I'm hearing more stories of people losing hives, from guys like me with a handful right up to a commercial guy who treats his bees seven ways to Sunday.

I haven't been in mine for 3-4 weeks but the next time it warms up to 50+ I'm going to pop them and have one last look.


Red the color variation is interesting and pollens makes all the difference. I've heard that urban honey is different and darker due to the varieties of flowers and ornamentals in the vicinity.


I should start a go find me for plastic surgery to see if doctors are skilled enough to make me pretty enough bees don't want to sting my eyes shut.

Bummer.

It's 50 degrees today so I walked down to check my hives. 2 alive, 3 dead.
My friends have lost several hives already too. I don't know if it's the extreme cold, mites, who knows.
This pic is my strongest hive....and the shit bees next to it are roaring stronger than they were when I wanted them to be busy....

Chalk it up to lesson learned. Next winter, I'll do more to protect them from cold and maybe do candy boards.

You do any mite treatments, IA?

Yeah I did some of the treatment sticks. I guess I'm blaming the extreme cold for now.

I'll re-evaluate what I did, treatment(very limited) and what I'll do next winter(candy boards, wood chips, hive wraps).

The thing that pisses me off is my strongest hive died, and my shittiest hive that I planned to pinch the queen is roaring today.

Yeah, mites will kill a strong hive, doesn't matter how strong a hive if the mite load is too great.
I did an oxalic acid vapor treatment mid-Dec, mites dropped like so many freckles.
Earlier in the season I used a product called Hopguard II.

It was 64 degrees here yesterday, and I wanted to pop the lids and see how the girls were doing. I get worried that there are too many dead bees blocking the entrance.
So I checked my "weaker" hive. Right out the gate, I got a little venom therapy for my trouble.
It was about all I could do to lift the top box off.
Great!! We're heavy!! That makes my forehead hurts a little less. Hives look good so far!
When I got home, I looked like a damn Ferengi from Star Trek! I've never swelled up that much before. I've heard that bee stings accumulate over time; I'm starting to believe it.

I talked to another guy that had lost several hives this year already.

We were discussing the way I found the bees, and they are in a dead ball on top of the hive under the inner cover with a few on top of that. I'm going to pull the frames sometime soon and clean the dead bees out and take a look. One theory is that if they're in a ball on top, the cluster just ate it's way up to the top and due to the cold didn't move around much and starved. I was wondering if it were mites if they'd die off a few at a time and either be wedged into the comb or drop to the bottom?

I don't know. What I do know is that I'll go on a rampage finding swarms and maybe do some cutouts. I've found a handful of trees of bees if I get too ambitious. I also think we will build some nuke boxes/swarm traps. I've got 2-3 locations we've gotten swarms more than once(houses) and thought about putting a box there.

This year, I'll probably consider a little more treatment, maybe feed them more in the fall, candy board in the winter and more wraps/protection for winter.

Live and learn.

Does "strongest" in this context mean largest, or something else?

Thanks for these updates btw! Very cool stuff.

It had the most bees all year, meaning I had a good queen. They were vigorous, always coming and going(activity) and produced the most honey.

I kind of knew I'd lose some bees, because everyone does. I'm just a little disappointed to lose that hive(and so many). I do still have my favorite hive and that is a swarm I captured on memorial day that I saw come out of the tree during the ceremony and collected with my kid later. I hope I always have that hive.

Mites will leave little white salt-like crystals all over the frames/combs.
If they have no honey stores, it's likely they starved. If there's honey, then it might be the cold that did it.

You might try some DFM* in early winter/late fall. That'll give 'em a boost.

*directly fed microbial nutrients

What about moving the hives to a barn or shed? I was watching something about bees and pollinating almonds. One big guy stopped doing it and just moved the hives to barns in the winter

A month ago a keeper in Sioux City had his hives vandalized by some kids when it was -20. He lost half a million bees and $60k.

They caught the brats, 12 and 13. The keeper said he hopes they learn to be better people. I say nuthooks.

