Beekeeping General

I work for a large seed pollinating company (6 thousand hives) I have two of my own. Hoping to boost it up next season.

I have a question. Can ants loot an insect hotel for mason bees? Many holes where filled, but I looked yesterday and everything was suddenly empty again.
A ant state is relativly nearby.

>>2393002
How does one get into bee keeping?

Just out of curiousity, how much honey does on box produce?

I only ask because i have roughly 20 acres I have to put something there to justify ownership (agrarain reform laws)..

>>2393012
>6 thousand hives

Fug.

I only have 5.

>>2393024
Since they mud up the entrance, it is unlikely ants did it. They either hatched or a bird ate them.

>>2393053
A deep super full of honey can weight close to 70 pounds. A medium close to 50 pounds and a small 30 pounds. 1 large hive that has 2 hive bodies and 4 supers can produce 120 to 280 pounds of honey optimally. In the USA, honey prices are $5.13/pound on average for the month of May. 1 hive could bring in $615.60 to $1,436.40 worth of honey optimally. This is the absolute best case scenario.

FYI, 1 quart of honey is 3lbs. I usually get about 30 quarts of honey from one hive (90lbs).

>>2393053
First you start reading about beekeeping and then you get overwhelmed because bees are more complicated than raising kids

>>2393082
This hotel was new so the bees only closed the entrences a few weeks ago. And I know of no bird that could get all the way to the back

>>2393082
Realistically, with less than a dozen hives you would be extremely lucky to break even on your investment if you're starting out.

>>2393053
Generally, finding your local association (pretty much everywhere has one) and going on one of their beginner courses at the start of spring is the best method.

You could easy put 100+ hives on 20 acres, plant lots of fruit trees for extra credit.

Hives can produce anywhere from 0 to 100lbs+, it depends very heavily on the weather and health of the hive.

It's an exceedingly rewarding hobby and will eventually pay for itself, you do need to invest a bit of time into it and don't expect to make millions.

>>2394067
The first year is always a bust for a new hive. The second year is when they really shine because of the larger population.

Who here watches walls bees man?

Might have a crack at writing an OP if we can to keep this general rolling, what links do you think would be useful?

>>2394409
I really hope you do.
I've recently gotten interested in plants and beekeeping. I keep searching for beekeeping threads on 4chan and only get archives, i was pretty happy to see this one up and look forward to learning more about beekeeping and hearing feel good stories about bees.

I was just watching a documentary on youtube about Mad Honey. A place in turkey has these villagers who forage honey and these bees are surrounded by a species of rhododendron that have a neurotoxin in the nectar. The bees convert the nectar into honey and the honey ends up being like absinth i guess. One teaspoon or you risk adverse effects. The guy in the video ate a handful and he couldn't walk or see straight.

They used to use this honey in war that i read also, they'd line the enemy war path with Mad Honey comb and the soldiers would greedily partake, while they were affected from the mad honey and staggering about they would be ambushed.

Would it be possible to reproduce this? I don't beekeep i'm just learning right now, but I read that bees have a flight radius of 5 miles. Would they need only the rhododendron, or just a good source of it to influence their honey?
What other plants have neurotoxin or different sorts of nectar that can influence honey?

Hunting For Mad Honey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_b2i_FvYPw

http://modernfarmer.com/2014/09/strange-history-hallucinogenic-mad-honey/

>>2394812
>Turkey
>Nepal

>>2394812
Don't know about psychodelic effects, but if you don't like someone you can make him honey out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobaea_vulgaris

https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/33129/Carlson_washington_0250E_14276.pdf?sequence=1

The Honey Bee and Apian Imagery in Classical Literature

>>2395140
rachel, stop shilling your phd

a phd in philosophy no less

>>2393089
How so? I thought it's fairly basic after you get down the building the hives, getting a colony and setting it all up. Once it's set you need to be careful of them swarming if they get to large. You need to feed them make sure it doesn't have mites. I mean of course they are wild insects and we can try to keep them but it's not like we can predict everything. Well whatever I'm not a bee keeper just very interesting.

>>2395398

There is an old adage that you can read as many books about beekeeping as you want, but bees don't read books.

It's a little more involved than how you describe it, but I definitely wouldn't call it complicated.

>>2393002
i'm not a beekeeper but my dad used to have several hives when i was a kid, and i remember finding it fascinating. as soon as i get financial independence i plan on trying it out.

the problem is the only land i own where i could keep a hive is an hour drive away from my home, so i'm afraid i would need to spend a lot on gas. anyone has any experience/advice on setting up hives in somebody else's property, or the government?

