So my wife bought some NOPE
- Thread starter Mr_Roboto
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Meh, I got stung once getting the honey out. No one else did. One crawled up my jacket and that was that. They don't really "attack" you per se as they've been bred by and large not to. They'll buzz the shit out of you for sure though. The ball of em on my wife was probably just her back turned out to be a convenient place to land of all things.
They don't die from taking honey directly. A whole hive will typically hold around 60K bees and they'll whittle their way down to say 20Kish (if memory serves right) before the winter comes. The life cycle of a bee is ~6 weeks, so the queen just ramps down laying before winter. After that they'll keep warm in the hive eating the honey reserves they have for the year. As long as you don't take too much honey they'll make it out just fine. We as humans tend to supplement the nests as well with just sugar.
As an interesting aside, if a person gets a wild hive they can swap the queen (much like I did in the non-producing hive) and the bees will become domesticated. If you have a hive of "africanized" bees you can do it with them as well. 6 weeks later you'll have a hive of domesticated bees.
The group we're a member of actually has a call list where you can go collect a wild hive. Someone will have one they want removed, and a member will go grab it.
If they're aggressive likely not domesticated bees. Also odd that they'd be out at night. Honey bees are back at the hive by dusk typically. You really want to go into the hive mid day because that's when the most of them are gone.
They weren't acting hostile to the new queen so I busted her loose The bees have to eat the sugar plug out now. Hopefully she'll get sprung out, get into the kitchen and start makin me some babies.
It wasn't dusk yet. I used the term last night "loosely" if you follow my drift. This was probably around 6pm.
Yea, I usually do my killing in the night when they're all sleeping in their little honeycomb tombs.
And then I read this on Facebook.
http://wgntv.com/2018/08/27/video-shows-bee-man-removing-massive-hornets-nest-from-car-in-ohio/
http://wgntv.com/2018/08/27/video-shows-bee-man-removing-massive-hornets-nest-from-car-in-ohio/
That's some major
right there. Hornets are not bees. I've killed 2 nests of them in the last few years, and won't apologize for it. I'd certainly save a honey bee nest however, especially since i have gear to go grab one and put it to good use like the previous thread someone had with a BBQ grill that was swarming.Final count is about 25lb in 1lb jars, our split is 11 jars or so.
Welp, long time no update. It's been a pretty damn busy run up to winter:
-The hive that was producing honey flew off right before winter. We think they probably were diseased and did it because of that.
-The other have was already weak, and we think it may or may not have had a queen. Regardless there weren't a lot of bees, and since they ball up and warm each other for winter they died off due to the cold. I kind of thought this was going to happen unfortunately.
-We did save the wax honey comb for next year, it's stuck in a freezer waiting on spring so that we can pop it in. This will give our next bees a very very significant head start in their production. If anything it'll probably be worth nearly a full harvest or 70-100lbs of honey.
-The other good news is we got another 40-50lbs of honey out of the producing hive as well since they flew off. It's a very thick, sugary honey that's crystaline and almost solid at room temperature.
I have a batch of this I stuck in some mead. This batch is slightly different than my last (just commercial honey and no additives other than water and yeast) because I made it with apple juice to see if I can make an apple/honey mead.
I also just racked out my last batch of mead today. Super drinkable, super easy to make and it is potent stuff.
-The hive that was producing honey flew off right before winter. We think they probably were diseased and did it because of that.
-The other have was already weak, and we think it may or may not have had a queen. Regardless there weren't a lot of bees, and since they ball up and warm each other for winter they died off due to the cold. I kind of thought this was going to happen unfortunately.
-We did save the wax honey comb for next year, it's stuck in a freezer waiting on spring so that we can pop it in. This will give our next bees a very very significant head start in their production. If anything it'll probably be worth nearly a full harvest or 70-100lbs of honey.
-The other good news is we got another 40-50lbs of honey out of the producing hive as well since they flew off. It's a very thick, sugary honey that's crystaline and almost solid at room temperature.
I have a batch of this I stuck in some mead. This batch is slightly different than my last (just commercial honey and no additives other than water and yeast) because I made it with apple juice to see if I can make an apple/honey mead.
I also just racked out my last batch of mead today. Super drinkable, super easy to make and it is potent stuff.
I never heard of a meadery before. We were in Cleveland a few weeks ago. So after we finished up at Cleveland Clinic I looked for some wineries. I came across Western Reserve Meadery. We just assumed it was a winery. To our surprise it was not. We did some tastings and really enjoyed it. I was blown away actually. I had no clue a wine like drink could be made from honey. It was so good. We took 6 bottles home.
https://www.westernreservemeadery.com
https://www.westernreservemeadery.com
Threw a few pics of the hive setup from the previous weekend up. Me, our friend and my wife worked about 2-3 hours on getting 4 hives stood up. We have 3 Italians and 1 Russians. We'll see how this works out.
Getting the first package ready to go in, shuffling some frames and getting ready to install the queen.
Working on the next hive. Notice how the first one has the package on top. We shook the bees in and are waiting for the stragglers to leave.
The second hive is done. You can see how this hive will hold 2 hives. Notice how the box only occupies half the space. The bees will build up and the entrances are on opposing sides of the box. One side will have Italians and the other Russians.
Russians are darker than the Italian Bees. If we don't like em we'll just queen swap at some point and that'll be that.
Doing some smoking here. Notice how the black trough in the hive in the foreground. That's sugar water so the bees have something to eat early on in the year as they're getting established. We want them making brood ASAP. Unfortunately for us it's a week of rainy weather here so we're not going to get to tend to this until Friday.
Getting the first package ready to go in, shuffling some frames and getting ready to install the queen.
Working on the next hive. Notice how the first one has the package on top. We shook the bees in and are waiting for the stragglers to leave.
The second hive is done. You can see how this hive will hold 2 hives. Notice how the box only occupies half the space. The bees will build up and the entrances are on opposing sides of the box. One side will have Italians and the other Russians.
Russians are darker than the Italian Bees. If we don't like em we'll just queen swap at some point and that'll be that.
Doing some smoking here. Notice how the black trough in the hive in the foreground. That's sugar water so the bees have something to eat early on in the year as they're getting established. We want them making brood ASAP. Unfortunately for us it's a week of rainy weather here so we're not going to get to tend to this until Friday.
I just saw this on Instagram. It's like a barrel with a tap on it. But it's for honey bees. I dont know anything about this or the honey bee hobby. But I think it's pretty neat if it works as advertised.
www.honeyflow.com
Spring is here
Experience the award-winning invention that lets you harvest honey straight from the hive
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