I read that too. Dumbass kids. Need to be taught a lesson and be show the hive in honey. Parents need to pay restitution.

worst is-how quickly can you restore 500,000 bees with what is going on with the bee population.

Those kids needed a good ass kicking and a couple summers of hard labor.

Just reading about it pissed me off.

I had a trailer load of exposed mixed feed out for a few hours today. Must have been 2-300 bees swarming it. I assume they were digging for the liquid molasses I use when mixing it to control dust. Was quite interesting just watching them digging down into the feed then flying off. They completely disappeared by ~3:30.

Getting dark. Had to go home.

Probably getting minerals as well as a little moisture.
I've got an old trash bin lid and sides that catches rainwater. The bees will fly over to it and drink the dirty water. They also eat mud!

Is this something you want to read about it for another year?


I've been through my dead hives and have the frames cleaned up and ready to go. Probably have 20 full frames of honey ready to go for cut-outs or swarm catches. I'm planning to build some "traps" and have them out in the next month. I've identified a few areas where I know there are hives(found 2 trees on a deer hunt) that I'll place them hoping to catch some swarms. Right now I'm on the fence; I had decided I wasn't buying any more bees and am going to catch or cut out what I have, but I'm finding it harder not to order a couple of packages.

This year I hope some of the other beeks will contribute, share your stories or help save me from stupid decisions. A lot of talk about feeding sugar water and pollen patties, and I'm not sure when I'm going to start doing that with the remaining live hives.

One of the old timers who had been mentoring me a little and had been talking about coming along to do some teaching(had sold all of his hives to my friend) died this week. That's a bummer because he was a great old fellow.

YES!!!

X 2

I have very much enjoyed reading these as well.

I have no interest in beekeeping, but I enjoy reading your stories about it.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...ce0dbc90e9.jpg

We found one of our hives getting robbed on one of those sunny winter days. We brought it inside after dark to salvage the (considerable) remaining honey.

Here’s what the inside of a hive looks like. This box is upside down.


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Ok...you asked for it. On this season of deadliest catch, I'll be overconfident and wreckless. I do hope others will feel included to share also. The real fun should begin sometime in April. See you all then.

Interesting. Is this part of a top bar or just an 8 frame? Doesn't look like the comb is drawn on frames from here? I think I'd like. To build a top bar to try that, to sell comb honey.

Yeah this is a great thread. Never had any interest but since this thread I've had several conversations with an old guy I know who's a beekeeper. It makes both our days I think.

What's the risk of becoming allergic to bee stings if you aren't allergic when you start the hobby? Is it low enough that it's not a consideration? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

No that's a great question

Not a dumb question at all, but I'd either be lying or googling an answer. I just don't know. I know people who can take a lot of stings and be ok, and I know people who can die from one. Maybe I'll be a good case study this year. I do think my brother swells more the more often he is stung.

I have heard discussion that the more you get hit, the more the reactions can increase. I've also heard of people who get stung on purpose to alleviate health conditions. I was asked about stinging a guys wife who had MS but I didn't want to do that.

Spring update
 

Both of the hives have made it through the winter and seem to be strong. They have been bringing in tons of pollen, so brood production if well under way. They love the water station I've set up about 20' from the hives. It's fun to sit there and watch them drink.
We've had days where the bees have been in full gather mode with some nice warm days, although it's been kinda chillish and wet for the last few days.

I pulled the windbreak on the 21st, and flipped the reducer to the 3" entrance a few days before that. I'd been having a little trouble with condensation in the right side hive, so hopefully with the increased ventilation it won't be an issue.

I plan on getting a couple of new queens and do at least 2 splits. I'm getting some hybrid queens called mite-maulers, but they won't be ready until May 1.
I'm set up for 3 more potential swarms/trapouts, and could probably scrounge up a couple more in a pinch.

edit:
I'm preparing half an acre for some bee forage, right in front of the hives. It's mostly sainfoin, with some other nectar bearing flowers mixed in.

Keep posting Iowanian.

Love the beekeeping diary. Keep them up hopefully.