>>2395698
I don't think you check bees that often but I'm still learning, and an hour drive still seems a bit excessive even if you check a hive once a month.

I live in a trailer park in a town of 3000, would it be possible to set up some hives in my park if i put up a wall or something that makes the bees fly above humans?

>>2397789

the bees will fly above humans anyway

>>2395686
The 1st 5 years of bee keeping for me was,

>buy hives in spring
>buy queens and x pounds of bees
>put them into hives
>add sugar water for a month
>forget about them until the fall
>harvest honey from supers
>forget about them until the fall again

Yeah, I was extremely lazy about maintenance. I'd crack a frame nearly every time because of how much propolis buildup was gluing things down. I started paying more attention when my neighbor started growing giant fields of corn and my hives started dying in the winter. Thankfully, the neighbor switched to farming show horses & food crops for them and I haven't lost a hive since.

Now I crack open a hive once a month at least and take honey as soon as supers are full.

>>2397789
Probably. You could just aim the front at a section of your trailer that you don't walk by very much then fence it off. The trailer will be the "wall".

>>2397967
Not from the hive. They will "mostly" fly around, but when you are standing in the main flight path of the hive you will invariably get accidentally hit and stung by a bee. It is like a cone of air space you need to avoid at all times, except when smoking a hive and taking it apart for maintenance.

>>2397973

of course in a 6-10 foot radius the bees will come lower to arrive and take off at the landing board or maybe an upper entrance, but i've never seen bees traveling at human-level, all mine go straight up (or perhaps in a spiral) at least 20 ft off the ground before scattering to the four winds...

the one time I did manage to get a colony of bumble bees to stay in one of my own boxes, they flew lower, but i doubt any normal person will be keeping those

>>2393082
>This is the absolute best case scenario.

kek, many a night I lay awake and imagine what the best case scenario could be in terms of my bee's honey production...

too bad making splits hand over fist doesn't yield that much honey... at least I can sell bees!

I've hybridized Russian and Carniolan bees, very very gentile and produce lots of honey, but they also produce copious amounts of queens so you really need to keep up with them or they could swarm out on you.

As unethical as some say it is, I will clip queens so that they will be on foot should they leave. Swarms are far easier to collect on the ground than in a 50 ft pine tree

>>2398268
>As unethical as some say it is, I will clip queens so that they will be on foot should they leave. Swarms are far easier to collect on the ground than in a 50 ft pine tree

So long as they get knocked up, get collected, and put into a hive I don't think it matters. The nuptial flight is the only time they would be flying and it is only for breeding and relocation.

>>2394812
>Would they need only the rhododendron, or just a good source of it to influence their honey?
Honey bees actively avoid rhododendrons and won't take it unless there's literally no other option available, so you'd have to ensure that the only flowers available in a five mile radius were those specific species of rhododendron. In addition, you'd also have to keep a close eye on your bees and make sure they aren't being adversely affected by the rhododendrons as rhododendron pollen and nectar are severely poisionous to most species of honey bees, so there'd be a very good chance that giving them only rhododendrons to harvest from would just end up killing your hive.

In short, it really wouldn't be worth it.

>>2394812
You can buy grayanotoxin filled honey from a variety of online vendors importing from Turkey.

Don't know why you would choose to poison yourself with something that can trigger fatal diaphragmatic paralysis, but hey.

https://www.miel-fou.com/shop

Why are bees so nice compared to wasps and hornets?

>>2398535

wasps and hornets are scavengers. they also have no barb on their stingers, meaning that they have no reservations about stinging since they won't die afterwards. unless whatever they sting manages to swat them pretty good

>>2398520
>Honey bees actively avoid rhododendrons and won't take it unless there's literally no other option available

idk man my bees are all over mine and i live next to a bunch of hay fields teeming with random flowers ect... perhaps they only prefer specific strains?

The bumblebees like them even more

>>2398670
There's a lot of different strains of rhododendron. Only two or three have the grayanotoxin and maybe thats what they avoid.

>>2398520
I figured it wouldn't be feasible, I read something similar about marijuana plants, they are wind pollinated so bees don't forage for pollen/nectar from them, unless it's literally one of the only sources they can find.

>>2395698
A standard agreement for someone landlording your hives is that you give them 10% of the honey yield. If someone nearby owns their property and is willing to let you keep bees there/access the yard when you need, try something like that with them.

