We need an update. You been stung yet ?

You all probably wish I had a go pro last night.
It's the temperature of hell in iowania right now...I've been gone and noticed my bees were bearded up pretty bad on the outside of a couple of hives. That's not uncommon if it's hot.

I decided to be nice...I took a bucket of water down and filled a small water thing with some rocks in it 10' in front of the hives. I was feeling brave and wasn't wearing any protective stuff. I'm looking at these bees and how hot they are and decide I should crack the tops on a couple of the hives to allow some air flow.

I take 1 step towards them and immediately get my ass kicked. I was hit 5-6 times before I even knew I was in a fight. It was like a gang initiation.

During the past couple of weeks we did 2 cutouts, one ironically in my parents home. Never had bees before this year. Both of those cutouts ran away within a day.

Just got a call about another one from a dozer guy who was getting his ass kicked by a tree of bees. I think I'm ducking out of that one for another obligation, but at least it's hot enough to grill meat on the driveway...without a bee suit....and bees that are grouchy as hell due to the heat and their tree being knocked over.


I'm still enjoying it and I'm lucky that I don't swell when I get stung. My brother got stung on the lip the other day and looked like Mush mouth from the cosby kids about 5 minutes later. The hot dry weather here has really hurt honey production. The white clover is stunted and not blooming so everyone has less than they had hoped. If I had to guess, right now I probably have 5 honey supers full. I think you figure about 3-4 gallons per super, so I should realistically have 15 gallons plus this year, and if we get some rain hopefully that much more. We'll see.

If you will start a gofundme we'll get the go pro for you. LOL.

What does this mean?

I was talking with a bee-keeping friend of mine about the decline of managed colonies due to mites, pesticides or other problems. He suggested that it may actually be "intense" bee keeping/farming. Much like the intense farming in agriculture that led to changes decades ago, it might be the same thing.

There are more managed hives now than when the start of colony collapse disorder was first described ten years ago. Because of better techniques in pest control and bee rearing/queen production, we have more honeybees now than ever before. Things are def looking up.

There is a new breed of bees that has been developed by Purdue university that are varroa mite resistant. They're called "anklebiter" because they bite the legs off the mites.

Every time you post about Iowa it amazes me how wet it is there.

How is the corn oooking there? Can you make pictures of burned up corn go viral so the price will go up? I don't have enough hedged.

A swarm of bees found a hole under the roof vent cap and built a hive in the sophet.
We had to tear off some of the trim and the sophet to remove the hive and the bees. There have never been bees in their home before. Ironic they move in when brother and I start doing this.

The bees from that removal flew away the next day from their new hive location. We probably missed or killed the queen. I checked today and the bees are all gone from their home. I'll throw up some pics to show you more.

The week before that we cut a hive out of an old pop up camper. We put that comb in frames and moved the, to a new location and hive. All of those bees swarmed away the next day too. Not sure why. It sure makes all of the work to do it wasted.

Northern Iowa is getting pounded by rain, hail and wind. Flooding in some areas. We are in a pretty bad drought in my area. Rains keep missing us by 30 miles

That's interesting. I have one hive with hive beetles. I haven't treated them but smash as many beetles as I can when I open it. I named that hive after a local welfare apartment complex because none of those bastards are working during the day and have bed bugs. They're mean too. If they make it through winter I'll pinch that queen in the spring.

I know the feeling man except typically they're missing me by 300 miles. Hopefully you'll catch one.

I love smashing those little ****ers!
Small hive beetles usu aren't a problem in a strong hive. They're considered a secondary pest, and a lot of beeks (like myself) don't do anything to control.
Personally, I've never lost a hive to SHB. They've been in every hive I've had, but the bees seem to keep them in check. The bees push them into the upper portions of the hive (inner cover and the gaps between the hive body and frames) and I've not had them in the honeycomb.
Earlier this year I tried Swiffer sheets, but it caught more bees than SHB. I do not recommend.

Planning on pulling honey boxes Labor Day weekend. It's been so dry and production has really been slow. I added boxes to a couple of hives 2 weeks ago that don't even have any comb drawn yet. Right now it's looking like I'll have around 200-250lbs of honey this year. I guess that isn't bad for year one but I was hoping for more.

I haven't dug deep into them in over a month and I'm thinking about it. One of my pals on the bee team checked his yesterday and has five dead or dying hives right now. Not sure why, but some have suggested fungicides on corn?

