A pint short...

[JW_Halverson]

Just one more pint and we would have had a full 4 gallons of pure distilled sunshine harvested yesterday:



This honey came from two of the swarms we caught this year. One honey super from the swarm caught at the end of June and one super from the swarm caught in July.  The old saying is that a swarm in June is worth a tune, a swarm in July is not worth a fly.  Well, ol' hive #6 proved that wrong!

We have a second bloom of alfalfa right now, and it is going strong.  The field of 100+ acres to the north will not be cut, he has more hay than he can sell right now, so it's just bee fodder as the bloom continues! 

Will be peeking into the hives again in a week to see how they are faring.  I may have more to harvest before this short summer of ours is over! 

Oh, and Cipriano?  Somewhere there is a young bee asking her mother, "Why did she sting him in the hiney???"  Yeah, got stung on the left sitting muscle!

[IdahoMatt]

Very cool J dub.  One of my clients husband is bee keeper out here.  She is bringing me some honey next week.  Can't wait, never tried fresh honey.

[JW_Halverson]

Best thing about local honey is the local pollen that is in it.  Helps people cope with allergies and hay fever. 

I have been using honey in cuts and scrapes instead of triple antibiotic.  Heals much faster and with less scarring.  Honey is hydrophyllic...is it such concentrated sugar that it sucks moisture out of anything it contacts, including bacteria.  It then directly supplies calories to cells right on the edges of the wound, cells that may not necessarily be getting a good supply of blood.  Speeds the healing process nicely.  The US military did quite a bit of research into field use of honey in wounds some time back.

[hunterbob]

That is pretty cool JW . do you sell any?

[Pat B]

I thought you were referring to your height, John. 
 This reminds me I need to get some of our sourwood honey. Even the bees keep it separate from other honey.

[JW_Halverson]

No, Bob, I do not sell honey.  The local apiaries don't want to deal with us hobbyist beekeepers because we sell end up with a gallon here or 5 gallons there.  They would rather deal in 55 gallon drums.

If I were to spend the time parcelling it out into quarts and pints, then go down to the farmer's market, I might sell a few jars....but that is too much like work and I really am not getting that much for myself.  All the honey harvested from these hives gets split 4 ways.  I was looking at my Christmas list and I can only say these bees better get their stingers in gear!  I am reserving 1 quart for myself and all the rest is spoken for. 

South Dakota is having a banner year for honey again this year.  The sweet clover is still blooming to a minor degree.  Spot prices for honey aren't much above $2 a lb right now.  I have considered buying some honey locally to make a batch of mead since it looks like I will be giving away my own liquid Black Hills gold.

[chamookman]

Looks like Ya need some Buttermilk Biscuits Jon ! MMMMMMMMMMMMMMm- Bob.

[Pappy]

Nice haul,   Josiah,[the bare foot kid that hangs out at the cabin] brought us some last week,they raise bees in there back yard,nothing like fresh from a small supplier.  I would love to get into that one day.
   Pappy

[JoJoDapyro]

I love fresh honey. It has been ten years. The last I found was at the Broadacres Swap Meet in North Las Vegas in 2004. The guy had Mesquite and Sunflower. The Mesquite was the best honey I have ever had, the Sunflower was way too sweet to eat, I just used it in cooking. My grandpa kept bees until about 94, when he moved out to Death Valley (Amargosa Valley Nv.). I sure miss his honey.

[NeolithicMan]

Man that is super cool! I want to bee keep when I get a bigger place and am a little farther out of town. how do you catch a swarm?

[PrimitiveTim]

that's beautiful!

[JW_Halverson]

Man that is super cool! I want to bee keep when I get a bigger place and am a little farther out of town. how do you catch a swarm?

Ok, first a primer on bees.  1) Honeybees will not sting unless they are protecting an active hive.  2) When honeybees swarm, they are leaving an active hive for a good reason and looking for a new hive.  3) Inside the swarm is one queen and all the rest are her daughters (the workers of the colony).  When you add 1+2+3 your answer = a swarm is not a hive, therefore a swarm does not sting*.

With those three basic things in mind, you simply need to have a structure ready for the bees.  I recommend you go with a Langstroth style hive if you are interested in harvesting honey, or a top bar hive if you just want a colony of bees to stick around and pollinate your garden.  When you find a swarm, just use a box to hold them, and drop them in.  Close it up loosely and carry it over to the hive, dump the bees into the hive.  Walk away. 

