# So you wannabe a Bee Keeper!



## rocky1 (Apr 8, 2019)

Ok... it's spring and we have several hobbyist beekeeping types among us that will be enthralled with this.

Others will shake their head and ask, as a rule, "How often you get stung?" All the time! Some days are better than others! Some days they are gentle and easy to work, some yards are gentle and easy to work, some hives are gentle and easy to work, and some of them are just plain mean little bitches! When you do this for a living you don't bother counting most days. Some days are memorable because you don't get stung, some days are memorable because you got eat slap up!!

Bee Keeping Basics....

Worker bees! These are the ones with the pointy little appurtenances that inflict pain. They are all female and have attitudes to reflect such. Some days they're pretty easy to get along with, some days you can't walk by without them attacking for little or no reason.





The chunky guy over here on the left side of this frame of sealed brood below, is a Drone Bee.
Drones have no stingers, therefore they work great for freaking out newbie female help, the wife, kids/grand-kids, neighbors, whomever. Slip a couple in a matchbox, and turn them loose in the house, or drop them on the neighbor's head, or pop one in your mouth and let him crawl out and around on your face and watch the grand-kids freak out. They won't hurt you. If they do, you didn't catch a drone!!

The drones' only purpose in the hive is to mate with newly hatched queens; they serve no other purpose. Eat, sleep, buzz around the bee yard waiting for a horny queen bee to fly by. Sounds like a cool job, but most will never be afforded the opportunity. Each queen turns into a little ho, one day in her life, and flies out to mate. She mates with the Drone in mid-air, ripping his genitals and sperm sac from his body, and he falls to the ground and dies.

The Queen will typically mate anywhere from 6 - 15 times that day, occasionally stopping for a quick smoke break, before returning to the hive. Actually, she will stop occasionally to clear the male bees' genitals, and work the sperm into the sperm ducts in her abdomen. Only the fastest among the drones will be afforded the opportunity, and even they may be knocked away by other drones as they catch up.

Since the drones serve no other purpose, when stores get short, and times get tough, the hive reduces population, to carry them further through tough times. The Drones are kicked out of the hive at these times and left to starve or, killed and drug out of the hive. So no... it's not really a cool job. If you do get lucky, your junk gets ripped off and you die. If you don't get lucky, you get kicked out of the house to starve and/or freeze to death. Either way, you're going to die.





A little better picture of a Drone... Bottom left corner we have a little sealed brood, over on the right side, the white milky looking stuff in the cells, we have some advanced unsealed brood. This stuff is pretty far along, in another day or so these larvae will straighten and stand up in their cells, the cell will be sealed by the other bees, the larvae spins a cocoon inside the cell, and enters the pupae stage.








And, here we have the queen bee.







The Queen is essentially a baby factory... The sperm from her little one day floozy foray is stripped of seminal fluids, and stored in sperm ducts in the Queen's body, for future use. Each egg is fertilized from the seminal reserve as it's layed. The queen has the ability to turn the seminal fluid off and on as she lays, Drones are derived from unfertilized eggs. Female bees, both workers and other queens, are derived from fertilized eggs.

Queen bees are raised from the same fertilized eggs as workers, the only difference being their diets. When grafting queen bees for use, you can transfer a larvae up to about 48 hours old, the bees themselves can raise a queen from a larvae, simply by changing it's diet, up to about 76 hours. That is 48 to 76 hours into larval stage, it takes almost 2 days for the egg to hatch and enter larval stage, so you're looking 3 - 4 days old for grafting, if the bees are really cooperative sometimes 5 days. (_Before someone says, well I read._)

Below we have pictures of recently laid eggs in cells. A little pollen in bottom left corner for contrast. Pollen comes in a variety of colors; many plants being worked can be identified by the color of the pollen stored in the hive.

For those of you scratching your heads wondering where the easter bunny hid the eggs, the little white worm looking things in the bottom of the cells are the eggs. When freshly laid they will stand almost straight up as many of these pictured are, as they age they will lay down and develop into young larvae.










