Apey for Apiaries: a Surly Beekeeping Thread

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Any other beeks out there?

Among my 1,001 other projects at the new homestead, I am putting in two Warre (vertical top bar) hives this spring.

They're a lot like Langstroth hives, actually, except the bees build out the comb themselves, with no foundation.

Ordinarily, I prefer building from scrap, and capturing wild swarms, but to save time, I bought kit hives (bonus! They have observation windows!) and a couple of packages with queens.

If you've got bee stories/advice, share away.

[Sbbruin 21828]

[Prepuce of Doom 21052]

[El Diablo 4232]

Oprah.gif

Do they have knees?

I remember having a discussion on TOS about this and you recommended the ones that live in holes drilled in wood. I never got around to doing that but it seemed like an easy way to have bees around during the season and then just popping them into the fridge during the colder months, iirc.

[baboso 6054]

Carpenter bees?  Hate them with a passion.

[HouTex 1866]

So how much honey do you plan to get out of one of those contraptions?

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

1 hour ago, El Diablo said:

Oprah.gif

Do they have knees?

I remember having a discussion on TOS about this and you recommended the ones that live in holes drilled in wood. I never got around to doing that but it seemed like an easy way to have bees around during the season and then just popping them into the fridge during the colder months, iirc.

The Carolina Botanical Gardens (where James Taylor used to wander back before he got famous) have a ton of those feral bee colonies set up all over the place. I'm probably going to do something similar just for show, but it's not really necessary here in the woods. There's enough fallen logs lying around that the bumblebees, Mason bees, and carpenter bees are all pretty happy as is.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Just now, HouTex said:

So how much honey do you plan to get out of one of those contraptions?

The beauty of the vertical top bar hive is that I can put a queen excluder between the top box and the bottom -- the top box will be where the brood comb is, and all the honey up there will be the bees' property exclusively, but I can raid the bottom at will. And bonus is, it will be pure comb honey, not like Langstroth hives where you have to harvest from the frames.

I don't know what the local production values are like, being new to the area, but we'll just have to wing it once I see how much they can produce per acre of forage. I've noticed there's a lot of buckwheat production as winter cover crop around here -- I'm hopeful that means there's plenty of forage year round.

[Sbbruin 21828]

[davidg 4036]

Don't remember if I ever posted this on the poopsnowcone site.

 

My grandfather kept bees from when he got back from France at the end of WW I till he died in 1983. At one time, he had an apiary of close to 1000 hives. Here's pic from 1938 with his honey truck. My dad's the youngest on the left.    In the summer of 1980, at the age of 87, Grandaddy Pete mentioned to my Dad that he might need some help with taking of his honey. Dad figured he only had about 15 or 20 hives left and we would get it in one day. Turns out the old man still had close to 100 hives, spread out over most of the county. We worked the weekend, then Dad left me there for the rest of the week and we took off close to 6,000 lbs of honey. I was 15 and the old man worked me into the ground.

On the far right of the pic you can kinda see some boards and scaffolding where he was building what we call the Honey House.  Its a two story building that housed his beekeeping equipement on the bottom floor and a bunkhouse on the top floor.   The bottom still contains a 60 frame extractor a couple of 100 gal tanks along with probably 10 or 15 hives worth of supers amid a bunch of others items dad has put in there for storage.  We still use the upstairs for sleeping when we are over at the family place during the cooler months.  Will probably spend this Saturday night there.

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

41 minutes ago, davidg said:

On the far right of the pic you can kinda see some boards and scaffolding where he was building what we call the Honey House.  Its a two story building that housed his beekeeping equipment on the bottom floor and a bunkhouse on the top floor.   The bottom still contains a 60 frame extractor a couple of 100 gal tanks along with probably 10 or 15 hives worth of supers amid a bunch of others items dad has put in there for storage.  We still use the upstairs for sleeping when we are over at the family place during the cooler months.  Will probably spend this Saturday night there.

That's awesome. Reminds me of the setup a friend of mine from Turkmenistan showed me of his dad's mobile set-up; long before tiny houses became a thing here, his two-story "Honey House" was rigged up on one end of an 18-wheeler flatbed trailer, and the remainder of the flatbed was room for all his hives. In Turkmenistan, beekeepers move from national park to national park (it was communist at the time my friend was growing up there, so all rural land not actually being farmed was a "national park"), and so it was pretty much more a home to my friend's family than their home address was.

[miguelito 11251]

Good thing the search function worked - I was just about to start a thread on bees.

