The last remaining hive has been moved to a friends place. Work and life have conspired against me so I am unable to care for them. My friend had decided it is time for the queen to be replaced. He said he was 30 yards away and still got stung. One angry hive. And here I thought it was me they were always pissed at.
Have lost one hive. Making warm sugar water this morning to feed and warm the hive.
Bee's are like babies, you have to take care of them just as you would your children. Inspect your hives for unwanted pests and parasites, such as Hive Beetles, Varroa Mites, Wax Moths, Queen Lice, Ants, Mice any many small animals that may have a craving and hunger for their honey. Inspect your hives on a regular schedule to prevent unwanted pest and disease's. Watch for over crowded hives. This may indicate that the queen is ready to leave and search for another home taking with her, most of the hive workers. When this occurs the remaining hive will die without a queen. This is the time you need to split your hive and make another new hive, Doing this, you will need another queen for the new hive Which you will have to purchase from a local experienced beekeeper who raises queen bees During the colder months, bees must be kept from the wind, kept warm and feed and plenty of water. Winter will and can destroy the whole colony and that can be a very expensive loss for you. This is just basic information that I have learned from watching a friend who is a amateur beekeeper who has been very successful just by listening and learning from other experienced local beekeepers. There are tons of information on beekeeping and plenty of books pertaining to beekeeping . Just google Beekeeping and you can learn just about everything you need to know before you decide to start beekeeping. Hope this will help those who are curious about raising bees. Good luck
Hoping my little girls are taking advantage of the rag weed. I'd like for them to survive the winter.
After I lost my second hive, I got very discouraged. But I found many professional been keepers unexpectedly lose hives. Keep trying.
Bees are very interesting. They are also, it seems, very difficult to raise. This is my second failed attempt, although I am still fascinated with the life of Bees, I don't see me trying to raise them again.
I recently watched Joe Rogan's old podcast interview with Metallica's James Hetfield from a couple of years back. Hetfield is BIG into beekeeping when he isn't on tour. Funny, they started talking bees about 5 minutes in, and Hetfield was all like "hey, if you want to do the whole interview about bees, I'm good with that. I can talk bees all day long." And then they spent about 45 min of a 2 hour interview doing just that.
As a side note, I find the idea of rock stars being profound as a pretty funny joke. But Hetfield's a surprisingly interesting guy.
Well, 118 days later... The bees are gone :-( They were there last Saturday but today, only a few stragglers remain.
My bees have calmed down. I added another brood box and queen excluder without using smoke or bee screen. They haven't moved up into the new accommodations yet, but they are busy little suckers.
I (Mr.SOTW) went up solo last weekend. The garden is looking good. Watermellons, beans, squash, radishes and cucumbers are sprouting. Tomatoes are flowering. The bees looked good, although I didn't open them, just observed. I walked right up to them and they don't pay me any attention. I didn't get to add any new Jasmine plants to the front gate. I was too busy working on getting the weekend retreat "Code compliant" The County Tax collector has been snooping around, so I figured it's about time to finish the outside. I had to add a egress window to the master bedroom. then start the new siding. I'll finish the siding Saturday morning. I also had 4 loads of dirt delivered. I'm getting ready to start a 30ftx60ft pole barn soon. I'm toying with the idea of a lofted bard, for either guest quarters or extra storage.
The community center near by is having a "Family Day" pot luck this Saturday. We were invited by our neighbors to go with them. We have tickets to a play here in our home town Friday night so it will be a long night of driving for me, I hear there's going to be a greased pig and chicken catching contest at the pot luck.... Yeah... I will not miss that!
The bees drank a pint of sugar water each so I refilled them, I added a sprinkler to the garden. My radishes are already sprouting. I noticed racoon tracks inside the fence. I planted about 30 jalapeno seeds in little pots. If they sprout ill transplant them to the garden. Hopefully they will deter the raccoons.