I'll sting Brideanian if she ever needs it

:)

I'll ask her for you but I don't think a sweat bee stinger is going to interest her.



Red I'm very interested to see what happens with those hybrid queens. Let us know how they perform and the demeanor of the hive please

This is a Warré hive. We run 8 or 9 topbars. This box is flipped over so you’re seeing the bottom.

It’s harvested a box at a time. I’m largely a non-interventionist. Add an empty box to the bottom in the spring. Take a full box of honey off the top in the fall. Rinse. Repeat.


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The research goes both ways at this point. Some guys get more allergic the longer they’re in the hobby. Some guys get less. That’s my current understanding.

I do not think it goes rapidly either way, though.


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Great question!!
 

I seem to be getting more allergic to stings. The first ones hurt like a sumbitch but didn't swell up.
I got popped in the forehead and I looked like I had on some prosthetic makeup. I coulda been an extra on Deep Space 9!
It might be due to getting stung close to the sinus cavity, but I've never swelled up like that before.
I got zapped on the back of the head and didn't swell at all. This study needs a bigger sample size, and I'm not too keen on doing that.

If you have time, I'm really interested to see/learn more about the top bar hives you're running. Do you do those due to cost, preference, or for comb honey? I've been considering building one so I'd have some comb to sell, but don't know anyone local that is doing them.

I don't know how widespread it is, but there is an explosion of new beeks in our area. I heard the beginner class has over 70 attendees this year. The bad news is, that's more people competing for swarms and selling honey which will flood the local market...the Good news is, I'd guess there will be a lot of used equipment for sale in a year or so when they realize they don't like getting stung or their bees die and the new wears off.

I love the Warré hives. They fit my management style and my life preferences.

It would be classified as a vertical top-bar hive. Quite different from the horizontal top-bar hives.

It's a french design from the 30s. It's purpose was to be simple to build and simple to manage. They're much smaller than a Langstroth, which has it's advantages in saving one's back, but also advantages to the colony.

It's not at all ideal for producing comb honey.

Hives are just tools, so you can run your hives any way you want. Most guys who run warré hives are following the principles set out by Émile Warré, who wrote Beekeeping for All. click on the link for a free pdf of it. His goal was for everyone to have a hive in their yard. I have helped people get started easily.

Running Warré hives in the Warré method means that you expand your hive space, not by supering (placing empty boxes on top), but by nadiriing (placing
empty boxes on bottom). The Warré method is like a never ending tree trunk cavity, so as the bees keep building downward (the way they do in nature) the boxes are gradually filled, used for brood, then used for honey once they make it towards the top of the stack.

Honey stored in comb that was once brood comb will not be the pearly white comb that customers want, AND it will have papery husks left over from the brood. Not a good mouth-feel.

Langstroth folks often put a queen excluder below their honey supers to prevent the queen from ever laying up there. This preserves the virgin honeycomb.

You CAN get some comb honey from the edges of a warré, but it's unreliable.

For the most part, we crush & strain to harvest our honey, the bees feed off the slum-gum and we process the leftover wax into bricks.

For me and my style:
• I want my bees to make their own comb. Yes it takes more energy that could have gone into honey production, but it prevents the chemical buildup in the wax, allows them to build whatever cell size they want, and keeps me supplied in wax.

• I like the smaller (12in x 12in interior) boxes, they are less heavy, but more importantly they fit the winter cluster better and prevents bees from starving with honey right next to them.

• I believe swarming to be a sign of a healthy hive. I don't go out of my way to force it (by restricting their hive size, for instance), but I certainly don't try to prevent it (rooting around for queen cells, keeping the hive weak, etc). I do capture my swarms when possible and they're far better off as colonizers than a random 3lb box of bees blown out of another hive.

• The boxes are super easy to build. Simple butt joints and rabbets. The top-bars are just a guide and of course the bees build how they want. I do put windows in mine, cause it's so fun to look in.