And, here we have a brood comb with a little honey on it. Some sealed honey upper right corner, below that the shiny stuff in the cells is unsealed honey. Fat bee above the one with her head in the hole, is again a Drone.







Bee boxes come in assorted sizes, the two most common are Deep and Shallow boxes. The deep is also commonly referred to as a "Hivebody" since it typically houses the brood, and thus comprises the "Broodnest" - and is 9 5/8" deep.

The shallow boxes get way far fetched, and come in a...

"Shallow" - 5 11/16"
"Illinois Depth" or "Medium Depth" - 6 5/8"
"3/4 Depth" - 7 1/2" or 7 5/8" as best I recall

All of that comes in either 8 frame configuration or 10 frame configuration, leading to a vast array of possibilities for different sizes of what is supposedly standardized bee keeping equipment. And, this is addressing nothing more than the common Langstroth Beehive we're all used to seeing.

Then they have different names dependent upon how you stack them...









Typically a double story has no queen excluder, and the queen is allowed to roam throughout the two hivebodies laying eggs. In a Story and a Half configuration, there is typically a wire mesh called a "Queen Excluder" that prevents the queen from roaming up into the honey stored in the supers, or "excludes" her from that part of the hive.

Below we have a couple hives pictured in honey making configuration, typically a Story and a Half hive the first super above the broodnest, is left on the hive for feed. With the single deep below the excluder, there simply isn't a lot of room for honey storage, so you're forced to leave some feed on them.






To be continued... as I ran outta pictures allowed.

Reactions: Great Post 2 | Informative 5


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## rocky1 (Apr 8, 2019)

Bees typically go into a funk over the winter that the beekeeping yuppies refer to as their "winter dearth". Timing of this funk is totally dependent upon where you are in the world. The further north of the equator you are, the sooner brood rearing will cease, reduction of cluster size will take place, and your bees will become pretty much dormant to conserve food and energy.

Lack of feed may drive part of it, but if you feed them syrup and a pollen supplement you can get around that and keep them brooding to some extent. As you watch them over the years however, you notice they quit rearing brood altogether, about the same time each year, without fail, religiously, time and time again, no matter what you do. That part of it is driven by length of daylight, and the only way around it, is to haul them to south Florida and compete with beekeepers from all over the country for territory containing Brazilian Pepper or Melaleuca. Here in North Florida, they'll start shutting down about the 3rd week of October, and slowly wind down until the first or second week of December, upon which they simply will not brood at all. Until the passing of the winter solstice, December 21, and days beginning to lengthen. Weather plays into that as well however, and you need some warmer days to get everything up and growing.

Once they do however you have a bunch of bees that'll look like this, and if you don't do something with them, they'll all swarm in this day and age.










And, since swarming is counterproductive to growing bees to put on pollination, we have to try and prevent that. Therefore we put an empty hivebody on them, and make them a double story.



 

Then when they get grown up, we go through 16 frames containing thousands of these bees...






Looking for this one bee...






You then split the brood and feed in the hive, between the top and bottom halves, and slip a "Queen Excluder" in the hive, to hold the queen down.





Yeah, it would maybe make more sense to put the queen upstairs, but you don't always find her, and when that happens you simply shake ALL the bees down, and put the queen excluder on the hive. Then set the top half of the hive back up, and leave it until the next day. The bees will move back in, cover the brood you've put in the top half; the next day you come back, set the top half off, pick the bottom half with the queen up, and move it. And, introduce a new queen into your split.

Here we have a $25 bee! Yep, they now charge you $25 for one bee, if you're on their preferred customer list, and buy a thousand or more queens each year. If you aren't on that list, you pay $28 for that bee!! Right side of the cage contains candy, little powdered sugar, corn syrup, water. And, holes each end of the cage are plugged with a small cork.






