My newest hobby is bee keeping.

[Alleyyooper]

My new hobby is bee keeping, we have 17 colonies At the present time. I would have had a even twenty but I gave 2 nucs and a swarm to a friend yesterday.
An off shoot of the bee keeping is wood working.

This is a screen bottom board I build.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid114/pf57aeed0e22758b5ae121864e9f7e0a2/f8cf9a33.jpg

This is two deep hive bodies I built.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid124/p29a8b98f24cbcef80504f81a01d57fe0/f80f2fed.jpg

[Wingnut]

I was thinking about starting that, but the Killer Bee swarms have attack a man (over 100 stings) while mowing his yard 7 miles away from place. The killer bee do produce a lot of honey, but I am worried about kids and pets in the area!

[Jim_WV]

Gives me cold chills just thinking about doing something like that :fing20: , but hey if thats what you're into, good luck and enjoy :fing32:

[Alleyyooper]

Their are a lot of beekeepers in Texas. They clain the trick is to keep a boughten queen in the colonies. A virgin queen could fly out and mate with a AHB drone.
Stings only hurt for a little bit. I find the itching the next day to be the worst part of a bee sting. Got at least a dozen this week. I was working to fast, didn't have my veil drawn up tight, shirt sleeve hanging loose instead of rubberbanded tight, And carried one home inside my shirt pinching her when I took it off.

[Steve (Magnolia, TX)]

I'd like to do that, myself, both for the honey and to keep the bees around for pollenation, but.... my wife and daughter both freak out at the sight of a bee.... :-(

Looks good...

[bontai Joe]

Up here in north east PA, a lot of bee keepers have gone out of business. The price of honey is good, but the bees are being infested with bee mites (think of microscopic pests that live on the bees and in the colony affecting the health of the hive. It is extremely difficult to eliminate the mites, and several guys have just given up. Less bee keepers means higher prices. I recently saw 1 pound jars approaching $5 in my area. Good luck with yours.

[Wingnut]

I thought that it was only in the east, Montana has them also!

Nasty mites feast on bees, hurt industry
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff

A tiny eight-legged bloodsucker is draining some of the life out of Montana's honeybee business.

The creature, sometimes called a vampire mite, has wiped out 30 percent to 40 percent of the bees, putting a dent in honey production and the cash made by trucking bees to other states to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples and oranges.

"It's been pretty devastating," said Harry Rodenberg, of Wolf Point, whose family has been in the bee business since 1922. "Everybody's been hit to some extent."

A few bee businesses in Montana have gone under. Most are rebuilding their stocks this year and are pinning hopes on new technology to stop the ravaging mites, said Steve Park of Harlowton, president of the American Honey Producers Association.

The bee shortage comes as the domestic honey industry struggles against cheaper honey imported from China.

"It's really a double-whammy," Park said.

Montana has 200 registered beekeepers, including 86 classified as commercial beekeepers, according to the Montana Department of Agriculture. At least 36 take their bees from Montana to California, Oregon, Washington and other states to pollinate crops.

Todd Larson, of Billings-based Larson Apiary Inc., typically sends out 4,500 to 5,000 bee colonies each year to pollinate California's almond crop in late January and early February.

But early last fall, Larson, like other beekeepers across the country, realized his bees had been hit hard by the crablike parasite formally known as Varroa jacobsoni. About 40 percent of his bees were killed. Luckily, Larson already had a surplus, but this year he was able to ship only about 3,000 colonies to California.

"There were just a lot of horror stories out there in January," Larson said. "Everyone was telling the same story."

In some places, losses were as high as 80 percent, and the theft of bee colonies has seen a slight increase as the bee shortage amplifies the need for pollinators.

Pesticides have kept the mite largely in check since it first was detected in the United States in 1987. But over time, the mite has built up resistance to the chemical treatments.

The mites, about one-sixteenth of an inch in size, feed on the blood of adult and young bees. Bees that don't die can end up weakened and possibly infected by viruses that can deform wings and cause other problems.

Once they infiltrate the closed system of a bee colony, the voracious parasites flourish by feasting on developing worker and drone bees and occasionally hitchhike on bees as they travel to other locations.

"Varroa is probably the most destructive pest that we know of in the United States," said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, research leader at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Ariz.

No one knows for sure how the mites came to the United States. Some theorize they arrived with migrating African bees or honeybees from Asia.

