Honey Bees

[homesteadingnky]

Considering getting started with honey bees this next spring. *I've been reading about honey bees for a couple of years now, thinking I'll contact a beekeeper that I know to see if I can spend some time watching him and gleaning some knowledge and experience there.

I want to start getting things together so I'm wondering if any bee keepers here have any advice for a novice? *I'm considering Langstroth hives though I haven't found any yet. *I'm also not sure where the best place is to find the equipment I need. *Anyone recommend a place or site online?

Also, where do you recommend that I get the bees. *I'm just hoping to get a little more sound advice to add to what I've read.

Thanks
Homesteading Dad

[WRTN]

My wife and I are pretty much noobies and learning bee keeping with some good coaching and advice from Bee Pipes and Kent Williams.

After much looking around and asking about building our own hives or parts of hives, we felt it was best for us to just buy a beginners kit and move on from there bases on the experience we gain. Bee Pipes (Pat) was VERY helpful and generous with advice and his experience which helped lead us to our decision to buy a beginners kit first. He even invited me to his place to look at his hives. He also introduced us to Kent Williams http://www.tnbeekeepers.org/index.html .

After MUCH looking around price vs quality comparison shopping, we decided to go with the Mannlake deluxe beginners kit:

http://www.mannlakeltd.com/catalog/page1.html

After we bought the kit we made arrangements with Kent to buy a 3 lb. package of bees to install in the hive. We met Kent and got the bees but got off to a rocky start due to our own inexperience and intimidation of handling so many bees. we opened the wrong end of the queen bee cage and she got away.

Back to the drawing board.

After learning and more reading along with some sage advice from Kent we decided to buy a second hive kit but purchased some different items not sold in the deluxe beginners kits such as the top feeders (the internal feeder kills too many bees). I would also recommend buying the hooded bee suit

http://www.mannlakeltd.com/catalog/page91.html

instead of the zip on netted hat bees suit

http://www.mannlakeltd.com/catalog/page92.html

The bees can sting you through the netting.

We purchsed 2 "nucs" (nucleus hives) of bees from Kent and installed them in the hives with the bees from the previous package. The bee hive with the previous package exploded with a HUGE bee population and is doing VERY well. The other hive did not do so well at first but has recently started producing many worker bees. It has also become VERY aggressive.

We build cinderblock pads for our hives and have had pretty decent luck keeping the ants away with baking soda and cinnamon.

Next week I plan to open up the honey supers to check for how much honey has been produced. Our hives got off to a very late start so there may not be much if any. We are hopefull though.

Kent Williams has also been VERY helpful and generous with his advice and knowledge which has helped guide us through some gray areas as well.

I have taken ton of pictures and I've been meaning to set up a photo page so I can post them but I have procrastinated for one thing or another. I'll get them posted sometime.

As I said already, I am kind of a rookie noobie to bee keeping but I am glad to help out with what little bit of experience and knowledge I have.

I'm sure Pat will see this thread and jump in there with some very good and sage comments and recommendations.

[homesteadingnky]

Thanks. I really appreciate you taking the time to share the info and the links. I have been very interested in bee keeping for the last few years and just recently descovered that my great=grandfather was a life long bee keeper.

Amazing that so much info and so many skills can get lost in just a couple of generations.

We have several projects going but this is something that I want to learn well and do right. I just don't want to start before I have the basic knowledge that I need to succeed. Yet, I'm chomping at the bit to get started if you know what I mean.

I'll check our those links and appreciate anything else that you want to share.

Thanks again,
Homesteading Dad

[homesteadingnky]

Great Links! Thanks. I'm going to start attending our local beekeepers org. I know several of the guys who are involved in it. Can't wait to get started!!!!

[bee_pipes]

Where's your local beekeeper organization? Are you near the Lake Barkley Assn?

There are a couple of long-winded posts out there about bees on the forums-
Starting up and building top-bar hive:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum.pl?board=fau-livestock;action=display;num=1175029206
First harvest:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum.pl?board=fau-livestock;action=display;num=1192071367
Trapping a swarm and building a quick top-bar to receive it:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum2.pl?board=sel-homesteading;action=display;num=1207057378;start=4 9#49

The hived swarm is absolutely kicking a** in the new hive. the package installed this spring in the original top-bar seems a little lethargic by comparison. We are running out of room in our little bee yard and I'm thinking of starting another one at the back of the property - maybe serve as sentries for the back and keep hunters out ;D

Just yesterday we harvested 39 frames from the langstroths and began extracting. Spent about an hour going through frames one-by one and pulling full supers. Started extracting and bottling around 2 PM and by 4 PM we had a little over 4 gallons bottled.

