Bees

[pineywoods]

Cool hope you got a bunch. I had a friend harvest his last week and he got about 5 gals per super.

I see you have two hive body's then a super where is the queen excluder?

I have one hive body then a super and the bees aren't really working the supper but are storing lots of honey in the hive body not leaving much room for the brood. I was told to take the supper off and add another hive body to give the queen more room for brood then wait until they are about worked out before adding a queen excluder to the top of the two hive body's then put the super on that.

 

[baja traveler]

Queen excluder is right under the super. The wood is starting to rot out on this hive, so we are in the process of building a new one. The next hive will have two supers for even more room. The hive is very happy with their home the way it is, but going to 20 frames may prevent the hive from getting as packed as it always seems to get.

 

[roller]

No Bee`s for me this year buddy did not come thru..I think it will be best for me to buy my Bee`s next year ...

 

[alblancher]

you have plenty of time to build your hive bodies!

 

[flyfishjeep]

We will be purchasing our bees next spring.  We have so many wild flowers on our property along with the fruit orchard I have planted the last two years.  Thanks to everyone for sharing on this topic. I would have never thought to ask about bee keeping on this forum.  Hopefully I can get my reading in before  too long.  I need to find some people here in East TN to teach me "hands on".  Reading about something will only take you so far...

Thanks again!

 

[alblancher]

Check with your extension service for classes or google bee clubs in your area.  It is  a big help  to have a mentor.

 

[pineywoods]

We will be purchasing our bees next spring.  We have so many wild flowers on our property along with the fruit orchard I have planted the last two years.  Thanks to everyone for sharing on this topic. I would have never thought to ask about bee keeping on this forum.  Hopefully I can get my reading in before  too long.  I need to find some people here in East TN to teach me "hands on".  Reading about something will only take you so far...

Thanks again!

I went to a very long bee class spread over 8 or 10 weeks it was good but as you said nothing beats hands on learning. We are actually starting a Bee Club in our county since there isn't one. Our first meeting will be next month and our Extension Office has been a great help with getting things rolling. 

 

[pineywoods]

I went to pick up more supplies yesterday and the owner (kinda my mentor) said he had to go pick up a bunch of nucs after he closed the shop. I told him I'd give him a hand so we went to get nucs from two of his bee yards. We picked up the first 8 and a full hive and on the way to the second one he said he might have something there I'd be interested in. We got there after dark and while he was backing the truck around I went and smoked the hives I saw a nuc with a second nuc box on it and thought that was strange. Turns out that's what he thought I might like it seems his guy was kind of busy and when the nuc got worked out he just added another nuc body full of frames onto the existing nuc box so now it's a 10 frame nuc. Needless to say I'll be picking up that nuc in the next couple days as soon as I get a new hive painted

This morning a friend who has had bees for awhile came over and we pulled the still un worked super from each hive we inspected the hive pulled two frames of brood and put them into a new hive body with wax frames and set them on the existing hive bodies after putting empty wax frames where we took out the brood frames. This will allow the queen to lay in both hive bodies and in the fall I will pull the upper hive body and make a new hive. I'll leave the queen with the weakest hive and let the stronger hive attempt to re queen itself if they aren't successful I'll add a queen. .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

I won't be making any excess honey but hopefully during the fall flow they can store enough to get them through the winter if not I'll have to feed. In the spring I should have to split again if everything goes as planned.

 

[baja traveler]

Thats awesome that you are starting a club! Having a club not only benefits by having experienced mentors around, but you now will have a built in community to share equipment like honey extractors and bee vacs that you don't typically need everyday. Maybe you can recruit a woodworker into the club, then hold a periodic hive building production line. Once the setup is done, it's just as easy to cut the parts for 10 hives as it is for one...

 

[thoseguys26]

Does anyone know of any online stores to order plastic frames for a super? We just lost 5 frames to the hot hot heat here in CO and they melted / collapsed.. We used all wax frames because we heard the bees like them better.. Now we're going to try some plastic.

The places I looked online had really expensive shipping.

 

[alblancher]

Mannlake has free shipping over 100 bucks  won't work for 5 frames but maybe you need other supplies

 

[baja traveler]

Does anyone know of any online stores to order plastic frames for a super? We just lost 5 frames to the hot hot heat here in CO and they melted / collapsed.. We used all wax frames because we heard the bees like them better.. Now we're going to try some plastic.

The places I looked online had really expensive shipping.

Hillside Apiaries does not mark up shipping.

http://www.hillsidebees.com/Deep-Plastic-Beehive-Frame-p/es-002.htm

 

[pineywoods]

Does anyone know of any online stores to order plastic frames for a super? We just lost 5 frames to the hot hot heat here in CO and they melted / collapsed.. We used all wax frames because we heard the bees like them better.. Now we're going to try some plastic.