I might be buying some land, and I've always wanted to get some bees.  I won't have the minimum 5 acres for the Ag exemption, but that's not why I want bees.  Pollination, honey, they're cool, etc.  I love working in the garden with the bees buzzing around me.  

A few years ago at a farmer's market, I saw a guy that would rent out hives.  He would set them up on your land, check them periodically, and then harvest the honey, which you got to keep (at least some of it).  I don't remember the guy's name or business.  Does anyone know of a service like that in central Texas?  It seems like that might be a good intro to doing my own beekeeping. 

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

18 hours ago, miguelito said:

Does anyone know of a service like that in central Texas?  It seems like that might be a good intro to doing my own beekeeping. 

Check with the Central Texas Beekeepers' Association. There are always people looking for land on which to put a few hives. 

[Marfa Low Crown 2546]

I know absolutely nothing about beekeeping but I think it's bad ass. Subscribed. 

[miguelito 11251]

Thanks, Walden.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Here's some of the wild bee houses at the Carolina Botanical Gardens that I was talking about:

 

...and here's one of my old "do it yourself" horizontal top bar hives:

 

The horizontal hive is "easier" to work, because you just remove one lid, and that's it, but it's also harder to work, because the brood is not separate from the pure honey comb, so every time you harvest, you have to pick a bar that will do the least damage to the colony as possible, in terms of lost brood for the next generation of workers.

Also, the vertical (Warre) hive is more compact, and just looks spiffier.

[davidg 4036]

Is there any advantage other than getting honeycomb for that Ware hive? You mentioned excluders but you can put one on a Langstrom hive. Grandad typically had 2 deep bodies, a queen excluder, then 2 or 3 medium supers or some shallow ones for comb.

For comb honey, he would buy prepared pure wax foundations and had a Hotwire setup where he could met stainless support wire into the base foundation to hold it in place.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

43 minutes ago, davidg said:

Is there any advantage other than getting honeycomb for that Ware hive?

For the beekeeper, no, no other real advantages (I suppose maintenance is less, but that's debatable).

There's some pretty strong advantages for the bees, however. In nature, the bees decide the size of cells to create based on a ton of environmental factors. With the Langstroth hive, that decision is made for them, because the foundation has a pre-set size. The beekeeper gets to determine what will maximize honey production for the hive, but maximum honey production may not necessarily be the healthiest thing, again from the hive's point of view, based on what is going in in their microclimate.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Saw this in my Facebook feed:

This was in a Langstroth hive where they didn't have the frames in (they had it "retired" for a season, but bees moved in anyway). The comb  was designed entirely by the bees for maximum effectiveness given local temperature and humidity conditions.

A top bar hive attempts some of this, but is still a little bit more structured for human needs. Long story short, there's no way to give the bees everything they want AND harvest the honey. Some sort of compromise is necessary.

[BabaYaga 15286]

I have a nice colony of Japanese Killer Hornets - we should meet.  I'll bring them over to play.

[miguelito 11251]

That bee hive picture is beautiful. 

[Braff Zacklin 13552]

Strange contradiction in that I find hive mind behavior in the animal kingdom to be fascinating, but disgusting among humans.

Also: always wondered if apiarists exclaim, "Hi, honey, I'm home!" after a long day's work.

[Thetexashammer 1062]

You should try raising Africanized bees.

OK but seriously I was walking around in rural Northern Italy and there was a lady selling honey. I bought a couple of small jars, 5 euros each. I say got damn that was some good shit. You don't appreciate the flavor of natural products if you just buy industrial shit at the grocery store. I believe the honey was labeled as lavendar. Real hones is a little like venison, it picks up the flavor of what the animals eat and so there are dramatic differences between products sourced in different environments.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Nice, been thinking about doing this once we sell the house and move to  a new place in the fall.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

On 2/20/2020 at 10:39 PM, Thetexashammer said:

You should try raising Africanized bees.

You joke, but in Brazil (and a few places in Central America) beekeepers do just that. They get marginally more honey simply because they lose less to predation and disease. I don't personally think the risk is worth it, plus I like keeping my hives in easy walking distance to the house, but hey, it's their hide, not mine.

[PRONG HORN 3131]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say that this "cure" for coronavirus is a crock. Beehives smell nice, but they aren't therapeutic for anyone with less than six feet.

 

Yeah, 

 

[BabaYaga 15286]

On 2/20/2020 at 7:39 PM, Thetexashammer said:

You should try raising Africanized bees.