I guess I'm lucky so dpfar when I'm getting stung, I don't swell too bad....but my brother gets one and looks like things are broken. This is his hand from one shot to a finger, and since I know you're all here for the blood and guts I'll share......but I can't share the pic of his lip when he got stung there....looked like mush mouth from the Cosby show about 2 minutes later.

What is pulling boxes? Taking them apart to extract the honey? What happens with the bees over winter?

Ouch!

Tell your brother to buy some jeans that fit. :D

More likkely miticide for spider mites or insecticide for corn rootworm beetles in corn or aphids in beans.

Basics. There are what are "deep supers" and mediums/honey supers.

In the Midwest, you typically need 2 deeps with 10 frames each for the bees to live. The bottom one is typically where the queen lays most of the eggs and the second you want to see full of capped honey going into winter. They build their hives in a shape and usually have honey in the top.

We let them fill 2 deeps, and then when they are about 70-80% full you add a honey super. They are more like 6 1/2" deep with 10 frames. ( in the type of hives I have). When the honey Super is 80% full of capped honey you add another.....and hopefully another. All hives of bees are different and I don't know why. I have some I got the first day and one hive has 3 honey supers full and the other might fill one.

Each of the honey super stars will weigh probably 40lbs. A gallon of honey is 12lbs

So, when I said pull the boxes, I was referring to taking the honey supers, blowing the bees out and harvesting honey. In Iowa we do that before the golden rod blooms because that pollen makes the honey taste like shit.

I will document and share the harvesting process around Labor Day.

No idea what happened but there have been crop dusters in the area this month. All I know at this point is that his bees were fine a couple of eeeks ago and now 5 hives are basically dead. They also happen to be the purchased bees and the wild catches are doing ok.

We are learning that wild bees seem to be tougher.



If anyone else is doing this I'd sure like to see pics of your setup.

Insecticide and miticide are made to kill bugs. I wouldn't know how a fungicide could affect bee physiology but I'm no entomologist.

Makes sense that wild bees would be tougher. If they're from the area they've had ancillary exposure to pesticides and disease in the area.

Hope he wasnt on the shitter for that pic.ROFL

Today is the day.

I'm taking off in a while to go loot some honey. I'm sure they'll be unhappy about it, but I'll have some pics to share of the process at the end of the weekend.

Don't die about it.

This weekend I was reminded of an old MadTV skit.....Lowered expectations.

We sang that theme a few times as we gathered the honey supers from our hives.
I had hopes and expectations for 20-25 gallons from my five, first year hives. The final tally from my first year of bee keeping was a little under 10 gallons. Some people don't get any from a first year hive, and we experience a drought that burned out the white clover and dandelions which is a major source of honey, so I should probably be happy to have any at all.

I know you're all watching for the crashes....I only took a couple of half stings through the gloves and on my taint when I squatted down one smashed one. The wreck of the weekend was my brother again, who got stung in the eye lid. We had to pull the stinger with pliers, and I'm not going to lie....I'm guessing it hurt like a sonnabitch.

The basic process. We take th hive tops off, replace it with a different type of lid that has a few spritzes of a substance that smells like almond extract that bees hate. Most of the bees leave that Super. After a few minutes we pop the Super off and place it on a stand and use a battery powered blower to blow bees out of the box and frames. We do this because you don't want a bunch of pissed off bees in your shop when you extract.

Once we do that, we take the boxes of frames to my buddies shop which is a nice setup. We use a leaf blower to blast as many of the remaining bees from the box as we can and take them indoors. When you're done with s load, a truck is almost unapproachable due to th volume of lost, confused and angry bees.

Once inside we use hot knifes to scrape the wax caps from the frames of capped honey. This is the uncapping process and there are other ways including using something that looks like a comb. The wax has to be removed to get the honey out. Then we put the frames into a machine that spins the honey out of the comb...we run that honey into a filter and then into buckets. You have to filter to get the pieces of wax and comb out of the honey, as well as bee legs and hive beetles and other chunks of things you don't want.

We put the honey into buckets for storage and then it can be bottled at a later time.

Year one....I learned a lot. So far I've enjoyed doing it, like spending time with our small bee team and it provides a great conversation topic in both my business and personal life.

This year we totaled around 975lbs of honey as a group.

I'll share a few pics for those that like them.

There is a lot more to the process. Wax needs to be melted and cleaned, and making sure the bees are healthy going into winter.