Bee researchers are scrambling to find a way for beekeepers to cope. Pesticides can work as a stopgap measure, DeGrandi-Hoffman said, but eventually researchers will need to develop a more complex solution that is not only affordable for beekeepers, but also can match the mites' ability to develop resistance.

"There's nothing more important right now," DeGrandi-Hoffman said. "Not only is the beekeeping industry counting on us, but so are these commodity groups that rely on honeybees."

Montana's bees provide about 20 percent of the pollinators for California's almond industry. The bee shortage, compounded by other price issues involving pollinating and honey, is felt throughout the state's beekeeping industry and in West Coast agriculture.

The honey business in Montana raises about $9 million annually. It's more difficult to estimate the income for beekeepers who take their bees on pollinating trips in other states.

"This is a big, big business," said Jerry Bromenshenk, who studies bees at the University of Montana.

Larson, of Billings, said he remains optimistic. Work at federal labs may have something to offer later this year. If so, the problem mites that have been so devastating this year may fade again into buzzing background.

"There's some good stuff on the horizon," Larson said.

[Fusion1970]

That is definately a different hobby. I got stung on the eyelid a long time ago by a bumblebee, and have avoided bees and anything else that will sting like the plague since then. But hey, some hot buttered biscuits smothered in honey does sound pretty good! Good luck with 'em.

Greg

[Argee]

Alleyyooper,

Take us through a day in the life of a beekeeper. What equipment does one use?? What do they burn for the smoke pots??

When I sold veggies at the farm market there was a fellow who set up next to us every weekend who sold honey. He would speak of what some of the local farmers had planted on a given season could effect the color and taste of the honey. I found it to be very intriguing listening to his stories.

[Ingersoll444]

There used to be a person on the old board that was a bee keeper. Sadly I cant remember there name. Think they ran a bee keeping site also.

I could never do this. My wife FREEKS over bees. She would jump right off a 25' ladder to get away from one. I am not a big fan, but in most cases you realy have to prettymuch poke them with a stick to get stung. The past owner of my land keeped bees. and there were eaven a few old bee boxes around. From what I heard mights got them back in the 80's and he never started up agean.

[Alleyyooper]

Yes the mites are bad, about wiped out all the wild bees all over the US. California was hit really hard this past winter. Know of a fellow who took 400 colonies there to pollenate tha almonds and lost 200 hives to them. There are treatments that help but a lot of people don't want to use them because they are chemicals and cost about $3.00 a strip and each brood chamber takes two.
A day in the life of a bee keeper.
ROF Yesterday took my dogs for their morning run, went by the hives and saw some by the entrance waiting for it to warm up a bit so they could fly away to a nectar/pollen sourse.
A day of actually working them say first thing in the spring when they start flying (50F normally) is to see where the queen is. That normally turns out to be in the top box of a two box colony here in the north. If she is in the top box you take it aside and move the bottom box and set the top box on the bottom and the once bottom box on the top rotateing them in other words.Clean all the burr comb up and look to see if they have enough honey for food till a sourse arrives. Also place the mite strips in the hive, they stay in there for 42 days. Put some termician and powdered sugar mixed on the top bars to treat for American Fowel brood. Place syrup feeder jars on the intercover because they are usally running short on food by spring. They also use a lot when raising brood. Here we don't need to add pollen because the willows are usally ready for them.
That is one day in the very early spring.

Last Wednesday I got up early, went and picked up 5 queens at 8:00 am. Crappy weather but they had to be installed in the new colonies we were making so they wouldn't swarm.
Pull each of five frames from the mother colony, look for the queen on it. Clean off the burr comb then put them in the new hive box, take any number of frames depending on the amount of bees in the mother hive and shake them into the new colony once you make sure the queen is not on them. We did five new colonies that way. loaded them in the truck to bring them home to the new yard. selected a sixth two box colony checked to see the queen was not in the top box found she was not. Lifted it and put a double screen board between it and the bottom box and installed a new queen swarm cell to hatch out. We went from 9 colonies to 17 in one day.

I was the bee keeper on the old site.
only do the garden forum now and it is brand spanking new this spring too.

[Ingersoll444]

See I KNEW there was a bee keeper somwere:D

[Alleyyooper]

:fing02: Collected a swarm yesterday, it had two clusters for some reason.
Makes 18 colonies now. Have ran out of deep brood chamber hives, foundation and just about out of frames. Got to build the boxes, buy the foundation (made of bees wax) & the frames.