• I'm just a guy who likes honey. I'm not a sideliner. I'm barely a hobbyist. I seem to stick to 2-6 hives, and I never have trouble selling any extra hives or honey that I have...at prices that I certainly could not afford.

• I did buy my first hive already in a langstroth, but we put a bottom board under it that had a warré sized hole in it with a Warré box underneath. They grew down the next season and the langstroth box came off for good.

• The clubs all recommend langstroth hives of course, but in my opinion, starting with a bunch of langstroth equipment really keeps them chained to that hive style. You're going to need more and more langstroth boxes of course, and it's hard to start buying/making new boxes when you're already invested so heavily in the langs.



Because of the infighting within beekeeping circles, I want to make clear that I'm not declaring my methods as superior, nor do I look down upon other methods/hives/goals. Enjoy the little rascals.

Damn you, Groves!! :cuss:
I've just spent the last couple of hours researching Warre' hives, and now I want to try it out. Shit man, my wife is gonna kill me (again).
Damnation dude, I was happy in my little Langstroth world. **** me

If you want to avoid death-by-wife, you can always just run some langstroth boxes in the warre method: Nadiring, no excluder, etc.

Exactly. Whatever he said.

I don't use excluders, so I think I might try that. I'm not spending $300 to buy new and making one isn't really feasible time-wise for me.

Near miss to start bee season.


I've been doing some burning this spring(CRP, Field edges, timbers) and last night decided to burn my timber to kill off some of the thorns and honey suckle. I was doing it alone but thought i should be pretty good as one neighbor had burned and had a mowed path, one side a pasture and I had burned quite a bit across the creek and a steep ravine.

Short version, I lit the timber and then went to the area i needed to control to keep the fire off of a neighbor property and worked on a back burn. My timber has a lot of dead and dry sticks and undergrowth that needed to go away to make it a healthier habitat.

A couple of hours into the burn I was getting pretty close to being done as the back burn fire and main line were about to merge in most areas, but had another area it had burned up a ditch and started so I put that out....but realized I was out of water. I was zig zagging through the trees and brush and noticed a tree had burned across the ditch and started on the other side of the creek and the fire was about 20-30 yards from my bee hives.

I had to drive about a half mile around through a neighbor to get more water and hauled ass down and put the fire out about 30-40' from my hives. I was "that close" to killing off the bees that hadn't died already, and based on activity I'm not sure one more of them hadn't died in the latest cold snap.

A lot of people are picking up the "packages(2-3lbs of bees)" this week....so bee season is here.

I've looked at a couple of trees to do cutouts already and now that dandilions are blooming I'll probably start doing some of those before swarms get hot and heavy towards the end of May. Should have some pics to share in the next couple of weeks.

I'm getting geared and ramped up for bee swarm apocalypse. We need to catch a lot of swarms so I hope the calls roll in.

I've been through my equipment, my remaining hives have been gone through and I've found my queens and so far so good.

I had 4 trees identified for cutouts. Two died over the winter, one that I looked at with an endopscope 3 weeks ago is gone and I went to cut one out at a cemetery and the mower guy had sprayed the hive and blocked the entrance with a rock and mud. If he'd have waited 2-3 days I'd have had them out.

On the bright side, I got a call last night asking me to go look at a dead walnut tree full of bees. Further investigation reveals that it is very likely next to the house of THE most insane woman in 7 counties. I once saw her eat a live, mud covered crawdad out of a bucket like a snickers bar. That could be interesting if I follow through.

Next three weeks should be more exciting in this thread if I'm lucky.

Holy Shit!ROFL

Today I needed a break from reality so my pal and I did a bee cutout. Actual,y 2 hives about 10' apart. They were 6' or lower so we could do the, from the ground and the owner was going to remodel so we didn't have gen have to put it back together again.

It went really well and took a total of 2.5hrs for both removals.

The best part, I found and caught BOTH queens. That is the tricky part of cutouts. No queen and they might fly off.

Sting total on the year: 3.
Fault: mine. Removed glove to take pics for you.


I will add pics here when I have time to convert them.

