Anyone keeping bees?

Billy Goatee said:

My brothers and parents all keep bees. I live in a fairly urban area, and the city won't allow it. (Lots of kids around, so I wouldn't anyway) but we do help. View attachment 491461
My 14 year old enjoys it.

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That's too bad. Urban honey, with the wide variety of nectar sources, is some of the greatest honey available. My small town honey has great flavor!

Honeybees, by nature, are not very aggressive. I routinely approach my hives to do an external inspection without any protective gear at all. It is only if I enter the hive that I suit up. The personality of the hives is different and also changes over time. Sometimes a guard bee will come out to warn me if there is a lot going on.

I also enter the hives without gloves. I will take an occassional sting on the hand but it's so much easier to handle the frames w/o gloves. I will admit that I don't have a strong reaction to bee venom and hope that doesn't change. Once stung, however, it is very important to leave immediately and wash the area to remove the pheromones otherwise more stings are coming!

I keep invertebrates as pets, including tarantulas (I have about 100), other spiders (widows, jumpers, etc.), scorpions, and millipedes. This is part of the reason I'm drawn to bees. Just one more fascinating invertebrate for my "Zoo".

I have always wanted a tarantula but the wife has to draw the line somewhere. From what I understand Its there little hairs you have to watch out for. Had a teacher in school who got an eye full of them.

Only North and South American species have the urticating hairs. They can be itchy if they get on your skin. If you get them in your eyes, then you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing with your tarantula. If you are careful, they are not dangerous.

In the tarantula keeping hobby we liken them to bees as far as danger goes. People always ask about being bitten by a tarantula. I usually respond by saying that most species have mild venom and a bite would feel similar to that of a bee sting. Then people ask about allergies. Tarantula venom is built differently than bee venom. The peptide structure makes it near impossible to be allergic to the venom of tarantulas. So they are safer than bees! I've never been bitten in my 14 years of handling them.

If anyone wants more info on tarantulas, PM me.

So is warm weather generally better for honey bees? I'm seeing that imbator (living in Maine) is barely breaking 15lbs a season, while Vaplanman (living in VA) can get up to 80lbs. I live in SC, and our warm season is even longer.

Edcculus said:

So is warm weather generally better for honey bees? I'm seeing that imbator (living in Maine) is barely breaking 15lbs a season, while Vaplanman (living in VA) can get up to 80lbs. I live in SC, and our warm season is even longer.

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Bees start moving/foraging when the air temp is above 40°F and stay active to around 100°F. They like the low to mid 70's best. The hive is maintained at around 95°F.

The bigger factor is whether or not there are flowering plants available. In Virginia, there is always something blooming. My allergies can testify to that!

A lot has to do with the strength of you hives as well. I my second year hive was doing very well and I thought it would produce a lot but then in July (right in the peak of the nectar flow) my queen died. This put the breaks on for about a month.
My new hive has built up good and should be producing next year.

OK, the more you guys talk, the more questions I'm going to ask. How do you know when your queen dies? How can you tell your queen from the other bees?

TheVez2 said:

OK, the more you guys talk, the more questions I'm going to ask. How do you know when your queen dies? How can you tell your queen from the other bees?

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Sure rub a dead queen in my face
The queen is longer which allows her to insert the egg onto the comb. She can be not quite twice as long. With that said, with about 60,000 bees running around she is hard to spot. Some keepers will put a colored dot on her back. I have a hard time finding her so I usually just look for fresh eggs. Which means she has laid within the past few days.

I knew my queen was dead because there was no new eggs. Then it takes a little while for the hive to figure it out. Then they will turn an older egg into a queen by building out that cell and feeding it a special diet. When she hatches she has to leave the hive, become pregnant and return. This takes about 4 weeks. So you lose a generation of bees because there are no eggs for this period of time. When she returns she starts laying and the hive starts to build up again.

Don't feel bad, imatabor. I lost queens in both hives this year. And I think my weak hive still.hasn't replaced her. Must be stubborn bees!

I've been thinking about putting together a Beekeeping Video series. Not so much an intro tutorial but more of a "What's beekeeping all about?" type of thing. Something to help someone decide if they want to learn more. Anybody interested in such a video?

I'm in!

Beemaster.com and beesource.com are good forums, hobbyist vs sideliner/commercial respectively. Bee Culture is a good hobbyist magazine. We need more beekeepers.

I found Beesource when looking for a local group. I can't find anybody close to me. Nearest group is about 45 minutes away. I Might check them out, although with fall coming, they might not be to active.

TheVez2 said:

I found Beesource when looking for a local group. I can't find anybody close to me. Nearest group is about 45 minutes away. I Might check them out, although with fall coming, they might not be to active.

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Beesource is a good site. You are right that the season is winding down and it would be difficult to get with a group. Keep an eye out for classes early next year. I think the course I attended ran in early March.

After further digging, a group that meets an hour away has meetings every month through December listed on their site. Their next meeting is in two weeks. One of their members lives 15 minutes from me, so I emailed him for more info.

My wife decided that she wants to keep bees. Apparently, sprinkling thumbtacks all over my bed would be too painless for me.

I have always been interested in keeping bee's but living in the sub-burbs not sure it's doable.

How much of a time commitment is keeping bee's?

Not much time at all. I usually check my hives every couple of weeks.

With the long winter we had, one of my hives didn't make it. So I'm down to one. Thinking about buying a new nuke this week though.

Bees are fascinating and industrious. I have been reading recently about the health benefits of wildflower honey and have considered beekeeping but have not really investigated feasibility. I live in an apartment building and would need to approach management about rooftop boxes. With everything else I do, I continue to find excuses to put it off, but maybe some more research is in order to determine exactly what it would look like and go from there. There was a hive up the hill from us but some recent developers cleared that whole hillside and are putting up condos. I was pretty bummed, but still see honey bees at my flowers, particularly lavender, so there must be another around here somewhere. I agree with others, beekeeping is a vital job, not for the honey, necessarily, but for the bees and the work that they do. Honey is just a sweet bonus. Good luck with the bees this summer!