After you set your split off, you pull the cork out of the end of the cage containing the candy, punch a small hole through it to speed up the process, and allow the bees to eat their way in, releasing the queen into the hive, after they've become accustomed to her ordering them around.











Once the queen is released, she'll begin laying in the new hive in a few days, and you have just effected an increase in your operation.


Half a yard of splits... had 120 something in there, moved all of those, set off 96 Friday and set in there again.

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## Tony (Apr 8, 2019)

I have no intent to ever raise bees myself but interesting stuff nonetheless. Thanks for the info Rock!

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## Arn213 (Apr 8, 2019)

No thanks. I already have my “honey” at home and she stings me every chance she gets

On a serious note, there are micro brewers who actually infuse honey on their beer and it taste good. Maybe I’ll chug some, so the sting feels less

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## CWS (Apr 8, 2019)

I ordered my bees and I am going to pick them up the last week of April. This is an awesome post. I have built my hive and when my friend comes over we are going to find a good place to set it. Do you use 10 frame boxes or 8. My friend lost one of his hives in the winter with a brood box full of honey. He is giving me a frame to get my bees started. I have 40 acres of pasture with a lot of white cover. That's again for the information.
Curt

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## rocky1 (Apr 8, 2019)

If you can get some drawn comb Curt, they'll do much better than starting them on foundation. If you're going to do the plastic foundation thing, find about 30-40 lbs of bees wax, get a hot plate and some foam brushes, and wax it good. It barely has enough wax on it to get them to draw it, and they'll do better with a little more wax on the foundation. Starting with drawn comb gives you the advantage of the queen being able to lay right away, the longer it takes to get drawn comb for her to lay, the longer it will take to build the population.

Wax is actually a fatty tissue, they need an abundance of feed to draw it. Even if the clover is blooming, you'll be way ahead mixing some sugar syrup and supplementing feed until they get combs drawn.

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## sprucegum (Apr 8, 2019)

I messed around with bees for a few years. I never had good luck over wintering them up here in vermont. Winters are so long and cold you need to have a very strong colony and a lot of honey to get them through . I buy a couple pounds of honey and depend on wild bees for polination. Nice job with the pictorial and discription Rocky.

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## Lou Currier (Apr 8, 2019)

Great info even though I hate stingy insects but explain how the honey is produces and the cones.


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## Sprung (Apr 8, 2019)

I feel like I need to go chew on an entire bottle of Benadryl after reading through that! 

I've thought for a while that keeping a hive or two of bees would be cool. But I'm also allergic to bee stings, so it probably wouldn't be the wisest of endeavors for me to undertake.

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## CWS (Apr 8, 2019)

rocky1 said:


> If you can get some drawn comb Curt, they'll do much better than starting them on foundation. If you're going to do the plastic foundation thing, find about 30-40 lbs of bees wax, get a hot plate and some foam brushes, and wax it good. It barely has enough wax on it to get them to draw it, and they'll do better with a little more wax on the foundation. Starting with drawn comb gives you the advantage of the queen being able to lay right away, the longer it takes to get drawn comb for her to lay, the longer it will take to build the population.
> 
> Wax is actually a fatty tissue, they need an abundance of feed to draw it. Even if the clover is blooming, you'll be way ahead mixing some sugar syrup and supplementing feed until they get combs drawn.


I just built a hive top feeder for my hive. I will keep it full of syrup to get them started. Do you build your own hive boxes.
Thanks


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## rocky1 (Apr 8, 2019)

sprucegum said:


> I messed around with bees for a few years. I never had good luck over wintering them up here in vermont. Winters are so long and cold you need to have a very strong colony and a lot of honey to get them through . I buy a couple pounds of honey and depend on wild bees for polination. Nice job with the pictorial and discription Rocky.



Over wintering in the north country is tough. Best recommendation would be to move them indoors, where it's heated, with a means for them to get outside. Entrance needs to be high enough it won't get snowed in, the snow will suffocate them if the hive gets buried. Lot of folks stack square hay bales around them. Have seen others that wrapped them in roofing felt and packed hay around them. Still others cut high density foam and wrap the hive with foam and plastic. 