The 4 swarms we captured this year were all hanging off branches on small trees.  If you are careful and gentle, you can clip the branch off and lower it right into the beehive.  I have even seen a person use their tshirt as a basket to carry the swarm.  He untucked it from the front, pulled it out, and asked me to clip the branch.  The swarm landed in his shirt front while he carried them over to a 5 gallon bucket with screened lid. Easy peasy!

Go online and find a copy of Beekeeping for Dummies. Interesting read this winter while you think about adding bees to your life. 


*While the swarm will not sting, an individual bee getting pinched might.  For example if they wander in between your neck and shirtcollar where they get pinched, she might defend herself. 

[Poggins]

What did you decide on that hive with the brood above the queen excluder ?

The honey my brother is getting up on the river is just a tad darker than yours ( still other flowers around besides the alfalfa) , he pulled six supers last weekend and said he may have more to pull .

I may need to move a couple up to the river next year , just goes dead around my place this time of year . The local honey around here goes for $10 a pound ( about a pint give or take a little), I sell mine to folks I know and this year a jar only sat around long enough for someone to pick it up , I've never sold my honey that fast before , when I first started getting enough to sell it would set in jars for a couple months sometimes before I could get it sold and this year I had people calling before I even had it exctracted , even had to go and pull a frame to finish out a jar or two one evening .

My bees are just a hobby and they pretty much cover the expense of upkeep ( painting hives , new foundation , sugar when needed , and new frames or bee suit when needed , I do need to pick up some new gloves this winter ), plus keeps me busy after work sometimes and I have a supply of bees wax for my other hobby ( archery) as well as a few jars to donate to our club to help raise money .

[JW_Halverson]

Right now we are letting that hive "hang and rattle" as the local cowboy slang goes.  We don't have a single hive body or honey super to work with at this time.  I forwarded your messages to the other parties in the group and asked what they want to do.  Still waiting to get a concensus. 

That hive is one of the hottest boxes we work on, they are very liable to start stinging just for walking near it.  I guess we can take that as evidence they need more room. 

[Poggins]

Part of the aggressive behavior may be due to having two queens , it would be almost like one hive robbing another but happening inside , if you had another excluder and super you could place the extra super and excluder under the top super to create a little gap between the queens and take some 1"x2" 's and make a spacer with a space cut out so bees can go in and out and place it between the top cover and super with the bee space just on top of the super ( I actually have a super with a hole drilled in at an upward angle that I use in the summer to alow extra air movent in a hive that is out in full sun or o. A hive that has several supers on top to give them a shortcut to the top ), if you do have two queens this will help sepperate them and help with the agretion plus with two colonies working together to fill the extra super it will go faster .
You could leave the colonies like that through the winter with the extra super between for food and split them early next year when they go into brood production , the smaller colony would have the warmth of the bigger colony below to help them and cutting some foam insulation into panels to help keep the cold out wouldn't hurt .
I had forgotten about doing that before with a colony that got knocked over ( horses) during a cold winter rain , lost a lot of worker bees but the queen and most of the brood was alright , I placed a screen over the hole in the iner cover and placed the weekend colony on top , the warm air from the lower colony helped save them , plus I took the honey they had and warmed it up in the house before putting it back in the hive .

Oh , and I have seen a couple of swarms get mean , they settled in a tree and a cool spring rain that lasted a few days kept them from moving on , they started their new home there and was getting low on the honey they took with them , they weren't to happy with me relocating them but they settled in nicely . My father did the clip the limb bit one time with bad results , back in 06 we had a drought and warm spring , the cedar limbs were brittle and while standing on a stepladder my dad tried to cut the limb the bees were on , he tried to use the shears with one hand and his shoulder , when he couldn't get the limb cut he reached up with his other hand and was going to get the cut started , well the limb snapped and about half the swarm ended up down inside the back of his shirt and the rest was in his face , hat and everywhere else , he ended up with close to twenty stings and feeling sick for two days ( slightly allergic to them now ) but we saved the swarm .

With close to fifteen years straight of keeping bees and a few years of helping my dad back in the eighties I have accumulated a few stories and knowlage on bees .

At one time we ( us three brothers and our father ) had close to 50 hives ( twenty were mine) , we have gotten smarter and have cut back to numbers we can handle and have a full time job also .
We try and stay chemical free in our hives and so far have had good results , we do loose a hive from time to time but everyone looses hives , kinda like building a bow , sometimes you break one .