The places I looked online had really expensive shipping.

Have you tried this one??    http://www.dadant.com/catalog/advan...i cell&search_in_description=1&sort=2a&page=2

I was told by several people I trust that if your in a decent flow and introduce plastic frames they will usually work them however if you don't have a good flow going they might not work them at all. Last week we took off three supers with plasticell that had been on since May that the bees weren't working. I was told when I put them on that if the bees didn't start working them to feed a thin sugar water in my hive top feeders and this would often get them started. After three tries a week apart I gave up and pulled the supers. That's when I decided to give up on honey harvesting for awhile and concentrate on making more hives. We removed the queen excluders and put another hive body on all of them with wax frames

 

[baja traveler]

After the last harvest I'm finally getting around to taking care of the wax from the crush & strain process. I brought it to my house and spread it out on cookie sheets in the shade of the backyard, didn't take more than 5 minutes for the first bee to find it. By tomorrow afternoon the wax will be all cleaned up and ready for melting and processing into lip balm or bullet lube using my own recipes.

 

[thoseguys26]

OK, that was actually my next question.. We had about 10 wax frames melt. What do you do with the wax? Do you just set them out by the hive w/sugar water to help them fill the plastic (wax coated) trays? The plastic trays I ordered have a wax coating.

This is a great thread. Thanks.

 

[baja traveler]

Was what had melted full of honey? If it's just plain wax, save it for your own use. You can set crushed & strained wax out by the hives, but one of the issues that we discovered is that other bees will be coming in to rob, causing some very aggressive behavior. Thats why I choose to move the wax to my house in neutral territory. That keeps the bees away from their own hive and they don't get aggressive. When I get my own hive here at the house next spring that option will go away, in that case I'll just put an empty super on top of the hive with the tray of wax to be cleaned inside. That keeps it inside the hive so robbing (and pissed off bees) isn't a problem. Just be sure to remove the empty super after several days or you will end up with them building in there. In this picture I just took you can see practically the whole gang here this morning cleaning up, I'm standing 2 feet away from the trays watching them do their work while I'm in shorts and a tee shirt and nobody is paying any attention to me. You can already see pure white clean wax in places.

 

[rabbithutch]

This has been a very interesting thread. I've never kept bees because I have to keep an Epi-Pen handy just in case a sting might lead to anaphylactic shock. We have the persistently aggressive Africanized strains around here.

Why do you set out the wax? Is this wax just taken with the honey crop, still containing honey dribs and drabs? Is that why the bees are working it, to get the sugar and any left over pollen? Or, are they somehow reusing the wax?

I bought some wax from a wholesaling honey operation not too far from me. It was raw wax that had not yet been cleaned or strained. I spent considerable time heating it and puring it through successively smaller strainers to get clean beeswax.

 

[baja traveler]

I set the wax out because the bees will do an amazingly effecient job of cleaning off the remaining honey residue that is trapped. They will literaly dig through it to get to any remaining sweet spots. Some of the bees will also be collecting the wax and packing it on their hind legs to transport back to their own hive. If I lost more than a tenth of an ounce to this I'd be surprised. I now have the cleaned comb semi compressed in a gallon ziplock, to be later melted in a pot of hot water to further purify it for bullet lube. The hot water will dissolve any remaining stickiness the bees didn't get. Don't use your wifes pots for this step, or you will be spending hours scraping the sides to clean it back up!

When I make lip balm out of it I just melt it as is because my recipe uses a touch of honey as one of the ingredients anyway.

 

[roller]

I built10 hives for the guy that was supposed to get me 3 swarms. He supplied the material and brought it to my shop..He did how ever catch his cusin 3 swarms..Guess blood is thicker than 10 new hives...

 

[rabbithutch]

I set the wax out because the bees will do an amazingly effecient job of cleaning off the remaining honey residue that is trapped. They will literaly dig through it to get to any remaining sweet spots. Some of the bees will also be collecting the wax and packing it on their hind legs to transport back to their own hive. If I lost more than a tenth of an ounce to this I'd be surprised. I now have the cleaned comb semi compressed in a gallon ziplock, to be later melted in a pot of hot water to further purify it for bullet lube. The hot water will dissolve any remaining stickiness the bees didn't get. Don't use your wifes pots for this step, or you will be spending hours scraping the sides to clean it back up! :wife:

When I make lip balm out of it I just melt it as is because my recipe uses a touch of honey as one of the ingredients anyway.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't think I've ever seen any beeswax that was left out for the hive to pick clean. All I've ever dealt with personally required a lot of boiling and skimming and straining. You are right. It is a job best not done with her pots or she might make you wear one of 'em.