Best bet is get them inside an out building, out of the wind, southern exposure, up off the ground and insulated. Or, build something in the garage you can lock a hive or two up in. Unfortunately, they do have to defecate occasionally, and it will stain paint or vinyl siding, so that has a down side too. Metal siding or steel building you can wash it off. 

Otherwise, supplemental feed will help, but you don't want to build them up too big going into winter. Just try and get them to maintain until early November or so, feed a pollen patty and some sugar syrup. Around the first to middle of January they'll start wanting to build a little as the days lengthen, then you can add a little more feed. 

A lot of commercial operations are storing hundreds/thousands of hives in potato warehouses these days. Not sure how they do it, the bees have to get out and fly every 30 - 45 days at least. They defecate in flight, and they can only hold it so long! There they keep them at somewhere around 45 degrees, I think, in total darkness, to keep them dormant, and prevent them from eating too much feed. Downside to that deal is, if the refrigeration and ventilation system goes down, they all overheat and suffocate. And, when they've all been locked up for a month and you turn them loose, everything within a quarter mile is covered with bee sh1t!! 






Lou Currier said:


> Great info even though I hate stingy insects but explain how the honey is produces and the cones.



Honey is actually bee barf Lou. The bee sucks the nectar up, hauls it to the hive, and regurgitates it. Bees have a public and a private stomach, the private stomach is used for their own needs. Public stomach is used to store and carry the nectar. The stomach does however act like a stomach, secreting enzymes, and stomach acids to digest the nectar. Since the nectar is partially digested and contains those enzymes and acids, there is truly no way for man to make it by other processes. They can make goodies that are close, but it isn't honey. 

Because of this honey is also very acidic. The average person will never see this, but in the extracting room, honey will literally eat the concrete floor up over time, unless it's sealed with an appropriate sealer. Cut the floor out of the shop in ND as it was getting impossible to roll a pallet jack across it anymore, and repoured it. After one season, any place anything sat with water under it, the finish was noticeably etched. It really is that aggressive. That was in 2005, nephew said it's getting bad enough again, that he's looking into having it ground down, holes filled, and sealed again. 

Nectar is typically pretty high in moisture content, varies according to plant, environmental conditions. You get a lot of rain during a honey flow, nectar of course has more moisture in it. Once deposited inside the hive the bees have to fan the moisture content to less than 18% to prevent it from fermenting and spoiling. Here in Florida with our humidity, typically around 17 - 18% is the norm, unless we're into drought type, hot weather. North Dakota, where humidity typically is trivial if not near non-existent, I've seen them fan moisture content down to 12.5 - 13%.


Honey comb is of course constructed of beeswax. As mentioned above somewhere, wax is actually a fatty tissue secreted from glands on the underside of the abdomen. Younger bees tend to produce more wax, not sure why. Maybe older bees retain it like we do, no clue. At any rate the wax is produced like a scale on the wax gland. The bee plucks the scale from under it's belly, chews it up, and sticks it in place to build the comb. Honey comb is pretty much pure wax. Brood combs actually accumulate a layer of fiber something like silk, over time. Each time a bee is raised in a cell, they spin a fine cocoon inside the cell. So brood comb are considerably tougher and quite a bit heavier, than honey comb. However, the wax isn't nearly as pretty when you melt it. 

To my knowledge no one knows where the bee come up with the geometry used in construction of the comb, but they all build it the same six sided way, tilted slightly upward so the nectar doesn't run out. Have heard of cases where bees were kept under the big megawatt transmission lines, and the electrical field caused them to build weird combs, with cells that ran down hill. The elctro magnetic field from the power line, throws their sense of place on the planet out of whack. 






