Starting honey harvest

[bee_pipes]

The summer heat and drought were rough on the bees, one hive was robbed to death and another swarmed. But we finally got some honey to harvest. The last time I had bees the only equipment I owned was hives, smoker and protective clothing. Everything was either cut comb or strained from crushed comb. Last year we picked up a hand operated extractor. I still like comb on hot biscuits, but the bottled stuff is excellent to bake with as a sugar substitute. The extractor lets the bees concentrate on loading the comb with honey, rather than rebuilding comb.

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_cut_comb_frame.jpg
frame of cut comb

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_cutting_comb.jpg
cutting comb

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_cutting_comb_pat_tony.jpg
cutting comb

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_cut_comb_boxed.jpg
comb boxed and ready for family and neighbors

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_extractor.jpg
extractor

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_extractor_pat_tony.jpg
holding extractor steady

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_extractor_output.jpg
extractor output

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_extractor_bottling_bucket.jpg
bottling bucket

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/bees_clean_gear.jpg
bees cleaning processing gear. After they got through, there was nothing left but wax.

http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/beginning_honey_harvest1.jpg

Regards,
Pat

[WRTN]

Did you sell all of the honey? My wife likes to sample different local honey. Also expressed some interest in learning more about bee keeping. There seem to be very few hives around our area and the heavy logging is not helping the bees out either. Found a wild hive that was in a hollow tree the loggers left behind. The bees stayed in the tree for a few weeks but are all gone now.

[bee_pipes]

Naw, bad year and first year on new packages. The drought and heat didn't make for a big harvest. We're using the honey for holiday gifts to family and friends this year. Hopefully next year we will have something to sell. I'm happy just to have the hives going strong into the winter.

We have the same problem here. Couple of hundred acres behind us clear cut. The worst part is there are plenty of mills in the county and people needing work, but the timber is being trucked to mills in Mississippi and Alabama. Leaves us holding the bag. My creek comes out of the clear cut area and we're seeing a lot of erosion and runnoff. The only people in the county making money off this deal are the land owners, and for all I know they don't live here or pay taxes either.

I started this a few years ago, then had to stop because of job relocation. This year was the first to start up again. Don't know what your library is like - I read everything I could find, then started getting gear. Winter is a good time to start getting ready for the spring - build hives and order packages. My first hives were started as splits at a local orchard - orchards are good places to find bee keepers.

Shame the ferral hive got away. There aren't enough of them left anymore.

Regards,
Pat

[humbug]

Thanks for sharing. I will be getting a hive and colony in the spring. I am really looking foreward to it.

[bee_pipes]

Well that's good to hear. Is this your first time at it? Where did you get the hive gear? New, used or home brew? How about the bees? Do you have livestock to deal with? There's posts with pictures from our startup in April:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum.pl?board=fau-livestock;action=display;num=1175029206

Regards,
Pat

[humbug]

I am getting a complete hive including the colony of bees from the local beekeeper here. It will be my first attempt at keeping bees. I have been reading up on them and reading all the threads I can find on it. I still have some equipment to buy but will do that after Christmas.

[bee_pipes]

Well good on ya! You can't beat having a local beekeeper handy. I have no ide what supplier you'd use. I use outfits in Wisconsin and North Carolina, but there's a lot of difference in UPS charges for Tennesse when compared to Nevada. Glad to hear you have connections - they might be able to steer you to used equipment.

There's nothing like having bees around. It keeps you in touch with what's blooming, gives your garden and orchard a real shot in the arm, and just generally makes you feel more involved with the environment around you. With all the problems out there experienced by commercial beekeepers, it's good to have small holdings like ours - maybe we can keep them from whatever influences are causing the colony collapse disorder.

There's an outfit on Yahoo - haven't been there in some time, but they were trying to raise "normalized" bees. Their thinking was that bees have been getting larger ever since suppliers started selling pre-made foundation. Their proof was that cell size in a feral colony was smaller than a domestic hive, making the smaller bees less attractive/vulnerable to mites. They also let the bees rear and replace their own queens so that strains adapted to the local environment would thrive, rather than importing queens from breeders in other parts of the country. A lot of what they said made sense.

Again, congratulations on your new project.

Regards,
Pat

[AlchemyAcres]

There's an outfit on Yahoo - haven't been there in some time, but they were trying to raise "normalized" bees. Their thinking was that bees have been getting larger ever since suppliers started selling pre-made foundation. Their proof was that cell size in a feral colony was smaller than a domestic hive, making the smaller bees less attractive/vulnerable to mites. They also let the bees rear and replace their own queens so that strains adapted to the local environment would thrive, rather than importing queens from breeders in other parts of the country. A lot of what they said made sense.

It extends well beyond Yahoo!
This has been a big argument since at least way back in the 80's.
I'm not buying it...at least not completely...maybe not even partially.....
Feral colonies are just as easily wiped out by varroa (or any of the other major bee diseases) here as colonies on foundation, and they can draw out cells any dang size they please!!! Not too mention the fact that much of the comb in beetrees and such is old and cacoon laden...so the cells are often much, much smaller than the cells of freshly drawn foundation.
I'm just not seeing varroa resistant colonies in the wild...not now...not ever!?

How about there??

~Martin

[AlchemyAcres]

BTW!
Very nice pics, Pat!


~Martin :)

[bee_pipes]

The ideas are interesting but I'm not buying it 100%. Sue Hubbel wrote about experiments where they enlarged the cells to make a larger bee. The bees were too big to get at the nectar in blossoms. Almost sounds like one of those old cold war sci-fi movies wher ethey make bugs bigger with radiation.

The decimation of feral colonies was what clued the industry in on the fact the mites were such a serious problem. There still seem to be some out there, but they are few and far between.

The idea of breeding bees for the local caught my attention. Conventional practices would have you replace the queen each year with a fresh queen, bred in Mississippi or some other place with a longer season, inseminated by drones raised in the same environment. The fresh queens are supposed to be more rhobust and genetically superior to anything the bees can raise on their own, but the organic bee folks are ruthless about culling their hives. It would take more resources than I have - you'd need a lot of hives to cull like that. But I could see coming up with a superior queen for the area with pressures like that being brought to bear on breeding.

Regards,
Pat