Financially, bee keeping year one is an ass kicking, but hobbies cost money and this one at least gives something back to our family and friends and has potential to pay off going forward. I've already decided I won't buy more bee nucs. I'll capture swarms and maybe a few cutouts. I think wild bees are tougher.

After some discussion, I will probably add a couple of hives next year and I'm thinking more about a top bar hive so I can get some comb and honey. Seems to be demand for that


Pics aren't uploading so I may have to resize and add later.

Very interesting!

That is damned interesting. Nobody has ever told me how that stuff works. Partially nobody here does it. And if your drought will adversely affect bee production, it would be a joke around here. Thanks for posting.

And HOLY MOTHER ****. Anything you have to pull out of me with pliers I am not interested in. And sorry about your Taint man, LOL.

Pics

Moar bee pics

That's awesome.

Cool hobby, Iowanian.

Looks like a clean professional operation. Well done.

If it were me, I'd have 30 acres coated in sticky honey product.

Thanks for sharing.

So far I've learned that like most of my other farm related hobbies, bee keeping has turned me into a magician.

Take $1500 and say the magic word..."bitch better have my honey" and Poof! It's now $400!!!!


No...it's not about the money.. it's interesting and I find it calming and relaxing to go watch and screw with my bees. It's also been a great ice breaker conversation topic. It helps our farm, orchard, garden and I get to tell hippies that I'm a deplorable who does more hippy earth shit that's they do. Bonus.

Thanks for watching. Tune in next spring for a game of "did any of them survive the winter"

I talked with my old man last week and he said he got quite a bit more honey this year than last. Between all 15 of his hives he collected just under 600 pounds. I guess all the heavy spring rain did some good.

Most excellent Iowanian

I was caulking the side of the house about 3 weeks ago and was standing over a bush that just so happened to have a yellow jacket nest underneath it. I got nailed on the knee and knocked that one off pretty quick, the one that was going to town repeatedly stinging my ankle had me doing the funky dance across the drive. Later that evening I went out and dumped some gas in the hole and dam if I didn't get nailed in the palm. That shit hurt for a good week.

How awesome! Excellent pics of the extracting process. Your honey has great color, I bet it tastes "real". Hippie earth shit is good for the planet no matter who does it. Looking forward to next spring!

Great pics!

Really enjoyed seeing some of the process.

There are four of us who putter with this together. Honestly I probably wouldn't do it without them, it's just more fun helping each other.

We plan to do a lineup and taste test. Our honey was in 4-5 different locations. Mine should be heavy alfalfa and wood,and wildflowers, while another guy is surrounded by a couple of hundred acres of pollinator CRP fields. I'm interested to see the difference from place to place.

Really have enjoyed this thread thanks so much keep it going.

Also when I was a kid mom would bring a jar home from the store with a chunk of the honey comb in it. You dont see this anymore I think it was Su Bee. For some reason she liked that. She said her Dad my Gramps who kept bees always jarred with a bit of the comb.

Seriously this is incredibly fun. After reading this thread I discovered I work with two folks who keep bees. So I'm kind and helping them out when I can.

I mostly get in the way, but haven't screwed anything up. Yet. I'm learning a lot and only got stung a few times. It's fun Tom do and socialize with others who do it.

Good on ya, again IO

Very interesting stuff. I have to say I'm surprised at how often you guys appear to get stung. I would have figured gear and technique would practically eliminate that.

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That's hilarious

Great stuff.

I rank honey right behind money as one of my true loves.

Any bugs in my shop are usually dealt with complete and utter destructive force.

Yesterday I noticed what initially looked like a fly on the shop bench. As I was cocking the fly gun getting ready to sight him in I looked closer and discovered it was a worker honey bee. Just crawling around on the bench acting all confused. I slid a piece of paper underneath him (I'm no he man Iowanian) and took him to the door. As soon as he hit the open breeze he took off with what looked like an instinctive plan.

Gotta admit, me previously following this thread saved his life.

Wasps on the other hand...they could shit hundred dollar bills out of their ass and I'd still kill everyone one. They scare the hell out of me. Only animal that does.

The truth is we don't get stung that often. I've had more trips with nothing bad happening.

Usually when we get stung it's during cutouts when we are cutting into their homes and tearing out comb by comb. The gear is good and saves you most of the time. Maybe I'm too rammy and not calm enough, maybe I don't use enough smoke to calm them down. A lot of people don't use gear at all, but I've gotten my ass kicked about every time I've been near them.