CWS said:


> I just built a hive top feeder for my hive. I will keep it full of syrup to get them started. Do you build your own hive boxes.
> Thanks




We used to Curt, back in '79 the old man ran into a deal on a flat car load on 1 x 12 Ponderosa Pine that had been rained on, he and the local Dadant Bee Supply guy, bought it, and not long after they stumbled upon a semi load. All of it had to be stickered and dried back out, but dad bought 21,000 linear feet that we turned into bee boxes of all nature. Between dipping all of that in coppertox, before assembling, and spraying 28 cases of aluminum paint on it, I went from looking like the green giant, to looking like the tin man that year. 

Automation has driven that stuff to the point it isn't feasible to build your own. You can buy boxes from Mann Lake assembled, branded, dipped, and painted for less than you can buy the lumber, and do it yourself in large quantities. Not a lot less, $2 - $3 a box maybe, however when you buy 1500 at a time, that adds up, and then when you factor in waste lumber, pieces that split, warp, etc., it simply isn't cost efficient. You're better off buying the finished product, without defect, at the commercial level. We used to buy frames unassembled, and put those together, to give the kids something to do over winter in ND, but there too, it got to the point that when you truly sat down and penciled it out, it was more cost efficient to buy them assembled, along with the box.

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## Lou Currier (Apr 9, 2019)

Very interesting thread @rocky1 ...what determines if an egg or honey goes into a comb and why do they collect pollen on their back legs?....inquiring minds want to know more


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## CWS (Apr 9, 2019)

rocky1 said:


> Over wintering in the north country is tough. Best recommendation would be to move them indoors, where it's heated, with a means for them to get outside. Entrance needs to be high enough it won't get snowed in, the snow will suffocate them if the hive gets buried. Lot of folks stack square hay bales around them. Have seen others that wrapped them in roofing felt and packed hay around them. Still others cut high density foam and wrap the hive with foam and plastic.
> 
> Best bet is get them inside an out building, out of the wind, southern exposure, up off the ground and insulated. Or, build something in the garage you can lock a hive or two up in. Unfortunately, they do have to defecate occasionally, and it will stain paint or vinyl siding, so that has a down side too. Metal siding or steel building you can wash it off.
> 
> ...


I learn more and more every day. Thank you for sharing!


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## rocky1 (Apr 9, 2019)

Lou Currier said:


> Very interesting thread @rocky1 ...what determines if an egg or honey goes into a comb and why do they collect pollen on their back legs?....inquiring minds want to know more



Balancing act on the distribution of brood and honey in the broodnest lou. If the queen is fired up and wants to lay, honey flow is coming on, days are getting longer; they will frequently move honey out of the broodnest into empty room in the supers above.

As days get shorter they sense the need to cut back on brood production and start moving feed closer to the brood, where they will cluster and feed on it, to generate heat over winter months.

Pollen will typically be stored at the outside edge of brood to feed the brood as it grows. When the queen gets excited and starts really pushing brood production she'll jump the pollen stores and move outside of it to lay. Bees move pollen stored over a frame when that happens and use the other up as needed. Fall of the year this works in reverse, the bees will crowd the pollen stores tighter and tighter as brood production slows.


Pollen on back legs is a nature design thing. The bees entire body is covered with fine hair, and in certain circumstances they will be covered with pollen all over. The hair on the back legs is a little longer and coarser, and the pollen sticks as the bee walks around the flower trying to find the nectar in the bottom of the bloom. The bee does actually shape that and pack it to some extent, and some bees in the hive will seek nothing but pollen, since it is needed to feed the brood. Pollen is essentially a protein source for the bee, there is virtually no protein in honey.


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## rocky1 (Apr 9, 2019)

Back to building boxes... We do at times have boxes that need repair Curt. Cost effectiveness of that needs to be weighed in a commercial operation as well. If a box needs more than 2 repairs, say the lips over both frame rest, and a box edge, it will typically cost more in labor than the cost of replacing the box, if you're paying someone to do it. Had a difficult time convincing the nephew of that initially, but when he started doing the math and figuring cutting the pieces out to make repairs, cutting the broken pieces out to a uniform repair size, effecting repair, repainting after the fact, it all started adding up. You also have to calculate value of the repaired box versus value of the new box, and it simply isn't worth the effort beyond 3 repairs.


