I haz a buzz

ansonivan, a.k.a. Marcie, wrote: Awesome new hobby sir.

The gals are doing great! They went on a major pollen hunt today and worker after worker came in low with their pollen baskets full of pale yellow pollen.

Here you can see one coming in for a landing:

That yellow stuff on her hind legs is the pollen. There's not really a basket structure on the legs, but they attach the pollen to their legs and it's called the pollen basket.

Today I released the queens. I named one 'Queenie' and the other one 'Maybelline'. Yeah, I like Chuck Berry

I opened up the hives today to do a little maintenance and I removed some burr comb. Because I had some extra space in between two frames for the Queen box to fit, they wanted to fill that space with comb. Ultimately it makes it hard to maintain the frames properly so it is best to remove it when they make burr comb. Here's a couple shots of it:

These pieces are about 6" at their longest side for reference:

If you look closely at the cells in this one you can see eggs. They look like tiny grains of rice, one in the center of almost every cell and one cell with orange pollen in it:

Pretty cool

So are you training your bee army to do your bidding?

Yesh.

im still trying to figure out what this honey extractor thing is you speak of... we had bees in the back yard when i was a kid, four or five hives, at least till the neighbor nuked them ( he got his back later though..) but all I remember about getting honey out of hives was you needed a smoke can, a bucket, and a hot electric knife...oh, and also its not a good idea to let bees get under the mesh of your funky hat...

cool hobby... when do the landing strip lines and lights get installed on the flight deck?

If you like your honey in the comb, then yeah, that's about it. If you want to extract the honey and reuse the comb in the hive, then you need this big centrifuge thing to spin the honey out of the cells after removing the cappings. Honeycomb takes a lot of energy to make, so saving the bees that effort means more honey production in less time.

This is awesome!!!

The amazing thing about bees is the inbred engineering and navigational skills they have.

...and the fact that aerodynamically, they shouldnt be able to fly at all

4cylndrfury wrote: ...and the fact that aerodynamically, they shouldnt be able to fly at all

I know that bumble bee, moths and butterflies "can't" fly. Somebody needs to tell them.

Ok Mojo. Your thread is inspiring. I've done some net research but haven't taken a class on bee keeping..in...ever.

Also, Savannah GA has a store that sells flavored honeys. It's way cool. They seemed very knowledgeable and willing to talk. They mentioned that the plants the bees come in contact with affects the taste of the honey. That was how they were able to flavor them naturally. By planting the hives in a field of say, orange trees or a strawberry field.

Honey that is labeled as a specific flavor can also be honey that was harvested from the hive while a particular plant was in bloom. For instance, if I wanted to have "Clover Honey" I would put a super on the hive with empty comb at the start of the clover bloom and remove that super once the clover bloom was done. Chances are, most of the honey production during that time will be of clover origin, although there will be some other pollen & nectar sources during that time also. Honey bees will travel up to 2 miles in any one direction from the hive when foraging, so you would have to have a really large crop to place the bees in the middle of and not get other pollen sources mixed in there.

As a FYI, bee's wax is the main ingredient in cast bullit ("boolits") lube. If you want to make your own, that's what you gotta start with and it ain't cheap. There's a guy selling an excellent boolit lube that must have his own hives, as his finished product is cheaper than I can find raw wax for.

This thread is making my skin itch and my blood pressure skyrocket. Oh, and could you please refrain from using the term "Bee Army" as to not give me nightmares.

LOL you are allergic to my thread

It's been a while since I posted about the bees, but I thought I would post this project I recently completed. It's my bee vacuum.

Why do I want a bee vacuum? I want to be able to remove feral colonies when they take up in places they are not wanted, or possibly capture swarms. I would then bring these bees back to my yard and set them up with their own hive. In fact, I just suck them into their new hive to start with. Here's how it works:

I made a bottom, screened divider and a screened top out of an unassembled hive body. The vacuum is just your standard large shop vac and it should have plenty of power. To control the force so as to not kill too many bees during this process there is a bypass built into the top. The bottom has an inlet for another vacuum hose, this one goes to where the bees are. You suck the bees into the middle section, which is just a standard 8 frame hive body, with frames with foundation on them to give the bees something to crawl around on once they find themselves inside.

In this picture you can see the parts a little better. The white section is a hive body with frames inside, the unpainted sections are the "Bee Vac" specific parts.

This pic shows a closeup of the screened divider. The purpose of this part is to keep the bees in the white hive body. Once you have cut out the comb for a feral colony you will want to rejoin the bees with their brood as soon as possible. Cut comb can be placed in a frame that does not have foundation on it and held in place with beekeepers wire or rubber bands. These frames with food and brood get placed into another hive body and this hive body can be placed on top of the screened divider and the sliding top section placed on the top of everything. Once the ratchet strap is back in place, pull the screen out of the divider and the bees can crawl up and tend their brood. This should result in a calmer transport and better transition to their new home.

Once the bees are all on board the sliding top can be opened all the way, providing ventilation. Once home, all that is necessary is to remove the sliding top and replace it with a standard top and open the gate. After a few days and they have had a chance to settle I would place the hive on a standard bottom board like my other hives have.

Here's a linky to more pictures of the Bee Vac Project. I was hoping to practice on some styrofoam packing peanuts but I don't seem to have any.

Here's a linky to the site where I got the design idea.

No update since almost a year ago?! WTF wo-Man!? How'd that buzz go? A friend just got his own hive in Atlanta.

I agree, we must have an update.... sir

A local beekeeper I've known since high school, told me that cellphone towers are screwing up the bees homing senses. On top of the usual fungus/bacteria/moth problems.

I'm really hoping for an ECM update.........

Since she works in a bike shop, she may be busy with business - it's prime riding weather, ya know?

She has been way too absent lately!

I'm not absent, I'm tardy. Wait, uh... that didn't come out right.

OK, so when I made the vac the swarm season was all but over around here. This season has been rip-roaring and my own hive swarmed once, but I was not able to catch them, over 50ft up! I have volunteered to assist in the removal of two rogue colonies that were going to be removed from houses, but have yet to be called to the front lines to assist. I'm itching to vaccuum up some bees though! Got any colonies that need to be moved?

I have read the theory about cell phones and my opinion is that all that is baloney. People are grasping at straws to explain the Colony Collapse Disorder, but cell phones are not playing into it. The biggest issues bees face right now are lack of nutritious food variety and overuse/indiscriminent use of insecticides and pesticides. Secondly, commercial bee retailers are not helping by producing Queens in quantity, not quality. Inferior queens are a bigger problem than we are willing to admit, until we solve that delimma we won't get anywhere with CCD.

I am glad to hear your friend is getting into beekeeping. I have found it to be very rewarding and I feel more in tune with my environment as a result of watching them and reading more about their plight. I would recommend that they offer sugar syrup to the new bees until they stop taking it, to give them something to build comb with. Chances are that they started with package bees like I did, and if so the bees are tired and have few resources just starting out. Feeding just ensures that they have a minimum amount of resources available, they can use the syrup to build the comb and use the pollen and nectar they collect to feed the brood.

Maybe what you need is a little bit of some of those super tough African queen bees bred into your lines. No, wait....