>>2396779
When you're new it's like once a week, later it is less often, though it's more often during swarm season. I have a mentor who has hives an hour away from the city, but we're trying to do some isolated breeding out there to make some new hybrids.

>>2397789
Common practice is having their flight paths face something (wall, building, mass of trees/vine plants, etc) that is at least 6 feet high. They will go straightish out of the hive and ascend over the barrier, then stay at the level they ascend or higher. I have mine facing a shed and have a fence between them and the neighbor's yard so they're always up above head level. I think it's actually in my city's code for bees.


>>2398308
The existing queen takes off on the first swarm, that's why he clips the wings.

>>2398535
When bees are full they don't sting, as their full bellies make it hard to trigger the stinging mechanism, or so they say. Smoking them masks alarm pheromone from the guard bees and makes a lot of bees start eating in prep for an emergency flight (in case it's a forest fire).
Also they tend to work on their task without interrupt; when working a hive, the guard bees are specifically on job to find threats like you and stop you, but the vast majority of bees making honey and building comb and raising brood completely ignore you because they're doing their task. Also paper wasps and some other wasps are less aggressive, not quite to this degree but paper wasps won't aggro attack you.

>>2394409
I've been wanting to start a beekeeping general for a while, I'd rather discuss beekeeping here than leddit or beesource. Last bee thread I made didn't have too many other beekeeps out but it looks like there's a decent number of us.

>>2398822
>we're trying to do some isolated breeding out there to make some new hybrids.

what kind of hybrids are you trying to make? obviously the end result is pretty easy to guess; hygienic bees that produce lots of honey while being very docile and reluctant to swarm.

But I guess I'm curious about what breeds you're working with? I've been wanting to try Buckfast honeybees but I don't want to have them mixing with my pure Russian stock especially if I end up disliking them, so until I am able to set up another remote bee yard and nail down a good supplier for Buckfast, it will have to stay on the bucket list.

How much honey would you have to leave inside your hive to avoid feeding your bees sugar water as much as possible?

How much would this affect honey output? Saying you sell your honey would this affect income severely?

I read this article that these beekeeping couple wrote, they take a more hollistic approach to beekeeping and avoid using chemicals on their bees.

say your bees have a mite problem, they don't think you should use chemicals to kill the mites but instead find out why your bees are susceptible to mites in the first place. they'll sprinkle sifted powdered sugar to increase grooming habits of the bees, and avoid feeding them sugar water and leave excess honey in their hive to survive off of.

They also say the langstroth hive design puts stress on the bees due to the way they shape their cells, and they use a modified langstroth design so they make comb more naturally.

>>2398985
I haven't started beekeeping yet but one of the motivators is the cool stuff people do regards to mixing breeds of bees to get different kinds.

Can you go into more detail about your breed of bees, like what kind of traits they have over what I guess would be your areas natural bees?

How do you go about breeding different kinds?

>>2398989

Two deep-boxes should be enough for any healthy hive to survive a winter. As the queen slows her laying down in late October, the bees continue foraging on late blooms like goldenrod and begin to fill the vacant broodcomb with honey for the winter. Since most people raise their honey crop in a super or possibly a third deep box above the first two, I wouldn't say this would affect your income, but as most bee keepers will quickly realize, the real money to be made is in pollination services for commercial farmers, and selling off splits from gentle stock. One nucleus colony can rake you in $200 on a good day, and that's the return on an entire honey crop from a mature colony if you're lucky.

Not sure what to say about the earthy-crunchies' disdain for the age-old method of langstrothing, I guess I would have to see a picture of how their units differ (I'm thinking possible Warre)

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>>2398995

I have been working exclusively with purebred Russian honeybees since 2014 and their benefits have outweighed the drawbacks enough where I haven't bothered with any other major strain, although I am open to trying new things for sure.

I haven't had experience with any local mutts, but I have kept purebred Italian bees, and Italian-Russian hybrids before, both of which with basically identical results. Italian honeybees produce lots of honey, but are also known to be far more susceptible to mites than other mainstream alternatives. Another issue is that they do not overwinter well at all, I was never able to get a single Italian colony through the winter, yet only lost 2 out of 8 Russian colonies in the 3+ years I've been keeping them. A 25% rate of winter losses is perfectly acceptable.