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## CWS (Apr 9, 2019)

rocky1 said:


> Back to building boxes... We do at times have boxes that need repair Curt. Cost effectiveness of that needs to be weighed in a commercial operation as well. If a box needs more than 2 repairs, say the lips over both frame rest, and a box edge, it will typically cost more in labor than the cost of replacing the box, if you're paying someone to do it. Had a difficult time convincing the nephew of that initially, but when he started doing the math and figuring cutting the pieces out to make repairs, cutting the broken pieces out to a uniform repair size, effecting repair, repainting after the fact, it all started adding up. You also have to calculate value of the repaired box versus value of the new box, and it simply isn't worth the effort beyond 3 repairs.


I checked a local supplier today and I can purchase an unassembled deep box for $18. Cheaper than the wood at Lowes.
Thanks


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## rocky1 (Apr 9, 2019)

Absolutely... Then Mann Lake and Dadant have automated assembly. Parts drop in place glue applied, nails all 4 corners from both directions at once. Last I heard we were under $30 on 10 frame 6 5/8" assembled, dipped, branded, painted, with frames and foundation assembled and in place.


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## rocky1 (Apr 11, 2019)

@Lou Currier - Concerning your question on the pollen on the back legs, I stumbled upon a picture of the hairs on their legs I was talking about earlier for you.

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## rocky1 (Apr 11, 2019)

And, here's one with the bee covered in pollen from head to toe Lou.

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## rocky1 (Apr 12, 2019)

Found this pollen frame in a hive the other day, with a variety of pollen in it. Not all plants have pretty yellow pollen, it all differs a little and much of it can be identified simply by color.

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## rocky1 (Apr 12, 2019)

Didn't get this one split soon enough, it split itself!!

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## rocky1 (Apr 12, 2019)

Only took 5 hours to upload this, (_which is really ridiculous because it was on the Thomas Honey website and it only took 5 minutes to download it_), but back in 2006, working for the nephew, all conditions got right for swarming. And, they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed... I was trying to split bees, and everything I tried to work had swarmed. Dug through one hive, set up a split, and as I was putting the hive back together, it swarmed. Of course all the bees in my split left with the bees in the hive. Rode to the next yard and caught 4 swarms, after which I decided it was pointless to try and split them, the best thing I could do was simply try to catch the ones splitting themselves. In a period of about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks, I caught 137 swarms.

Took a lot of swarm pictures that year, did a slide show/video of them all. As for the choice of music, it was a Microsoft sample music file, had a catchy beat, and just seemed right. After the fact I considered, "what if someone else knows the words and it's a nasty song" so I researched the title... Tune turned out to be from Africa, don't recall which country, but it's of all things, a fertility dance. What are the odds it could be more appropriate?  Daughter played this for her kindergarten class, said the entire class was up dancing around the room, it was absolutely hilarious, so try to control yourself Marc!

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## CWS (Apr 12, 2019)

Great slide show. Not so sure about the music.

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## gman2431 (Apr 12, 2019)

I'll let my wife read all this info. Thanks Rock. Our first hive survived this last nasty winter and we get our second one here soon.

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## Nature Man (Apr 12, 2019)

With that music are you trying to turn the bees into African bees? I actually am enjoying your tutorial a great deal. Chuck

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## Mike Hill (Apr 12, 2019)

Oh, I miss my girls. They were my Urban Stingers. But between DM2 and receiving 3 simultaneous stings on my head while cutting grass and having a reaction, decided to give my hives and all the extracting equipment to a friend who lived in the country. Hopefully they have happy 6 week lifespans. I was fascinated with the different colors of pollen and bought the 2 books at the time that had the colors listed for the different sources. Was fun for me to watch them land and guess what flowers they had been scrounging from. 