Good work. I killed off a half acre of grass to plant a pollenator strip. It probably wont grow.

Here are a few pics from today's two cutouts.

Misadventures in beekeeping
 

When last we left our intrepid apiarist, he(me) was patting himself on the back for successfully wintering 2 hives started from packages. The boxes were heavy, and presumably had enough honey to last until the early spring blooms started. Mother Nature and the Seasons had a different plan.
I don't know how the late Winter/early Spring weather went for the rest of the country, but around here it was pretty screwy. Winter held on for far too long and didn't really seem to want to leave. Consequently, it delayed the early blooms. It seemed everything was late in blooming this spring, white clover in particular.
One fine day in the beginning of April, I went out to the bee yard to check the hives. Much to my dismay, there were piles of dead bees in front of the hives. Thousands and thousands of bees, dead and dying on the ground. I pop the lids, same story: giant wads of dead bees on the bottom board. In the frames, clusters of dead bees with their heads in empty cells.
Well GODDAMMIT!! I mean what the ****?!?!? What the hell happened?!?!?! They were doing so good!!

What I've surmised during autopsy:
1. The lingering winter affected the spring bloom, delaying it by a few weeks.
2. There were some warm days, so the bees were active; not in a cluster. When bees are active, they have to eat. They ate all of their winter stores, and had nothing left.
3. Because there weren't any blooms, the bees weren't able to collect nectar to replenish what was consumed.
4. There were a couple of nights/days that were quite cold, we had several freeze warnings this spring. The bees starved then froze to death in their hives.

Whatever the causes, by the time I figured out what was going on, it was too late for one hive. It was a total loss for the best honey producing hive I had last year. Damn y'all, beekeeping ain't much fun when your hives die!! I was really down about the deadout, and thought about just having the one survivor hive this year. No splits, no nucs, and no new packages. Just the one hive and if it dies, it dies. **** this stupid shit, I suck at it anyway.
After spending a coulpa days ruminating about why I'm doing this beekeeping thing, and feeling bad about so many dead bees, I decided to go ahead and see about getting some package hives. Mind you, by now it's the 2nd week of April, and that's getting kinda late to decide. Still, I called up my supplier, and whaddaya know, he's got some packages that I can pick up that day! Okay then, I guess it's meant to be! I'll take 2 Italians, please.

Let's just see what happens this year!
I've already had some (mis)adventures with these package hives, but this post is already too damn long.

It's been a rough year for a lot of people I know.

I've also found the lack of swarm calls disturbing and 3 trees with wild bees are empty right now.

I was convinced my lost hives were due to the reasons you mentioned above, though mine were dead in a cluster on top of the frames. I saw something a while back that if your bees are dying on the ground in front of the hive it could be tracheal mites.


My dumbest gaff so far this year is sticking my hand into a glove that a few bees had crawled into while I was taking a pic. Stupid is as stupid does.

This afternoon my phone rang and a large tree had blown down in a storm last night and had a "giant hive of bees in the tree". It was across the street from a similar situation I resolved last year.

I went alone this time because my people were busy. I borrowed a trailer with a generator and some tools and about a mile from the location looked up to see the steel loading ramp come off and cartwheel down the Hwy. I'm really glad it happened a couple of hundred yards after two motorcycles had passed. I cobbled that with the help of a farm boy from another town that stopped to help.

The large maple had exploded and the limb that contained the hive was split. I didn't even have to saw it. That was th good news. The bad news is climb and brood were thrown around and damaged. I vacuumed what I could and framed up some of the brood comb(babies). I ended up with about 4 frames of brood and maybe 3000 bees. It was a disappointing but we'll see. I didn't see any sign of the queen and the brood young enough to make a queen is pretty limited.

I set up the box in my yard and stole a full frame of brood from a strong hive. I'm going to check in the morning and if they stick around I think I'll buy a queen to give them a chance. Someone in my area raises queens and has a hybrid Called saskatraz that interests me.

Hope they stick around, don't want to waste that much time and work. I do have 15 gallons of bad comb for th bees and a full five gallon bucket of capped honey to squeaze out when I have time.