I'm going to cut back on cut comb. I like it but can only use so much and there isn't much of a market for it. Right now I'm getting $5 for a pint and $8 for a quart. We have yet to crack the top-bar hives, but I'm thinking there's at least 15-20 good combs in there for harvest too. We were lucky about the extractor. Never thought I'd be able to afford one, but we saw one at a Mennonite auction for $60 (along with gloves, veils, smoker, electric decapping knife and other stuff).

Can't recommend bees enough to anyone with the room for them. Old American vegetable staples don't require pollination from bees - corn, potato, squash, beans. The Indians did not have honeybees (apis melifera) - those were brought to this country by the Europeans. Native bees were here, but these plants evolved without heavy pollinator participation. But fruit trees and other vegetables do use pollinators and you will notice an increase in yield.

With colony collapse disorder and all the other ailments of modern bees, it is good to have your own. If we ever hit a shtf situation, honey and wax will work for barter, as can hived swarms. Honey can replace cane sugar in a lot of recipes. One more step towards self-reliance.

Best of luck to you in your endeavors.

Regards,
Pat

[homesteadingnky]

I am in south-central KY (near Bowling Green). Thanks for the links and the update on your bees. I love to see what other folks are doing!

How do you like the Langstroth hives? I'm trying to decide what I want to go with. Sounds like you got a heck of a deal on the extractor!! Guess I've got bee fever, all that talk about the honey you just harvested is making me that much more anxious to get started! ;)

Please feel free to share any knowledge/info that you think might help a beginning beekeeper. I am very eager to learn all I can. Going to check out those post now, thanks again!

Thanks and take care,
Homesteading Dad

[EarthMother]

Hey Guys/Gals :D, I'm glad I ran across you posts because I have a really big sweet tooth and was wondering if I would even want to live if I couldn't have sugar. Now you have answered a question I hadn't even figured on asking until I got a lot of otherstuff done.

When the hives are away from the house and aren't being harvested, do I need to worry about kids getting stung? ???

[bee_pipes]

Check out the links in the earlier post. I put up a relatively inexpensive fence just to keep dogs and children from accidentally blundering into them. Youn need to watch livestock too - a horse, cow or goat mught think a hive is something good to rub against for a scratch.

I used to have one outside of work, where I would go and sit to eat lunches.

Regards,
Pat

[jajbellsouthnet]

The bees you are looking for may be available for free. I called my local County Animal Control office and asked to be put on their list of contacts for any swarms that that someone was complaining about. Two weeks later, I had to call and have my name removed from the list. I had way too many calls to handle. Captured three huge swarms, all easy jobs which were at ground level, and could have had several more. Interesting observation: I got really busy shortly after capturing these swarms and wasn't able to inspect them for three months. I used to inspect my hives every three weeks. All three colonies were thriving! The only advantage they have is the4 ee screened bottom boards. I think that this may be all they need to survive mites, etc. I will leave two of these colonies to their own devices over the Winter to see how they compare to the other "managed" colonies. I'm beginning to suspect that too much attention may be worse than no attention at all. I am building hive bodies like crazy. This Spring I will be ready for the 10-15 calls I get.

[flatwater]

I did something really stupid about 20 years ago when we first moved into the nine mile homestead. There were a huge number of bees in my space above the cieling. At the time we saw bees all the time. I started spraying them as they were coming and going. Finally the bees went away. I took off the shingles and found a bunch of dark combs that I threw away because I thought it was rotten. Behind the dark honey combs was a whole lot of good combs. I set up a tripod beside the fireplace and hung some cheese cloth filled with the combs. As the fire heated up I twisted the cheese cloth untill the honey started to flow. I ended up with fifteen gallons of honey. today we hardly see a honey bee anywhere here in wash.east side. Some sort of might got them I was told. Boy that honey was good. I think I still have a quart or two left.
Flatwater