I planted 8 Jasmine at our front entry. Its 80ft across with 32 ft of gate so I may need to plant 8 more next week to fill in the gaps. The bees will love them next year.
Two new hives have been acquired and set up. It's a little chilly this morning, so they are huddling inside. But they are much calmer than yesterday after their all night drive and being moved into a new home.
I got the garden's 8 ft high fence complete. I then re-tilled before I planted my tomatoes, Radishes, carrots, cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, spaghetti squash, bell pepper and another squash that I'm not sure of the variety.
I added another brood body to each of my hives. I ordered new foundation for the frames which came in on Thursday. While I was in there I gave them both 2 mite treatments and topped them off with a quart of sugar water. The hives were a lot more active this weekend, it looked to me like their numbers have increased by half.
It was an exhausting Saturday but I had just enough energy left to take Mrs. SOTW out to dinner, we bowled one game at the local bowling ally, before settling down for a couple of movies and several adult beverages. All and all it was a great weekend!
I'm watching "Hive Alive" on Netflix. Episode #1 they lost their colony from the observation hive. It makes me feel better that even the "Pros" have the same trouble as we do.
Monsanto is trying to make bees go extinct, so everyone in the world will be dependent on them for seeds. They have the support of many governments, and the people who are so rich that they give the orders to governments. It's all about control. Control the food, control the people.
Sorry, but it's me, and ya'll know me. :)
Photo copy them. The receipt is printed with disappearing ink and will vanish. We kept ours in a zip-lock bag in the cupboard and after 10 months we couldn't read one of them but we could read the other. We had no problems with the return process.
We just bought several fruit trees from Lowes. They mentioned a year guarante, but i was sceptable about it. Maybe i should find the receipt and file everything.....
Last spring we planted 6 peach and 9 apple trees. the deer killed 4 of the peach and 1 apple. My scarecrow worked for at least a week... Thanks to Lowes 1 year plant warranty, I replaced the dead trees last weekend. I'm in construction so now I have #10 gauge 6x6 WWM surrounding each of the trees to keep the deer from rubbing their antlers on them. There are no elk here in Florida but we do have Black Bears.
Feeling your pain on fencing. We have deer and elk pressure at our place. Just before last season we finished a huge garden fence. 8’ tall, over 900’ in length. 1st year we made it through without any damage (we’ll, except our wallets)
We successfully transferred both nukes to my hives with new young Queens. The garden fencing is taking longer than expected. Its half way complete. The deer found the 16ft gap in the fencing and checked out my progress Saturday night. That just proves that I can't plant anything until the fencing is 100% done.
I'm starting my first garden. 2 types of beans, 2 types of tomatoes, squash, watermelons, bell peppers, cukes, carrots and radishes. The spring wild flowers are also in bloom. The bees should be very busy.
A commercial operation is currently wintering about 200 hives in my front pasture. In two weeks I'll be getting two nukes. My only goal is to keep at least one hive alive for a year.
We've had bees for about 4 years now. 3 hives up to 13 at one point. Still learning everyday but its been great for fruit and veggie production and a few grand per year in profit from honey sales. Sure wish you could post pics in the forums!
My last attempt was in Central Florida where I own 150 acres between 2 orange groves. I thought it was the perfect spot but the grove owner sprayed killing both of my hives. I didn't notice until it was too late that the farmer had moved his bees just before he sprayed the groves.
We moved our 2 hives to our property in North Florida where we are surrounded by several thousand acres of planted pines and pastures. No risk of anyone spraying. Our neighbor who has a thousand acres or so, lets a bee keeper, keep 30 or 40 hives in each of her 3 pastures. I am hoping he will mentor me and give me a helping hand.
We missed an opportunity at catching a wild swarm 3 weeks ago, so I have 2 nukes being delivered Saturday. It's that time of year.
The marauding hive has cleaned out all the crystalized honey. At least it didn't go to waste. But I now have plenty of comb for the next attempt at enticing a hive to stay around.