Russian bees, in my experience, are more docile than Italian bees, but, of course, as with any breed of honeybee, the larger the colony, the more testy they get. Never had any mite problems with my Russians, nor beetle or ant issues. So far I've gone treatment-free. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that after a successful overwintering, Russian colonies will absolutely explode in late April all the way through May, and will swarm up to 3 times in just one month if you do not stay on top of the situation, employing swarm control measures. This is great if you want to make lots of splits, but can be a pain if you like taking a hands-off approach to bee keeping.

The Italians are the stereotypical yellow-on-black honeybees everyone is familiar with, however Russians, Carniolans and Caucasian bees have a slightly darker color scheme

>pic related

>>2393002
Dear apiarists, how do I get tested for a bee/wasp venom allergy? I'm not allergic to fire ants if that helps.

I have a phobia of bees and wasps.

>>2399020

seek out a local immunologist, they even have allergy shots for bee venom tolerance buildup

>>2399028
Thank you. Once I find out I'm not allergic to bees/wasps I think the majority of the fear will go away.

>>2398995

here's some great info on the most common strains of honeybee; https://wadesbees.wordpress.com/category/honey-bee-races/

>>2395140
>>2395149
Yeah rachel, fuck your uppity ass Pee 8ch Dee and your shifty ass citations

>>2395149
>>2399065

who the hell is rachel? is she a meme like stacy and chad?

>>2398985
He's not being particularly scientific about it, but what we have out there right now are carni/ital hybrids which are the standard around here, just installed some Russians and Saskatchewan, and fairly significantly, a hive run by a farm lady out there that has been sustaining itself with minimal interference for 5 years. The elevation of this place is over 8000 feet, it gets cold as shit and these girls don't care. Saskatchewan have hygienic genes and are cold resistant, Russians have similar mite/cold resistance, we're basically just making a ton of splits and seeing which colonies we end up liking. A few years of that and we'll just graft queens from the best colonies for local distribution; we're basically going for specific adaption to our climate.

Also have heard of a guy who has found feral bees that are over 100 years old, German genetics that are more or less wiped out. He's tried capturing their swarms or nests and they do terrible in Langstroth hives at apiaries; they're escaped bees of the early settlers of our area. Now he's setting up elaborate bait hives that are still out in the woods and will try making splits off them to get ones that hold up in the apiaries. If we're lucky we'll get some of those babies to stick up in our farmland, mix in with the random clusterfuck of good bees we're keeping up there.

>>2399031
Bees and wasps have completely separate venom chemicals, one may be allergic to wasps and totally fine with bees. A loooot of people tell me they have bee allergies and often it's:
A) They got stung by a bee and got all puffy around the sting, which is just how bee venom works
B) They got stung by a wasp or hornet and went into anaphylactic shock+hospital, it was a long time ago and they only remember "black and yellow thing stung me". Lots of casuals confuse bees and wasps all the time.

Bee allergies are semi-rare, it's like a couple % of the population. Everyone has degrees of reaction to the stings; they hurt of course, for me the area is a bit itchy for a few days and slightly red but not so bad. Others have big swollen areas.

>>2399071
According to the linked PDF Rachel is the name of the author.


I might livestream my hive inspections if I can get a wifi repeater in my backyard.

>>2393002
Ive had to do it in secrecy for the past few years but you just cant beat fresh honey

>>2399259

Wow I've never heard of Saskatchewan bees, they must be some type of local hybrid ... I hope your project works out!!

Those German bees sound like apis mellifera mellifera or the European Dark bee that was brought over by the pioneers. From what I've been told they can be quite aggressive but nonetheless would be very cool to have for the sake of preserving their genetics.

>>2399267

>I might livestream my hive inspections if I can get a wifi repeater in my backyard.

I'll be doing something slightly similar in a week or two, will photo document my late-spring harvest with an AMA. too lazy to set up streaming tho, plus my internet connection is absolute dogshit. I hope you get your streaming set up as I'd love to watch :)

>>2399259
>they do terrible in Langstroth hives at apiaries

They need to be shaded in the forest and they need to be in a top bar hive that's about 1/2 the size of a normal top bar hive or have a divider. You'd need to make your own custom wax foundations with wiring if you want to spin out honey; if you can't buy them.

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>>2399699

I would just go with the divided top bar route here. no need to build a special one, and then take cut-comb honey should they get honey bound or something. One issue with that, however, is that they tend to produce "wet" cappings - perfectly good comb honey but not aesthetically pleasing for consumers. But on the other hand if someone is keeping these bees, I doubt that comb honey profits will be their priority

I saw a bee today and it looked really weird, like it had a black thorax, and when its abdomen was bending down towards the flower it looked like it's thorax had no hair and it had these really straight edges like how a wasp looks i think. I can't find any pictures of what it looks like...

