: gibsonj@vanuatu.com.vu "

If I had two good legs I'd be applying to crew that boat. When the going gets tough the smart guy might just sail away from the big land masses for awhile. 

[The Future]

Off topic trivia: They also had what would have been a world record marlin there some years ago.  It was so big they had to cut it in half as the scale could only measure 1000 lb max.  Catch some fish and some queens!

[Beeherder]

 

The Beeherder stole some honey from the sisterhood today. The first 6 frames of capped honey are ready for the extractor so just as soon as the sweat stops running off me like water from a tap, I'll go do that. Had the neighbor take some pics so if I can figure out if or how to set up a slide show of VGA digital images I'll share them with you guys.  Beeherder has a hard time lifting those full supers they must weigh at least 60 lbs each and that's way over my 25 lb lifetime lifting limit. Ya just can't get somebody else to do your heavy lifting. See the tall hive, there is one more super on it now than when that pic was taken and I could barely lift the top one off to get at the ones below, it's just a little bit above my eye level, you'll see in the pics.

How sweeeeeet it is baaaaaaby!

[opsec]

Might you be interested in selling a jar of that raw honey? How much for it?

[hancocs]

Ditto PM me

[Beeherder]

I've always appreciated the wisdom of the hollow log method of exchange of fungible (how's that The Future?) resources. And where would your hollow log be located? I'm not sure the Beeherder could afford the delivery expenses but I'm open to suggestions.

Now who is going to tell me where I can find out how to share a slide show with you guys? I have two files now, FirstHoney09 with as many as 34 VGA images (think I need to find the delete button) and FirstExtrct09 with 6 VGA images. Every thing is Adobe Photoshop Starter Edition 3.2 that I got for free somewhere.

[Beeherder]

And then there would be that discussion about fungible assets and just what you were offering in exchange because I'm really not that interested in FRNs. Did I mention I like AG.

One of my hoytee toytee neighbors says my honey is the best she's ever had. I had sold her a pint for some FRNs. But when the word came back that she wanted more honey but was not willing to pay that many FRNs I told her where she could purchas lots of honey for less than half of what she just paid. She actually got huffy. Some people! For her the price just went up.

So how much did you want, where does it need to get to, and what are you offering in exchange? We can discuss weighty issues as much as you would like. The honey weighs approximately 12 lbs per gallon.

[Beeherder]

And if you return the empty cleaned out mason jar I put it in you get a small credit toward your next barter/purchase.

[Beeherder]

six frames extracted, will return them to the hive in the morning and steal some more. If I had a few more supers I'd just take the whole thing and leave a new empty super but when I caught that first wild swarm this year they got all the available supers.

[opsec]

I'd wouldn't mind having two pint jars. Hmmmm...let's see...what to trade. How about a Glock 9mm magazine? Current price for one of those is between $25 and $30 depending on where you can find one. A 30 round AK magazine is slightly less. I think I paid $20 for one of those. I have a Mora knife that I would be willing to part with. I think I paid about $12 for that. It has a Scandinavian grind on the blade. If that interests you, I can dig through my garage and give you all the details when I find it. I have some spare parts for a '74 Chevy K5 Blazer, if you have one let me know if you are looking for anything in particular. Anything interest you so far?