Bee Keeping

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

My two new honeybee colonies arrived and I installed them into their two new hives yesterday. Very exciting! All went well, totally gentle bees and can't wait to see them fly today...supposed to hit 74F and sunny! Woo-HOOOOO!!!!
YES!!!!

[short cut sally]

Oh Bleeker, you will so enjoy them. I know I have.
To update on my hive that was essentially doomed. There is a shining star looking out for them yet. I see today that there are larvea in small to large stages, so I'm thinking maybe they made a queen. I inspected today and even though I didn't see one, there must be one. They had some spunk today too. It was too bad I used all my cornhusks and peanut shells for the smoker for my dad's bees. I'll know next time to take all the stuff in the bee yard with me instead of leaving it behind. My dad's bees are going great guns, I think I'll be adding another hive body on next week or so..they are like everywhere..

[crazycanuck]

Saw this on today & thought the bee folks might like it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth...00/8682842.stm

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Here's a video i took of my new bee hives a few days ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN8DA_F6hUw
it was a pretty buzy day.

[crazycanuck]

Just another reason to be a small bee hive keeper...
http://www.news.com.au/world/one-per...-1225871170288

[OakLeaf]

Wow.

Bee peeps, how likely is it that these bees will survive?

I still have not seen a single honeybee since we've been back in Ohio. Seven weeks now.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Just another reason to be a small bee hive keeper...
http://www.news.com.au/world/one-per...-1225871170288

I've seen this story in several versions already.
When you see the various photos, there are obviously not 7000 bee hives on that truck. The bee owner said it was 800 single hives (that number jives better with the photos), and of those only 150 hives either fell off the truck or were jarred open. Bee-wise, it's lucky the bee truck did not tip over. Yes that's a lot of bees escaping, but 4/5 of the hives on the truck were not damaged or cracked opened. Beekeeper workers transferred the undamaged hives onto a new truck and got them out of there.
The one person killed and other people injured were in vehicles that collided with the truck. One car was very badly crushed, it's a wonder more people weren't killed or seriously hurt. Very sad.

Some of the 150 or so crashed hives might have been salvageable, at least in parts. The beekeeper could probably re-use some of the frames and boxes, and might even have been able to transfer some frames full of bees or brood that were on the ground into empty boxes and transport them away from the crash site. Once the hives are removed from the highway area any remaining flying disoriented bees will disperse and probably die off.

[mudmucker]

Well, it's close to 9 months since the last bee posting. It's March now and time to think about bees. I make mead and locally good honey can get expensive when you need 6 to 12 lbs per batch. So I said, well, let's do my own bees! I've decided to build my own top bar hive and take the more natural beekeeping route. There are many obvious reasons why I've decided to go this way over the conventional vertical hives, which I won't get into here. I've ordered my bees from a local apiary and am awaiting the call in April. This was fun to build and extremely inexpensive.

See here for more pictures and narrative https://picasaweb.google.com/1037315...43392922/Bees#

Building the hive


Making a top bar


Nearly completed


Made a roof. Still need to put something protective over it. I think some brown aluminum flashing to keep it very light.