Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby matt walker » Fri Aug 17, 2012 6:29 pm

No, I'm fine. Just wanting to whinge about it like us boys do. Thanks for the sympathy. :lol:

I've been paying better attention since your post Guy, and am seeing a lot of the big fuzzy bumbles, and smaller hoverfly type pollinators, but very few honey bees. Maybe I need to think about beekeeping. Oh no, another project!
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:52 pm

My Grandmother lived to be 90, she told me years ago that the secret to a long life is that you have to have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. At this point I have so many projects lined up befor me that give me reasons to get out of bed everyday I should live to be 110, :lol: Bee Keeping is fairly easy, it just takes money to start. With normal hives you can mess with them as little as twice a year if you really don't want to work much. I read an article in Mother Earth News years ago, it was titled " So You have Moved to the Country and You Want to Keep Live Stock " It recommended that the city folk who had just moved to the country not buy a horse, or a cow, or even a sheep. It told them to start by keeping bees and see how that went befor trying to get something that had to be fed and watered each and everyday, lol I think Bees are the easiest " Live Stock " you can raise.
Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby matt walker » Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:17 am

Well, I hope your Grandmother was right. I'm gonna live forever!
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby Lollykoko » Sat Aug 18, 2012 6:50 pm

Matt, the folks I talked with said that the top bar method is least stressful on the hive. There is less disruption when you open things up. I'm seriously thinking of building one this winter, then worrying about finding a queen to put in it.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Sat Aug 18, 2012 7:00 pm

Queen Bees are avalible for purchace Lolly, and the prices are not too bad from what I have heard.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby Lollykoko » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:11 am

I figured they were, Guy. But until I get someplace to put them ... I haven't looked into availability or cost.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Mon Aug 20, 2012 11:57 am

One Bee Keeper that spoke to our Rotary Club awhile back said that he just bought new Queens for his hives every year to insure alot of eggs for workers. I think the price he talked about was under $20 for the variety he bought. There were a number of different varietys of Honey Bees from many different places to choose from. I was sort of surprised that the price was so cheap. I think he prefered Belgian because they were pretty docile and produced well. I do not know if you can start a Hive with only a Queen, If you do plan on keeping Bees I guess you need to study up a bit on what you need to do, and how to do it. :D In that area I have very little knowledge, just enough to be dangerous, lol, or maybe not even that much. ;)
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:03 pm

I attended a talk on keeping Bees in Top Bar Hives this weekend at the Mother Earth Fair. The woman that spoke did a very good job and talked about some of the advantages of this relatively new type of hive. The main advantage she felt was not having to lift 90 lb's of weight . From a womans point of view that was huge. For some young people like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or 4H kids that issue could be a big deal as well. Her 1st effort with the Top Bar Hives was not very good however. She bought 5 hives, 5 colonys of Bees and 5 Queen Bees. She got the bees and put them into the new hives. when she checked then a few days later to see how they were doing she found 3 hives had been vacated by the Bees. I guess they just didn't feel at home there. She said to get around this common problem there is a starter kit that you can buy for about $10 that has a smell with it that makes the bees think this place smells like Home. She asked for questions at the end, and particularly wanted to have " Old White Guys ' who have kept bees in the weir hives, [ The white boxes that you have always seen bees kept in ] There were several there. The one had kept bees since 1953 and walked with a cane he wanted to know how he could move his bees from the old hives to this new type of hive. Bottom line they do seem to work well, they are easier to get at to extract the honey, they seem to requirer a little bit more work on the Bee Keepers part, it seemed to be a matter of what you know, and what you grew up with in keeping bees. If you have the older style hives you think they work well and see no reason to change. If you started with these new type of hives you feel that any " Thinking Person " would use nothing but the Top Bar Hives. I think it is a personal decission, look at both and decide what works best for you in your situation.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby GrahamB » Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:49 am

I've been researching another type of hive lately. It's the Perone Hive. It has a large brood area with a layer of honey frames on top. That is left alone and the honey for the beekeeper is in extra frame layers above the first one. It is supposed to stop CCD as the brood is allowed to grow without disturbance, it will swarm only once every two years and the beekeeper only messes with it once a year to harvest his honey. The downside is that it's illegal in the US as the inspectors can come onto your land and demand to see your hives. They will ask to inspect the brood frames individually. Because the Perone hive has no way of removing the brood frames without completely dismantling the hive, the Inspectorate won't allow them here.
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Re: Bees, Bee Keeping, Feral Hives

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Sat Jun 22, 2013 11:24 pm

My Wild Bee Hive is GONE. It was alive and well this spring, I went out and saw them with my own eyes. But now they are gone, totally Gone. I have no clue what happened to then. There is no evidence that the tree was tampered with or damaged in any way. They are just gone. Vacant Bee Syndrome has hit the Hill. They have been missing for some weeks now. All I can say is POOP.
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