OK but seriously I was walking around in rural Northern Italy and there was a lady selling honey. I bought a couple of small jars, 5 euros each. I say got damn that was some good shit. You don't appreciate the flavor of natural products if you just buy industrial shit at the grocery store. I believe the honey was labeled as lavendar. Real hones is a little like venison, it picks up the flavor of what the animals eat and so there are dramatic differences between products sourced in different environments.

Supposedly they gave cross pollinated (pun intended) with European bees to breed a type of hybrid?  We have a storage shed at the ranch.  Old sea crate.  They nested under it and are aggressive as heck.  Bouncing off the truck window.  Making quote the racket when we first approached before we had our bee guy relocate them.  Maybe they were full african bees, he wasn't sure.  

[PRONG HORN 3131]

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Just got confirmation on ship dates for my two packages of bees; they are coming in two weeks, and I'm gettin' geeked about it. I'm willing to bet the postal workers are not, but that's their problem.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

On 2/20/2020 at 9:39 PM, Thetexashammer said:

You should try raising Africanized bees.

OK but seriously I was walking around in rural Northern Italy and there was a lady selling honey. I bought a couple of small jars, 5 euros each. I say got damn that was some good shit. You don't appreciate the flavor of natural products if you just buy industrial shit at the grocery store. I believe the honey was labeled as lavendar. Real hones is a little like venison, it picks up the flavor of what the animals eat and so there are dramatic differences between products sourced in different environments.

When it's available, I buy honey from the local market. I guess that's going to be out for awhile, and our family will miss it. I love making buttermilk biscuits and local honey tastes great on a warm biscuit. We keep a little pot of honey in the pantry plus comb honey but comb honey is hard to find these days. Used to be able to find it even in the grocery stores. A vendor at the market that I've bought from will every once in awhile agree to bring me some and I always pay the premium but it's worth it. It's one of those little things that makes life a blessing.

[High Plains Drifter 11024]

 

Once I was doing some work on a ranch in S. Texas and disturbed an Africanized bee hive. I walked by a tree and the swarm came out of a hole in the tree that was about waist high. I got stung about 6 or 8  times on the left hand. I broke my PR for the 50 yard dash to the truck while wearing work boots and snake chaps. Got stung a few times on the back of the neck and on my ear before I could outrun them, then once more on the cheek by one that got into the truck.

Fuckers were banging against the windows, so I drove a few hundred yards and waited. They followed and caught up to the truck and continued trying to get in.

My hand started swelling, so I took some antihistamines and got the epi pen ready in case I started to have an anaphylactic shock reaction. Ended up not needing the shot, but my hand swelled up so fat I couldn't see my knuckles.

If the truck hadn't started for some reason, I probably would have died in that truck from heat prostration trying to wait those fuckers out. Sort of like the mom and kid in Cujo.

Later I told the rancher, and he burned the hive with a flame thrower that they use to burn prickly pear ("burnin' pear" they call it) during droughts so the cattle can eat it.

So glad I don't work in that S. Texas hellscape any longer.

 

 

 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

Been a little busy with a zillion and one projects over the last month -- I installed two packages of bees at the beginning of April, and they are now thriving. My wife was not too thrilled about taking video of the install, so I apologize for the (ahem!) orientation of her camera, and shakiness of her hands.

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Walden Ponderer

[shadow_operative2.0 15942]

This Austin chick is pretty hot. Minute-long Insta video... 

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMStanXHBI5/

 

[Pescado_Rojo 19412]

@Walden Ponderer How is this going? What's the time commitment like? I've thought about putting a hive or two on my in-laws place in Llano. They've got tons of bee brush and white brush on their place and I think it would be awesome to make my own honey. I don't want to do it if it's a few hours a week and I've got to make the two hour round trip all the time. If you can leave them be and check on them once or twice a month, that would be ideal. 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

4 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

@Walden Ponderer How is this going? What's the time commitment like? I've thought about putting a hive or two on my in-laws place in Llano. They've got tons of bee brush and white brush on their place and I think it would be awesome to make my own honey. I don't want to do it if it's a few hours a week and I've got to make the two hour round trip all the time. If you can leave them be and check on them once or twice a month, that would be ideal. 

Once or twice a month is fine with a vertical top bar hive. Langstroth frames (what most folk use) are more labor intensive.

[shadow_operative2.0 15942]

 

[irishtexan 11511]

On 3/16/2021 at 1:06 AM, shadow_operative2.0 said:

This Austin chick is pretty hot. Minute-long Insta video... 

