Anyone else have bees?

Kat...I was always interested in the "bee thing" never persued it though....one of my field engineers kept bees....he used to give me the best bees wax candles and honey....man was that honey great....I used to keep in touch with him but he got laid off when GE was downsizing the FE's.....and he was a bird man too...had about 3 of them....I see a pattern here...bees, birds and he was a woodburner too..... :lol:

I don't have bees, but if you've ever heard of Dadant & Sons, I'm pretty good friends with the Dadant family. That's about as close to bees as I care to bee at this point. I can see the Dadant building from my house.

I would love to have bees....but I have this vision in my head of me laying in a bed swollen up like a blimp from massive bee stings.... :bug: you should see how I swell from one bite.. All it would take would be one of my stupido moments.. :roll: then end of story...

I thought about it a couple of years ago. I read a few books, then decided it might not work for me. I was gonna talk to some local people about it, but never have. My new schedule gives me a lot of free time, so maybe this is the year to acquire some information and equipment.

I don't keep bees, but the house we live in was my girlfriends grandparents and they always had hives here. They were cousins to the Dadants.

But I had to look at this thread because last night as I pulled into the driveway I noticed one of my peach trees looked really funny on the trunk. I went to look at it and noticed it was moving. A swarm of honey bees had landed on it! It was amazing to see. I went out again about 20 mins later and they were all gone.

I used to keep bees, lots of them. At one time I had around ten hives here on our property. Had problems with varroa mites, foul brood and also with wax worms. Got that mostly fixed. I would get stung five or six times while messing with them and in later years I found the stings hurt more than they used to. I am a nudest mostly in the summer and the one thing they didn't like was for me to mow around the hives. The last time I was stung while mowing I had a alergic reaction and ended up in the emergancy room. So the bees had to go. They were work and trouble so I'm not sorry to see them go but I do miss the honey. I gave the last of my foundations, supers, etc away about two years ago. One of the best bee supply places around here is Brushy Mountain Bee Farms. They are real close to Hickory NC. Call them at 1-800-233-7929 and they well send you a catalogue full of good information. David

I've got about 20 fruit trees in the ground right now. The bumblebees look like they're doing their job. Sorry to hear that its work. I was starting to think about it.

I walked into Agway last week and even my wife wanted to pick up some chicks. She behaved herself, unfortunately.

This is my second year. One of our two hives survived the winter. Two more packages on the way. Set out a few swarm traps. The ladies have been real busy this spring.

Lost both of my two hives this year.
Losses up here was high this year. Lots of heavy wet snow = condensation issues, also had some really frigid temps for extended periods of time.
Not willing to pay the kind of money to set back up but will have some bait hives out.

Are bait hives a good idea in the grand scheme of things? I'd be ready for some free honey but would settle for some subsidized housing if it helped my pollination rates. Is it something you take down +clean every year or do you just let 'em go and leave them alone.

I just don't want to harm the locals.

For me, a bait hive just means having a couple of shallow supers set up with a bottom board and lid, hoping to attract an errant swarm or two. It is easy for me because all my equipment already smells like bees and honey. I don't know how hard it is to attract swarms without boxes that haven't been previously occupied - never tried...

These are too small for them to store enough honey to overwinter so they must then have deep supers added and possibly they'd need feeding to get established, etc..
so I don't think there's much point if you don't want to do actual beekeeping.

I have a top bar hive, have had it for 4 years. Just do a google on "top bar hives", there are a number of sites that describe how to build and maintain. They are easy to build, take very very little upkeep...are different than commercial box hives and don't take very much equipment. I usually get a couple of gallons of honey a year out of mine by mid-summer and they do a great job of pollinating the garden.

I can't remember the measurements exactly but it's a Tanzaniaian which means the sides aren't sloped but verticle, I did that so it would accept standard frames from a NUC, so the width is the same as a lang so it will take a standard frame if you want to drop a few in there to start it and I would guess it's about 4 feet long. It's really just a box made of scrap lumber, with the bars across the top, covered by a piece of plywood. I painted the whole thing in a mix of some melted bees wax and linseed oil and then attached pressure treated 2X4s for the legs. It didn't take long to build, the hardest part was the top bars with the triangle shaped strips for the comb to be attached to......what I like about this method is the low maintenance, I only open the thing a few times in late spring and summer to pull some honey and then some in the fall to feed them some extra sugar water before winter.