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>>2399928

perhaps a mud dauber?

>>2398822
>>2394409
Why not use the /invert/ general? I don't think they'd mind discussing bees in there as well, or adding beekeeping links to the OP.

Can't get a twitch to work for shit out in the apiary :\
Tomorrow need to make sure they're not planning on swarming.

>>2399928
>when its abdomen was bending down towards the flower

the "abomen" is the back part. the "thorax" is the main body the head is attached to.

>>2400673
i know this

>>2399928
If she was a honeybee she may be older, they lose fuzz, especially if they've been in fights.

There are various wasps and non-honeybees that visit flowers too ofc so idk.

>>2400679
After taking a look at pictures more closely i figured she was just bald in that area and i was trippin.

>>2400097
Bee husbandry is really a field in its own rights, it would be like saying "Put the Farming thread in with the land mammals thread."

Hi Bee people,

I'm going full euro and transitioning to poly hives, I'm sick of my cedar ones warping with the weather and trapping the frames.

Has anyone here had experience with poly hives and equipment? Specifically for overwintering.

Watch my shitty stream beekeeping if you guys want

twitch dot tv / junipertoxic

>>2401140

beekeeping in fishnets... you've got balls... i think?

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Well I fucked up. I'm out at least watching them every day, and yet they swarmed on me. Wasn't able to inspect on weekends, must have slipped out when I wasn't home. Seems like there should be more bees, given how active they were a few days ago. So:

Hive B backfilled the brood nest, tons of honey and pollen but barely any brood. Second box has some capped cells and older larvae, no eggs.

Hive A has like 10 queen cells, they're higher on the frame so you'd think they'd be supercedure cells but bees are bees. Pic related.

I'm not super sure what to do, certainly don't want them casting more swarms. I think maybe I will move a frame with two queen cells into Hive B so they get a new queen, and leave Hive A with the other queen cells. Maybe I'll even graft a couple onto a frame and set up a fifth hive.

C and D are doing great, laying good, gathering, saw their queens, all is well. Really fucking bummed with myself for letting two hives swarm. Or maybe I fucked up and killed the queen. If there's larvae then she was at least there 9 days ago. Fuck.

>>2401238
Set up some swarm traps/empty hives to catch anything that got away. They may still be in the area.

>>2401285
I have one swarm trap near my apiary, I'm gonna ride around the neighborhood and see if I can find my swarm after work, bring them home in a cardboard nuc and transfer them to a new hive.

>>2401291
I located 3 swarms by sound this year. The 4th by sight since they weren't moving like the others. Good luck.

>>2401294
Nix the motorbike then, I'm going on foot. We'll have at least 3 hours of daylight left, scouts should be returning.

I'm not a beekeeper but I've heard things about dwindling bee populations. Due to disease or pesticides or something?

>>2401322
Caused by pesticides that weaken the hive which allows disease to finish them off in winter. Kind of like AIDS for bees.

Do you need to take Honey from the Bees? I would rather keep them for the sake of keeping them.

I don't like Honey and have no interest in selling it but I think Bees are really fascinating.

>>2401140
Set it up so twitch records your past broadcasts, so whenever people miss your stream they can watch the vods still.

>>2401335
No you don't. Excess honey gets eaten in the winter.
as far as i know anyway, i don't keep bees :^)

>>2401344
>>2401335
Sorta, they make more than they can ever use up, even during a mild winter. I'm not even sure what will happen if you don't add supers for them to store the excess.

>>2401366
They'd swarm and leave, you gotta keep giving them room for honey.
>>2401335
I don't care about honey I just want more bees, store the harvested excess honey and use it to boost bees that aren't doing so well, useful in splits, etc.

Streamer here, I walked all around the neighborhood for hours trying to find my swarms. Got the cops called on me for being suspicious, staring in people's trees with some old binoculars. Didn't find bees :(

They're actually bearding hard right now at night, and while it's hot and humid here I'm wondering if they haven't actually left on their swarms yet. I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and watch them, maybe at least one hive is *about* to swarm and just had the queen stop laying in prep.

>>2401548
>Today in the news: Locals reported a suspicious man doing something with binoculars. A deputy checked and found the man was not suspicious, but merely autistic.