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMStanXHBI5/

 

Came here from the honey thread on Food & Travel, so sorry for quoting a three month old post.

She was in my bowling league at Dart Bowl. She was cool. Loved talking about bees. And a surprisingly good bowler. I think she always carried a 165-170 average. 

There was some bee drama with her recently, as some strangely aggro hippie bee keeper lady in California accused her of staging all of her hive rescues and having her husband do the manual labor so Austin bee gal could swoop in all dressed up and record it for social media. She also baselessly accused Austin bee lady of being a Trump supporter (No CR) It was bizarre.

[shadow_operative2.0 15942]

Hey, 165-170 can roll. I never finished a season higher than 179. 180 was my nemesis. 

Back to the bees... 

[Hornbeliever 712]

On 3/16/2021 at 3:44 PM, Walden Ponderer said:

Once or twice a month is fine with a vertical top bar hive. Langstroth frames (what most folk use) are more labor intensive.

Any nuggets of advice?  I'm starting with 3 hives and just beginning my journey.  Having them set up this week by the local county bee expert.

[davidg 4036]

Are you getting bees right now?  Don’t think I’d start hive right now and worry about having to feed or have a struggling hive over the winter.

[ohchaucer 1443]

Beads?!

[Hornbeliever 712]

23 hours ago, davidg said:

Are you getting bees right now?  Don’t think I’d start hive right now and worry about having to feed or have a struggling hive over the winter.

I am only to try and sneak one year in on an ag exemption.  I was always planning on doing in April for my ranching but local guy I hired said this can be done and should be ok if there isn't a Feb 2021 freeze event.

Long way of saying my bees are going to die, isn't it.

[Spaulding Smails 1552]

Posted primarily so I can follow.  Didn't realize this thread existed.  Thanks @Hornbeliever.  

We got our bees this spring for Ag exempt purposes.  We looked at a few different options, and went with this one.  Year one, bees are delivered and maintained by the supplier.  They're basically "under warranty".  Year two, they teach us how to maintain the bees.  Year three, we're on our own.  

[Hornbeliever 712]

7 hours ago, Spaulding Smails said:

Posted primarily so I can follow.  Didn't realize this thread existed.  Thanks @Hornbeliever.  

We got our bees this spring for Ag exempt purposes.  We looked at a few different options, and went with this one.  Year one, bees are delivered and maintained by the supplier.  They're basically "under warranty".  Year two, they teach us how to maintain the bees.  Year three, we're on our own.  

How did year one go?  I'm doing something very similar here near La Grange where local pro helps set up and upkeep for a bit.

Did you get any honey year one or still waiting?  

[High Plains Drifter 11024]

11 hours ago, Spaulding Smails said:

Posted primarily so I can follow.  Didn't realize this thread existed.  Thanks @Hornbeliever.  

We got our bees this spring for Ag exempt purposes.  We looked at a few different options, and went with this one.  Year one, bees are delivered and maintained by the supplier.  They're basically "under warranty".  Year two, they teach us how to maintain the bees.  Year three, we're on our own.  

 

how much does something like that cost?

 

[Sheep Have Wool 1053]

I recently got back into mead making after an extended hiatus, and honey has gotten much more expensive, especially with shipping. Any of you beekeepers in the DFW area?

[Spaulding Smails 1552]

@Hornbeliever year one went well.  We really didn't do much.  We check the hives once a month or so.  We're fortunate to have a creek about 100 yds from the hives (on a neighbor's property), but we supplement with a little water trough nearby as well.  The beekeeper was adamant that we needed water nearby.  The hives seem to be building, and we see TONS of bees milling around the lantana by our house.  Much more than before the hives were there, so that's a good sign.

The beekeeper said maybe honey next year.  Probably year three before we see good production.

@High Plains Drifter it wasn't cheap.  I think around $6K for 8 hives and 8 colonies (which is the minimum we needed to qualify for ag exemption).  Year two is like $1,000.  Much cheaper than what the property tax bill would've been (Hays County).  The other, less involved options, were a bit cheaper, but we didn't want to risk it.  Our property is a new tract carved out of a larger tract that had full ag exemption for cattle and hay, so we were able to put bees on immediately and avoid any waiting period before taking advantage of the exemption.

[Hornbeliever 712]

Year 3!  That is going to feel like forever to me.

Good for you on taxes.  My ag exemption won't happen until 2028 so we better not sell this house.  No plans as we love it but ya never know.