Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I’m sure we can find someone that came to the herf to regift their honey :r

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Mickey Moused a solar wax melter using an old cooler. Cut out the top of the lid and replaced it with plexiglass and fashioned an angled stand inside the cooler from some scrap wood. Banged some holes into one end of a foil pan, lined it with paper towels to stop any bee bits and junk from sullying the fresh wax & put a small Tupperware bowl beneath it to collect the melted wax. Now to let the sun do it's thing.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/849/4...760ee9aa6a.jpg

Unknown if this is going to work, but the internet says it should, so here's hoping.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Clever!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Was going through our hive photos from last year, and came across some pretty convincing visual evidence that this year's hive is significantly stronger than last.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/934/4...7e9fcf3f29.jpg

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1836/...23cc4447ff.jpg

More bees = Stronger hive

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's amazing Vin. Thanks for sharing,. Oh, and thanks for the honey. Yum.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Did it work, Vin? Inquiring minds and all that.

btw, if you grow lavender or something similar, you can make your own scents and put them into a candle, if you decide to make some. I don't know how, but there are plenty of places around here that do it as lavender is a fairly large crop here.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Kinda' but not really due to operator error.

Longer explanation coming when I have more time to self-flagellate.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Soooooooo my first foray into melting bees wax produced unexpected results.

I ended up rendering another pound or so of honey from the wax cappings, but the wax didn't really melt -- it just kind of stayed in semi-soupy form in the melter.

Did some research and found you get much better results if you drain the remaining honey from the wax then rinse the honey comb in cool water to further remove any sweet, sticky stuff.

I bundled up the cappings in cheese cloth and pressed it over a metal strain to squeeze out the last bits of honey then rinsed it as instructed in some cool water.

I was left with some slightly sticky wax globs that I broke apart and put back in the solar melter to see if a second go at it would produce better results.

It was warm, but overcast yesterday -- not much in the way melting took place, and I was a little discouraged.

However, today was bright sun and hot all day. I came home to this:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1839/...001089dd5f.jpg

All the wax had melted leaving behind the impurities on the paper towel filter.

The wax itself looks like this:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1831/...cb54126e6e.jpg

There's not a lot, but I didn't expect a lot -- maybe enough for one candle? :) Not worried - hoping to get a bit more this fall.

Bottom line though, the solar melter works if you prep the wax carefully!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Cool stuff, Vin, it gets better and better. :tu

Now if you can just train about 90 of them to attack Roger on command....

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Seriously cool, Vin!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Now that's funny. :r

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Great looking beeswax Vin. That's exactly what it's supposed to look like, lemon-ish colored. It can vary widely but they have shows/contests for this stuff and that's the color the pros aim for. Well done.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Got a chance to do a hive inspection on Saturday.

Not a lot is happening in the honey supers. That's to be expected as the spring flowers are done blooming in this area. The one area where I see a lot of bees is in our Rose of Sharon bush which started blooming in mid July and continues to flower now - though I think that's starting to ebb.

Here's a shot of one of the girls getting her pollen on in the flower:
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1856/...f562ee7083.jpg

Didn't take any photos during the hive inspection because the girls seemed a little agitated. In pulling some of the frames, I did see a decent amount of brood in various stages from egg to larva to capped brood, so I know the queen is doing her thing.

Also managed to see the queen scurrying around one of the frames. Always reassuring to me when I can find her among tens of thousands of other bees in the hive. :)

Looking forward to the fall honey flow in a few weeks.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

We get a lot of bees still around on Lavender & Basil patches. There are always several bees in them. Never seen them without bees actually.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

As the temps have started to get cooler in New England, Grace & I decided to harvest the fall honey this week. Unfortunately, there just wasn't all that much of it vs. what we got in the spring. Earlier this year we were able to take out about 30 lbs of honey. I was expecting A LOT more in the fall based on what I had been told by other beekeepers -- some of whom say their fall yield is 75%+ of the total year's volume. So I was expecting to blow past the 30 lbs we had taken this spring.

It was pretty clear we weren't going to get a whole lot because a couple of the frames looked like this - just a smattering of cells being filled.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1943/...827cea3dd7.jpg


In the end, we got about 12 pounds of a deep amber honey. Honey's color depends on what flowers are blooming while the bees forage. The bright gold honey you see in stores -- often labeled Clover Honey - is almost certainly produced in the spring and early summer when clover abounds. Darker honeys, at least in this area, are a result of late summer blooms of flowers and trees.

Here's a side-by-side look at our spring honey and our fall honey. The lighter spring honey has a more floral taste to it while the fall honey has a caramely, brown-sugar quality. I've read that the darker honeys are more nutritious. Both are freaking delicious.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1969/...1cd78c4e79.jpg

Going to throw some honey into the next troop auction if anyone's interested.

Grace and I have had such a good time with the bees this year, that we're going to add a second hive next spring. Fingers crossed that our current hive over-winters successfully. Otherwise, I may just have a whole bunch of firewood when the snow melts next year.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Looking forward to the troop auction

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Me too! I'd love to the dark honey.:dr

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's awesome congratulations on a thriving hive and bountiful harvest! Holy **** I sound like a Quaker :(


Actually thought this was very cool, saw it a lot in Europe on the breakfast buffets, that's if they are regular wax and not pre-made which it looks like they are, but this is still cool damn it!