It's been a tougher year this year.

Yesterday I went down to check hives and add a honey super to one of the hives. The hive that contained the cutout seen above had died and two full boxes of comb were gross and overrun with what I think are hive beetle larvae. I'd babied them, a new queen had hatched and was laying....and then I go on vacation for a week and get busy a few days and they're all dead. Pisses me off because I essentially wasted 8hrs on it with no return.

While I was there, my best hive was really active...they were agitated. I opened it up to do my inspection to see if i needed to add a box and they got pretty fired up. I closed it back up and noticed a flurry of activity I'd not seen. I'm pretty certain another group of wild bees had shown up to rob them. There was a big bee fight happening at the entrance with hundreds of bees, there was a group at the top opening, bees were dropping in a ball of 3-4 onto the ground....dead bees were being dragged away. I've heard of robbing, but I'd never seen it in one of my hives. Hopefully they were strong enough to hold them off. I have another hive that has a lot of honey but way less activity and I'm not sure that hive would be able to hold them off like this one did.

This year we've only had a handful of calls for swarms and I didn't get any of them. Helped with a few cutouts that have had mixed results....some are strong for the guys and 2 of them absconded the next day.

The hives I do have strong all have 3 boxes of honey and one I added a 4th. I was hoping to add several hives but now I'm still down.

I didn't get my traps built this year, but a guy I do bees with did put some out and has been very successful. I'll definitely have some traps ready to go next spring and catch some swarms that way. The trick seems to be lemon grass oil and ventilation in the boxes.

I found this channel and became addicted immediately.

I'm not sure if the product (flow hive) he uses is great or not but his channel documents a ton of pitfalls and problems that come along with bee keeping. And personally I find it really entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-x...DKuM00-45OUrvg

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UOwxxLUsD64?list=PLRWcJng54KzpJzKDoA-j3_Q5rDwTiNyiO" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I don't have a youtube channel but my snap stories are always popular on bee days.

First -- thanks for the updates. This stuff is pretty damn fascinating.

Second, forgive my ignorance, but what is a "call for a swarm"?

And what do bees fight about? You're saying the wild bees are trying to rob them, but of what? The honey?

You should consider it.

I'd subscribe...

Swarm call.

Last night while I was chopping weeds near the hives and putting a bucket of old honey comb down for my bees to use as their food sources dry up in the drought and end of summer....my phone rang.

"OMG, do you still do bees, we have a bunch of bees in an old building next to a house we bought....can you get them out"...... This would be a "cut out" because you need to cut a hole in the wall of the building-house and remove the comb and bees and relocate them. You trim the comb that has brood(babies) and use rubber bands to strap it into frames, as well as some frames of honey and pollen.....then you vacuum the bees as you've see in pics. Place them into the box with the comb at their new location. Boom.

In that case, I explained that it is a bad time of year and the bees have a low chance of living, but if it can wait I'll be happy to get them in the spring as soon as dandilions bloom. they agreed that was acceptable and I'll probably have some pics to post on that in April 2019.

A swarm call....the phone rings, email pings, FB messager dings....."OMG, there is a giant ball of bees on the tree in my yard/side of my house/fence post/mail box"

Bees get too populated or run out of room in a hive. Their instinct is to create a new queen....when she hatches, half of the bees leave with the old queen to look for a new place to live. They swarm out of the hive in a "cloud" of bees and land nearby and cluster(as you see in pics above on limbs or tomb stones etc).....then scout bees dispatch and look for a new place to live that has the proper volume of space and ventilation....then they come back to the ball of bees(swarm) and fly as a group to the new place to live.