First fall, walked out to the hives and was immediately inundated with a very bad smell from the hives. My heart fell - foul brood - I just knew it. Called up my mentor to come over and confirm it and to tell me what to do. He walked to my back yard, seriously looked at my hives and said something like "you do know with foul brood, you have to destroy the hives". Then he broke out laughing. I thought that was insensitive. He explained that what I had was fall wildflower nectar and it stunk to high heaven until ripened and sealed. Apparently our fall asters and goldenrod have the foul smelling nectar. I was seriously relieved. The fall honey, along with the very early locust honey, were my favorite honeys. The wildflower was dark and full of flavor and would occasionally crystalize. I loved it when it crystalized - you could put more on your toast or in your sopapilla and it wouldn't drip. Eventually, all the honey I kept, I would purposefully cause it to crystallize. The locust was very pale and light and flowery

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## rocky1 (Apr 12, 2019)

Most honey will granulate over time. Typically attributed to temperature change, once the granulation process is started it will continue unless you get the temperature just perfect and hold it just long enough, and there you risk darkening the honey.

Had 4 1/2 drums granulate in the milk tank we used for bottling in ND one year. I cut the cooling lines, soldered a pipe fitting on and ran the waste steam off the extractor to it. Worked great, 200+ gallons liquified in about 4 hours, let it sit over night. Girls bottled a bunch of it the next day, case or two sat in the unheated shop up there for 3 years before it granulated again.

Granulation typically occurs around 45 - 50 degrees. We store comb honey to pack, in the freezer, and it won't granulate at freezer temps.


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## rocky1 (Apr 12, 2019)

Nature Man said:


> With that music are you trying to turn the bees into African bees? I actually am enjoying your tutorial a great deal. Chuck




No.... It just seemed appropriate for the pictures at the time. Didn't realize how appropriate until after the fact. There was just something about it that I felt fit when I ran across it.

It was a trying 2 - 3 weeks believe me. Got very good at throwing large sticks and knocking bees out off trees, pruning branches, fabricating perches for bee hives, climbing trees. Everyone told me I had lost my damn mind climbing trees at 45 years old, but swarms had to be caught, and when they made me grumpy, I went up the tree after them and cut the branch out.

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## Lou Currier (Apr 13, 2019)

So if it wasn’t so solitary do you think it would be endangered 

https://bit.ly/2U32Q7y


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## rocky1 (Apr 13, 2019)

Well first off, I'm gonna guess the good doctor is full of crap blaming the bee's demise on "global warming induced sea level rise". God I wish these yo-yos would grow a brain and realize climate change and fluctuations in the oceans' levels have been going on for longer than man has been on this planet. The underlying message in that article is all about global warming, not nearly so much about the bee.

Otherwise... Yes, of course it would be endangered.

We just had a category 5 Hurricane blast that bees' habitat to hell and back, wiping out the dunes it nests in, wiping out the flowers it feeds on, wiping out the majority of the breeding population. Of course it's endangered, so is a whole lot of other stuff that only grows along the beach in the panhandle.



Otherwise, one of the problems we encounter, has been all over the news for years now, is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). What exactly causes CCD is still unknown, but what they do know is, it is not a one single thing issue; it seems to be related to multiple things attacking the hive at one time. While CCD has been blamed on a number of influences, what we do know is, Varroa Destructor, a mite that feeds on the bee is typically present, in hives that have issues. When mite counts get high, CCD takes hold, hives start crashing, and it happens very quickly.