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/bb/c8/b4/b...8ff55a85e6.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

We’ve thought about trying out foundationless frames in the future. It’s awesome to be able to cut chunks of comb with honey right from the frame. The downside for me is that the bees then need to completely re-create the comb instead of just focusing on honey production. Also, the guy who does our extractions charges more if we use foundationless frames because it apparently takes longer and makes a mess of things. For now, we are going to continue to go with the pre-printed plastic frames, but I’d love to try the foundationless frames once I have some more experience under my belt.
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Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

that dark amber honey looks delish!!..reminds me of a dark Amber I once knew...😎

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

This had me in the mood for toast with honey. I went out The kitchen before I realize there’s no bread here why would you be bread here. Then i was realized that there is no toaster here. Sure if there was bread i could use the oven, but really a house without a toaster, well there gonna s mood edit plan with taking a bath, notthst i would get in that tub even if i was going to play battleships with a plugged in toaster. I mean that’s just gross.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

After we bottle the honey, there's always a little bit left in the bucket. Washing it down the drain seems like we're asking for problems, but thanks to some research on Google, we found the answer is, as usual: bees.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1978/...d773322b28.jpg

I put the bucket a few feet from the hive, and within an afternoon, the ladies had slurped up all the good stuff leaving the bucket squeaky clean.

It was suggested that i put some grass in the bucket to give the bees something to hold on to as they can drown in their own honey.

What they took from the bucket is stored in the hive for future use as food during the upcoming cold weather months.

I wasn't prescient enough to take a photo of the honey remnants in the bucket before putting it out next to the hive, but there was a pretty decent amount. I remember thinking, "no way this works" and as usual, I was wrong. Will try to remember to take more pics next time.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

How are they doing on winter reserves?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

They seem to be loaded up pretty good. Going to do a hive inspection this weekend and rearrange some of the frames to keep the brood frames in one deep and the honey frames in the other. If the honey stores seem to be light, I'll add a feeder frame to promote additional honey production.

Overall though, I'm far more optimistic than I was at this time last year.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Genius.....gotta love nature....and way to use "prescient" in a sentence...bonus 10 points

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Awesome! :tu

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Couple quick quick shots from our recent hive inspection. We're really happy with the amount of honey & pollen we're seeing on the frames as well as the sheer number of bees in the hive. Feeling much more confident as we head into the cooler months this year than I did last. It seems like we have 4 or 5 times as many bees in the hive as we did last year.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1959/...6b1a7264_z.jpg
This is me poking around the frames to get a sense for what's going on in the hive. We riled up the bees pretty good, so Grace wasn't comfortable snapping many pics.

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1903/...0c50aa5c_z.jpg


https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1938/...a111368e_z.jpg
This is a good representation of how nicely the bees are filling in the frames with their winter stores. In this photo, they're got the frame packed pretty full of pollen.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hope this year's bees kick that Massachusetts winter right in its ass, Vin! :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Looks like you’re doing an amazing job, Vin.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's one sweet setup, Vin. ;)

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I never used "prescient" like ever
sort of like juxtaposition...

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hey Binnie.
I just read a few days ago that they finally figured out colony collapse disorder.
RoundUp.
Turns out the RoundUp decimates one of 4 of the bee's major gut flora, and it's not naturally recoverable, or at least in the period of time from crop application to winter layover for the bees.

Fortunately, some knuckleheads are developing fungus that supplies bacteria for the bees.
It happens to be the wrong bacteria at this point, but things are moving in the right direction quickly.
RoundUp isn't long for this world, and the right bacterial supplements for hives should be available soon. :tu

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I missed so much of this. I am now caught up and it is so cool. I don't use honey too much but the whole process is cool. Vin once again thank you for the updates.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

What a fascinating story. I finally got to catch up on the whole thing. Last winter was the coldest that I remember in years. Here's hoping for a return to mild winters this year. Thanks for sharing Vin!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Some very welcome mild temps in New England this weekend, and it gives the bees a chance go out and do their bee business. When temps get above 45* it allows the ladies to get out and take "cleansing flights" as, being ladies, they don't poo in the hive.

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4915/...91797600b6.jpg

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Much more hygienic than some of the human guests in your house this year. ;) ;s

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

2 bees one cup huh

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

That's a cool thing to know. I try to learn something new every day, now I'm all set for today. Thanks Vin!:D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

You can get an inexpensive manual extractor and do it yourself. The decent ones have a clutch so the crank handle doesn't take your arm off once you let go. The nicer ones yet spin the frames radially, allowing you to skip the step of flipping the frames over (like you have to on a tangential extractor) , plus is much friendlier to foundationless wax. With a manual extractor, you can carefully control the speed to prevent blowouts.

My extractor is a $120-ish 2-frame tangential but I have my eye on a 4/8-frame preferably with a clutching handle. There are a few manufacturers, and all will do 4 frames tangentially or 8 radially. I just haven't picked one I want yet. They run $250-300 or higher for name brands.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/outdoor...ar-beehive.asp

The Taj Mahal for Bees, or just a money laundering scheme for some suspicious bee keepers?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Hi Vin. What's the latest news on the bees. Are they doing well?

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Was reading back - and it is interesting as always. Was particularly interested in the Round-Up piece. So many people use it, and now we are seeing carcinogenic issues, and of course eco-system issues. who knew that killing dandelions in my yards would create an issue that may resonate through bugs, to birds and bees, thus affecting our own food production. My neighbor is super green (solar, geo-thermal, and such) and asked me if I would consider NOT spraying for weeds in my yard - and also not treating the yard against bugs and skeeters. Paints an interesting picture

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

I've been negligent in updating the thread -- lots has happened. Will try to post some info in the next few days.

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Looking forward to it. :banger

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

The grim reaper rears his head....cue the dark music!!

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Paul McCartney sings the opening verse of "Let It Bee"......-(P

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Mother Mary, comfort me ...

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

You really should be on the road working comedy clubs.:r

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

First stop.... Taylor, Florida. :D

Re: New Hobby: Bee Keeping
 

Took a picture of Vin's hive at the herf this last weekend -- it was too hot (over a 100*) for them, so they moved outside to keep cool. Vin said it's called Bearding:

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/attach...1&d=1563895477