Robbing: I'm not certain what causes it but sometimes bees will find another hive(wild and hives like mine)....they basically send an army of raiders(typical scum) and they'll fight their way into the hive....eat the honey and take it back to their hive and place it into their own comb and cap it to save. I suppose it's an instinct.....They'll clean out honey from dead hives too. Last night I placed a bucket that had some old capped honey from a tree that fell so that my bees could use it. When they cap it in their own comb it will be as good as new. I have some video of the bees fighting.....my bees lined up at the entrance and a hole near the top....the raiders flying in and trying to force their way in....2-3 of my bees would jump on one and ball it up, stinging....there were a lot of clusters of fighting bees on the ground in front of the hive.....and as they died, workers were dragging them away from the hive at the same time. Mine must have won because they were fine last night.

Fun fact. In a bees life, a single bee can make 1-2 tea spoons of honey.

Got it. Cool, and thanks for the additional info! Glad your hive won the war!

This past weekend was honey extraction time. My sister tagged along to practice her photo hobby and took a sting so she's legit now. My brother in law wanted to try and tagged along in a light rain to pull honey supers off of hives....and in standard welcoming form, when it was time to leave and he was taking the hood off, he got his face beat up.

Other than that, it was pretty smooth. Production for the team was about half of last year due to dead hives. If everyone had the year we did, honey prices should go up.

I'll attach a few pics for those that want to see them.

Mooooar of that bee hole footage

Another

Is slicing that wax layer off as satisfying as it looks?

It is, but it's actually harder work than you'd think. The most satisfying part for me is the first second when you open the spigot and honey pours into the filter screen to begin filling your bucket. That's the payoff. I get the same feeling later when I crack the honey bucket to fill the first bottle.

I don't know if Iowa is in the same drought conditions Kansas is but we will have lower honey production because the flowers are not as big as they are in a wet summer so there is less pollen available as well as less water.

A local honey producer tested his combs and they tested positve for glyphosphate but not in the honey. Do you have that concern up there?

Thanks for keeping this going.

Looks good man. Your stuff looks clean and professional. If I tried to capture honey, I'd just make a 60 acre sticky ass mess.

One of my bee team guys has lost every hive at his house on years when the field around him on 2 sides has soybeans. He thinks aerial spray is taking them out but unsure. Something is killing them and his bees a couple of miles away are doing very well

All of Iowa isn't dry but my area is and it definitely takes a toll.


Now I have to decide what I'm going to do with a budding hive beetle problem and to decide about feeding for a while, candy sugar boards and if I'm going to fog them for mites.

My pal has the extraction set up/ utcher shop...it's definitely really nice. A lot harder work to extract than I thought but 4 of us do it all together and help each other.

They broke out a bottle of homemade Meade from 3 years ago, but it was pretty rough. Needs some practice I think.

Welp it was an odd enough season
 

I started off this year with 2 seemingly healthy hives that had been started as package hives the previous April and overwintered once. Nifty.

Then we had what I like to call "this ****ed up Spring". Winter lingers, flower blooms are shy. Then it warmed up, a lot. Bees came out of cluster, but they had eaten all of their winter stores and there wasn't enough blooming for them yet. I didn't notice quick enough, and one hive died. Bummer, dude.

But I still have the one hive, even if it's sketchy to make it. So I feed, feed, feed and the hive comes back from the brink.

I also went ahead and got 2 more package hives for this season. I had queen issues with one hive, and the other was doing fine. I re-queened the bad hive and figured all is well. It wasn't. That hive didn't do shit this season! I mean they built out zero comb! I had given them a deep box that already had 8 frames totally drawn out. The bees said "Thanks mister, that'll do!", and proceeded to do no more comb building. I've never seen that before., not one more frame had been drawn! I just checked them on Monday, and they're still content with what I had originally given to them. I'm not very confident this hive is gonna make it through winter.

My other package hive did well. I got 1.5 gallons of honey from it, a fully drawn deep, a fully drawn medium super, and they are about halfway drawn on another medium super. This hive is still sucking down the 2:1 about a gallon and a half per day!

The near death overwintered hive was my star this year. I got 6.5 gallons from that hive and I haven't killed it yet!
I just finished treating all 3 hives with oxalic acid, so hopefully that will increase my survival pct. going into next year.