Usually everything is fine and you're taking your gear off and one hits you in the face when you take the net off, or one is behind your leg and you squat or sit on them in the truck seat. A lot of times it's on the neck when you work over your head....if you get stung through a suit it's usually from pinching them.

Other times I'm sure it's dumb things....moving too fast, getting cocky in a hot day when they are grumpy and taking your hats off near the hives and sipping a beer....that's how my brother took one to the lip....they don't like beer.

I'm not s pro and I'm sure I make mistakes. Usually I just tell people that bees are a good judge of character as proven by them coming for my face every time I get near a hive with no net. It's a fact that they come after some people more than others. It's either because they think my manly smell is bad, im ugly or I'm so macho they think I'm a grizly bear. I'd go with ugly since you've seen me.

Though the gloves is usually a half sting...small bite. Truth is, Most of them don't hurt too bad....the end of the nose is the worst place I've found so far, but I don't pee near the hives.

One of our guys sells quite a bit of honey and he sells some with comb in the jars and some straight pieces of comb.

This is why I'm thinking of getting s top bar hive or two....so I can sell comb honey for an up charge.

Most guys don't sell comb because you don't want to screw up the comb in your frames. If you start with built up frames next year the bees start making honey quicker because they don't spend time building new comb. More honey-mo money.

That's how I got started....an old timer wanted out of the business and a friend started talking to him....the other guys got a couple of hives....I started helping them and boom. I'll wager you have 2 hives next year based on my history.

Wasps and yellow jackets aren't bees....they are satans asshole.

I think I shared around fall last year I mowed over some by my pond and took 30-40 hits from those bastards. After they stung me 4 more times when I went down with wasp spray...which just pisses them off.....I ended up dealing with them with a couple of gallons of gas and the business end of 2lbs of tannerite. F yellowjackets. I hate them.

Really cool thread, I've been thinking of doing this again. Seeing the pictures makes me remember how fun most of the experience was.

I'm gone a ton from my farm in the summer due to photo related travel. My big concern is that I return to a hive crash. The recent fragility of bee populations concern me if you aren't going to be in the area for 2-3 weeks at a time.

I'm taking a "Get tough or die" approach. That said I was annoyed by hive beetles when we were processing and might try to spray a vinegar and salt solution under my hives to kill those larva and I'm not above fogging for mites with oxcelic acid and grain alcohol to handle that if needed.

A weak hive isn't going to make it, a strong one probably should. While I'm not an expert by any means it seems to me the only times they really need much baby sitting is early in the spring when you need to do some supplemental feeding.

If you're concerned about mites you can always fog them when you are around or detect an issue.

One of the guys did lose some hives this summer and we aren't sure why, but it seems like most of the losses from people I talk to happen over the winter. Once you're set up, I'm finding it's pretty easy to find bees.

Just one of those sugar water bottles inserted in the entrance?

There are options, the entrance feeders, top feeders will hold more juice.

Basically, what I was told was to supplement with the sugar water feeders until I see dandilions and white clover. Once those pop, they're ok.

That's what I've been taught anyway.

The top feeders must be new. Course I was doing this 40 years ago so I'd expect some changes. Should set the hives on a concrete slab or?

What kind of land do you have that you set it up on? A pasture away from any sort of potential human visitors?

There are quite a few variants and I'm told they are improving, but this image basically tells the story. You can put up to a gallon in some of them, bees access from the inside. The screens allow them to come up and down into the pool and use the screen to access it without drowning.

Some people also feed pollen patties but I'm told to be cautious with that on the time of year because increased pollen can stimulate the queen to ramp up the egg laying before it's really appropriate timing.

https://i0.wp.com/mudsongs.org/wp/wp...09.13.35-1.jpg

I have a small farm, a bout half hay ground and half timber. I keep the bees in an area at the bottom of a hill a hundred yards or so from my house. They are protected on the west, south and north from wind by trees, have early morning sun through afternoon and a pond and creek nearby. They're sitting on the edge of rolling alfalfa fields with several on adjacent farms as well. Myself and a few neighbors also have fruit trees within bee range as well.


Just got my first message and I'll make my first honey sale at 5pm. That's almost as exciting as filling that first bottle, but not quite.


Need to get done with this honey thing and get ready to press apple cider.

I have area that would be similar. Mostly corn, wheat and soybeans nearby, well and cows. What do you set the hives on and how do keep grass clear if it's just setting on the ground?

