Our bees!
- Thread starter Clouston98
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Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
Here's a picture from a while back of a frame of brood from one of the swarms we caught. It was the first time the queen had laid in their new hive, we were also cleaning the brace comb of the frames with the hive tool. Thankfully, I'm no longer using the awful half- suit and I've got one of those nice full sherriff ones now 
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I Stuck the pictures in a new thread- maybe they're better of in here?
some of you seemed interested last time, so here are a few more pictures:
the smoker, smoke is best thin rather than thick as it only requires little to calm them:
a shot of a smaller filled super (honey) frame:
top of the super:
propolis, bee glue, on the frames of the new brood box_ the smallest hive of a swarm we captured from the originals:
a lovely heavy frame of heavy, when it is capped a bit more it will be ready for harvest - at around Saturday:
bees feasting on nectar/honey/pollen in a tiny bit of brace comb on top of a super frame:
me inspecting a brood frame. the brown capped cells contained the fertilised eggs layed by the queen and also some grubs. if you can spot huge bees they are the drones, the only male bees who's sole job is to mate with the queen, some honey stores also. the haze of "icing sugar" on the bees backs is from collecting nectar and pollen (their protein source) from Himalayan balsam. the brace comb on the bottom is removed by the hive tool which is present in my hand:
the crown board when removed:
bees brushed off:
brace comb removed:
roof wiped down:
these are photos from the two newest hives, they are just under a year younger than the biggest and original hive. this is why the hive is much cleaner I general than the older one, which we did not get any photos off bottom they are a more aggressive hive than the others due to who the queen present in that hive has mated with. I find it very interesting so sorry if I've babbled- hope you enjoyed them!
some of you seemed interested last time, so here are a few more pictures:
the smoker, smoke is best thin rather than thick as it only requires little to calm them:
a shot of a smaller filled super (honey) frame:
top of the super:
propolis, bee glue, on the frames of the new brood box_ the smallest hive of a swarm we captured from the originals:
a lovely heavy frame of heavy, when it is capped a bit more it will be ready for harvest - at around Saturday:
bees feasting on nectar/honey/pollen in a tiny bit of brace comb on top of a super frame:
me inspecting a brood frame. the brown capped cells contained the fertilised eggs layed by the queen and also some grubs. if you can spot huge bees they are the drones, the only male bees who's sole job is to mate with the queen, some honey stores also. the haze of "icing sugar" on the bees backs is from collecting nectar and pollen (their protein source) from Himalayan balsam. the brace comb on the bottom is removed by the hive tool which is present in my hand:
the crown board when removed:
bees brushed off:
brace comb removed:
roof wiped down:
these are photos from the two newest hives, they are just under a year younger than the biggest and original hive. this is why the hive is much cleaner I general than the older one, which we did not get any photos off bottom they are a more aggressive hive than the others due to who the queen present in that hive has mated with. I find it very interesting so sorry if I've babbled- hope you enjoyed them!
Enjoyed them very much indeed. Were we still doing it, I would breed you up a new queen for your main colony to calm them - a nice quiet passive queen will sort them out in no time (well, in about 60 days) - for £25 if you have a swarmy aggressive queen, its well worth it!
Yeah it's someone we'll look into. It's not that bad- my dads mate has some worse but it seems to be the flight path that angers them. My dad got it six times in one go clearing weeds away in front of the hive- I was no where near but still got it. There ok to inspect but much better from behind!
Original original queen was- but it has fallen off. The others aren't. We are going to invest in a marker kit ASAP but we are moving- still! So we will wait until the bees have settled at the new place (hopefully) as it's an hour and a halls drive, which will be a big move for them.
Worth stashing the queen in the large colony away in an Apidea and then either letting them supersede or re-queening at that point. I may have an old Apidea you can have to keep the nasty queen in to give you a fall back. Alternatively you could unite one of the smaller swarm colonies with the original having removed the queen from the original. Happy to help if I can - not worth keeping the queen in an aggressive strain IMO
I'll definitely look into that, thanks. I've wondered can her attitude change with location. They Were dead friendly till we moved them, somewhat more hostile now but bearable. They'll be moved again so I'll see what they're like. Also it seems to be the environment they are in now is a farmers field (with permission from said owner etc- fellow beekeeper too
.) but it's in the outskirts and gets overgrown quickly which is agitating them during inspection when we clear and they remain cheesed off for the rest- but then again the other hives are in the same place too. Well all should become apparent soon, thanks for the help .
Well now, having read with great interest about Cameron's bee exploits, Lo and Behold! The postie delivered into my eager mitts today a small package of golden, waxy, sticky and sweetly glorious honey! I'd baked some oatmeal bread and have just come from the kitchen after a little session of separating wax from honey, and am licking my chops like the cat that got the cream; absolutely delicious, is there any other food, I wonder, which gives such a sense of pure sunny luxury?
Thank you so much for your generous gift, Cameron, it's greatly appreciated indeed - I haven't eaten such a thing since I was a kid!
Thank you so much for your generous gift, Cameron, it's greatly appreciated indeed - I haven't eaten such a thing since I was a kid!
As all three hives are of different sizes - I'll quote the bigger one. We got about 2kg of honey off that t'other day and we weren't harvesting all that we could of. Wax is harder to say- about quarter of a kilo to half a kilo per 2 frames I'd say- but that's un-refined. You can get loads out of them if you have large hives or specifically exploit all the honey in the super- but we only harvest enough for our personal needs and a some for gifts for friends and family-we keep them for pleasure rather than for money but if I had to heist image we could have taken upwards of 12 kilos of honey- however the more you take the higher the chance of the colony not making it (through winter) but if you take responsibly you'll get a good amount from them, hope this helps
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30 to 60 pounds of honey is not unusual more is very possible - but as Cameron says, it depends on the year and the colony. If you take all the honey you can, you need to feed the bees sugar water to get through the Winter (normally about 15 to 20Kg of sugar per hive).
If you crush extract and take lots of wax, you severely impact honey production (1lb of wax taken loses you 5lbs of honey). However the bees need to produce some wax and brood frames need to be replaced every 3 years or so. Its important to removes some wax therefore from the brood box, but using mostly drawn comb in the supers (not taking the wax), means you get a LOT more honey.
If you crush extract and take lots of wax, you severely impact honey production (1lb of wax taken loses you 5lbs of honey). However the bees need to produce some wax and brood frames need to be replaced every 3 years or so. Its important to removes some wax therefore from the brood box, but using mostly drawn comb in the supers (not taking the wax), means you get a LOT more honey.