While Varroa Destructor in itself is bad enough, the mite carries a number of viruses that it transmits to the bees. The virus is ultimately what kills the hive. When a hive dies of CCD the other bees will not rob it out, for a period of 2 - 3 weeks. Ants won't attack it, nor will wax moths, nor will much of anything else. Some have tried to blame CCD on pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, but CCD is more prevalent in the fall, when fewer crops are grown. Adding to those potential causes' defense, after 2 - 3 weeks, the bees will rob the hive out, ants, moths, whatever, will enter and attack the empty hive. Were it a pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide, those don't simply go away that fast. Those factors suggest it is viral, the insects can smell it in the hive, and when the virus has run it's course and dies, then the bees feed on the stores left in the lost colony. Ants and other insects will attack the dead brood in the lost colony, wax moths will eat the combs up. Bees robbing the hive aren't affected, you can double the hive up without affecting the hive you put it on. Whatever it is, it runs it's course, and it's simply gone. 

While it was initially believed the bees flew off and didn't return, that theory has been proven wrong as well. They don't fly off with CCD; they walk off, and if the hive is in grass or brush, you don't see them walking off. On hard packed dirt, or the edge of a plowed field, it's quite obvious however. When CCD is present in a yard of 40 - 60 hives, you will have anywhere from 2 - 3 hundred bees crawling from the yard at one time, constantly. Haven't looked for it at night, but they can crawl in the dark, so it is reasonable to assume, this goes on 24/7, until everything crawls away.

How do you stop it? Honestly... You don't! It's a virus, it's going to run its course, there is nothing you can do to stop the virus. 

You can stop the mite however, and hope to slow the spread of the virus, using a miticide. And, you can treat the symptoms of the virus, much as you treat the symptoms of the common cold, with antibiotics, vitamin and mineral supplements, and supplemental feed. IF you're lucky and catch it early enough, yes you can limit losses. IF you're lucky and catch it early enough, you might get by with only losing 40 - 50% of your operation, rather than 75% - 95%.

Those same mites, and viruses are capable of attacking most bee species, they can migrate en masse, and are capable of migrating a mile or more. The local varroa expert working with UF and the Florida Department of Agriculture argued that point with me at one time, and several years later stated he had proven my theory correct before the scientific community. But yeah, much like bees, they swarm. And, if they swarmed into nesting areas of these solitary bees, they'd decimate the population in short order. 

How do we deal with it? Grow lots of splits, like I'm doing this year. Typical year, most bee keeping operations will purchase enough queens to replace every hive in the operation. And, we're getting better. At one point we were buying enough to replace every queen in the operation twice. 

Do pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides create problems? Absolutely! All are capable of stressing the individual bee, stressing the colony. A stressed colony is more susceptible to parasites and disease. Roundup doesn't actually poison a plant, it inhibits the plants ability to utilize nutrients, causing it to starve to death. It's been proven it can attack the bees' digestive system in the same manner. Neonicotinoids don't actually poison insects, they weakin the immune system, disorient the insect, affect the insect's desire to feed, affect their memory processes so they forget what to feed on. Couple all of that with 7 or 8 common bacterial diseases affecting bees in the US, and at least that many viruses of the 17 known to affect bees here in the US, and it's a toxic mixture.

What does the future hold in store? There have actually been some recent developments that offer a great deal of hope. While scientists have known for some time that Varroa feeds on fatty tissue in bees, it was recently determined that the mite feeds almost exclusively on the bee's liver fats. Knowing this scientists can develop mite treatments that target the liver fat in the bee to increase the efficiency of treatment.

Reactions: Great Post 3 | Informative 3


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## The100road (May 7, 2019)

@rocky1 Incase you didn’t know.

Reactions: Informative 1


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## rocky1 (May 8, 2019)

True in a lot of respects... Dirt Daubers don't live in the ground however. They carry mud and build their nests out of it. Often in very inconvenient spots, like the inlet or outlet of the water pump on your boat motor. Either of which has been known to cause several thousand dollars worth of damage. They're notorious for plugging up most any hole they can find, and otherwise depositing large wads of mud on most anything to build their nests. Never seen them nest in the ground.

Reactions: Agree 2


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## Lou Currier (May 8, 2019)

Absolutely hate the yellow jackets...true buttholes

Reactions: Agree 1


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