I'm thinking some big pavers with lots of plastic under them then set the hive on 5/4 treated base.

Just wanted to chime in to say thanks for the cool stories!

I think that would work. If possible I think I'd try to stay at least a little ways from the ag crop fields to avoid pesticide spray.

Everyone does them a little different.

My bases currently are a tarp with mulch on top of them and I have pallets leveled(a little high on the back side to keep water from running into hive entrance). One of the other guys has gravel leveled and then has built bases of 2x6 on top of 4x4 posts.

I've seen other people set posts and build a platform a little higher than knee high to make it a little easier to work on them.

My thought is if you mulch around them so the entrance doesn't get blocked and you have room to work them, tarps and mulch has worked fine. My hayfield is mowed 3-4 times per year within 20' of the hives and I've whacked weeds down once or twice. That's mostly so I can peek out the bedroom window and see them with bincocs.

I'm not sure there is a right answer as long as the location, light and wind protection is good. But....I haven't kept bees through a winter yet, so don't listen to the new guy as gospel.

I bought the book "bee keeping for dummies" and it's got a lot of great information.

I think this is how I will go if I pull the trigger. No opening hive for honey and way less disturbance and hive weakening.

https://www.honeyflow.com/shop/flow-...y-bundle/p/282

If you choose to go the way of the flow hive, I'll be curious to hear your thoughts once you're using it. I've heard arguments for and against them but have no experience at all.

If they work well and make collection that much easier it would be a no brainer.

This year's hives (Italian, from a bee guy in KS):

The girls made some beautiful comb this year; uncapped frame in the background

My extracting setup, a lil' 2 framer
This one came with a hand crank, but I needed more power (Tim Allen grunt)!

I used an uncapping roller this year (instead of an uncapping fork), and I'll never go back. There was a lot less wax in the tub this time around, less honey dripping out of the cells, and it's much faster/easier to do. Here is a frame just after uncapping, ready to go into the spinner.

I got about 4.6 gallons this year; not too shabby for a couple of first year package hives.

Seems like some of you are behind the times.....

https://media.wired.com/photos/59327...t/hive-gif.gif

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/622...x1-940x940.jpg

I've wondered about the roller for uncapping but have been concerned that it wouldn't make large enough holes to get all of the honey out. You were happy with the results it sounds like, so maybe we can do a test next year.

Your honey is pretty light in color. Was the main food source clover?


For some reason I can't upload pics now, but I've moved on to the next phase.
We've had some rainy, windy days so I've spent a little time moving onto the next phase(in addition to trying to sell a little honey when I have time).

The past couple of weeks we have been slicing apples from our trees, and applying honey from my bees and dehydrating them for snacks. I've done quite a few with a brown sugar and cinnamon also, but don't judge me.

I've sold about half of what I'm going to and plan to keep some back for use, storage and things like teacher gifts for the kids.

I did break down and put some strips for mites in the hives, but I'm on the fence about how much I'm going to winterize them.

Yes IA mostly clover early, but the white is one of the first flowers that finishes blooming.

I took this @ the beginning of Oct, pretty late in the season. Honey gets darker later in the season(where I have these hives) due to the other flowers going.

I had some stuff last year that was much lighter than this. Gonna have to put up some comparison pics.

Beautiful.

Thank you

such an interesting thread.
my great grandfather raised bees and had an apple orchard.
he showed me how to work up a snapping turtle when i was 8.
sec

I hope none of you guys' bees get pollen from pigweed/Palmer Amaranth.

Pollen from that shit is every bit as bad as chemical warfare.

Thanks for the new reading subject, Buehler. Dang, looks like that stuff is a real problem.

Some recent honeys to compare:

The very light stuff from Grundy is from a friend of mine, there is a ton of clover, apple and pear trees up there. Very clovery.

The Platte Co stuff (mine) has clover, basswood, paw paw, and other fruit trees.
The really dark stuff from 2016 was extracted using a crush and strain technique, and resulted in a much denser and very robust flavor.
I ate/sold all of the other 2016 regular centrifugal extraction stuff which was in between the color of the Grundy and my other stuff.

:LOL:

This is a great thread. Thanks for starting it, Iowanian.

Here's a shameless plug for the UC Davis "Honey and Pollination Center", http://honey.ucdavis.edu/front-page

Please provide a review on here. Amazing difference in the colors.

This is a great thread!