Sorry you had a tough year. I'm also down 4 hives from last year, but I've already found some decent cutouts for early spring with buildings-sheds that are being torn down...so, ground level, chainsaw cutouts.

I'm still having a hive beetle problem....much much worse than before. I did buy some beetle traps and the oil to put in them and am catching a lot, but man....

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
 

Welp, hopefully this next year will have a little better weather for the bees.
I'm very thankful to have harvested what I did, my best year yet for honey. I sold all of it I wanted to. The optimism in me hasn't died out!
I'm looking forward to those warm spring days when the flowers are blooming and the bees are flying. We're on the other side of the short days now, it won't be long!

As far as I can tell I don't have too bad of a problem with SHB, but I went ahead and got some of these anti-beetle entrances:

https://guardianbhe.com/

They might help your situation.

I was looking at the hybrid queens from this guy:
https://newriverhoneybees.com/

It's been a little slow in bee world with this weather. I'm hoping we don't have another late start to spring, and I'm going to try to slip some sugar blocks into the hives if it ever warms up.

I bottled my last 5 gallons this weekend and have been peddling it to make some cash for supplies for this spring.

On tap for this spring, I already have a couple of cutouts scheduled. I'm going to start charging for anything that I can't use a chainsaw on this year. Too much time and cost to do it for free unless it's easy. Also on tap, I'm going to convert some of my older-warped hive boxes into bee traps. Seems simple enough to do and I saw my bee team buddy have good success last year with them.

Also, this year I'm going to raise a couple of hives with comb honey to sell in mind. I'm going to cut the foundations down to 3/4" starter strips and see what happens. There is big demand for that and not a lot of supply and I aim to cash in on that if I can get my bees to cooperate.

I've seen quite a bit about bad colony losses this year, but so far I'm good. Hope you are also.

hopefully in 4-6 weeks I'll have some pics and stories to share if there is still interest in this topic.

Sweet, Love hearing your updates.

Keep posting updates dude. I live in the desert so I’m not going to play but I love reading about it.

I'm a regular reader

Forgive my ignorance.. I am just starting to learn some beekeeping.. what do you mean by 'cutout'?

We had a warm day yesterday and the girls were bringing in scads of pollen. I can't remember what they are collecting from this time of year, but it was grayish yellow and those pollen sacks were bursting.

Cutting the hive out of a tree, building, or other "structure".

I've got some photos in the thread that will show what I'm talking about.

A "cut out" is a hive removal from a place where it isn't wanted. I've done or assisted with them in houses, garages, trees, buildings.... basically you locate the hive in the structure, try to identifY which cavities the hive is located. Once you've done that, you cut an access hole into the structure. After you have done that, you try to find the queen, and begin removing the hive a piece at a time. You cut the comb with brood(babies) into shapes and rubber band it into your empty frames. Sometimes you can keep some with honey, others we put some of those frames as well for food. We use a "bee vacuum" which is like a reduced power shop vac and suck the bees into a closed box. We relote the hive to its new home(one of our hives) and then place-shake the bees into the new hive and then release the queen.

If you're smart, as I'm learning you need to block the entrance for a couple of days so the bees won't abscond(fly away and waste your time and effort).

That's the basics. It's hard work, it's the most likely time to get stung, but it's fun and challenging.

My favorite or preferred are when we get calls that they are in homes/barns that are being torn down so we don't have to be careful for reconstruction.


In other news, I was wondering if you have any favorite bee men in YouTube ? I like 628dirt rooster and barnyard bees videos and learn a lot from them. There are a lot of noobs and douchers with bad information to sort through.


My favorite quote so far was a different guy who was wearing only shorts and when a bee flew up his shorts said "you're not a real bee keeper until you've been stung on the hammer".

I caught a little break in the rain before the wind picked up and checked my hives this afternoon. All 3 seem to be doing fine. Hopefully I get a chance to go in a little deeper later on this week, so I can get a better picture of what's going on in there.

Check out Don "The Fat Bee Man" Kuchenmeister on youtube. Lots of good info from him, he is very experienced.

How has this winter/snow affected things?