thinking of starting a beehive this spring.
 

any beekeepers here? it seems really interesting. my family eats alot of honey.

looking into finding some used bee boxes and starting the process this spring. if the meteor hits, at least my tea can be sweetened..

i wonder if zombies eat honey?

bonus, i am kinda anxious around bees. not scared, but my pulse quickens. this may help.

The last guy on the board to say "I'm scared of X"

"X" ended up getting him shortly there after.

Yeah, keeping bees would be interesting. I'm not really scared of bees, but I respect them. I have a hard time buying the whole "just whiff a little of this steam/smoke at them and they'll leave you alone." thing though.

My neighbor has a couple of hives. They are great. All their pollination work in the neighborhood has really increased the amount of flowers here. He also of course produces some very good honey.

There is a lot of good information on line about bee keeping. Not for the faint of heart -not because of the bee stings, but they are a lot of work and take some skill. My neighbor lost all his bees last Summer when they swarmed and flew away. So he will start again this Spring. Disease is also a problem so you have to keep a close eye on your hives and treat them as needed.

All that being said, I was thinking the same thing, and may try to set up some hives in a year or so. I need to spend some time with my neighbor and learn the art!

thought did cross my mind..ironic if i'm deathly allergic.

Yeah, not wishing anything on you, but wouldn't be fun.

I have a near bee/wasp/hornet phobia after an incident 20 years ago.

I was staking out a lot for a house one day and starting looking at a the base of a hollowed out tree. Said to my buddy, that would be a great place for a beeeeesss. All of a sudden I was in a world of hurt, as a black cloud of yellow jackets came out of the ground. Got stung 20 times while running away and rolling on the ground trying to get rid of them. My buddy standing next to me, just watched and didn't get stung at all.

My gosh, Cliff. Do you EVER stop doing new things?!!

I admire your will to try stuff but you make me exhausted just reading your posts.

You gotta slow down, son.

Thats funny haha, I was thinking the same thing. Vash is a true Renaissance man.

i have issues. if i EVER post up about milking pygmy goats..i fully authorize an intervention.

all that is left on my list is canning, whiskey making...

Do you have close neighbors? Do you grow roses? Alot of the powders people put on their plants to kill off bugs, etc, is deadly to honey bee hives. Put some 7 dust on your tomatoes and there goes the hive.

Don't buy used boxes. Some of the diseases bees catch/carry can be transferred to a new colony from the boxes. Maybe they'll give you new hunting opportunities, when they attract bears.

if i EVER post up about milking pygmy goats..i fully authorize an intervention.

But I hear the cheese is worth it...

I have not kept bees myself, but have several acquaintances who do/have and my brother in law used to rent a truckload of hives to pollinate his strawberry and wild blueberry fields. (It is NOT fun being stopped in the middle of the night by the Dept of Transport Compliance Division who tell you your truck is overweight due to the ton of honey in the hives loaded on the back of your truck and you will have to park it until someone can come with another vehicle to transfer part or all of the load. In the meantime, it is getting near dawn and the bees are starting to get grumpy.)

Try here:

Honey Bees and Beekeeping

That page also has a set of plans for building hives and supers. Seems like a good starting place.

It is natural to be nervous when first working with bees, but when you are agitated like that, your body gives off pheromones so: maintain your cool! After being around them you'll probably get so wrapped up in what they're doing you'll forget to be nervous.

Keep smoke use to a minimum. Like any other animal, the less stress the better for good productivity.

Worst part is extraction. Everything is sticky and you might not be as enthralled when you see how many bee bits are floating in the honey before filtering.

Have fun.
Les

25 years ago I bought 40 hives and equipment from the Chaplain who was retiring out of the air station here in Beaufort. He also gave me the location of a tree on the air station and one on the edge of the road at Clarendon Plantation that had active hives. I trapped another 30 hives out of those two trees over the next three years. The Peace Corps trained Beekeepers at Penn Center on St. Helena Island at that time. They needed to know if any trainees were allergic before sending them off to South America and Africa, so, they harvested for me without the benefit of protection other than smoke. All got stung repeatedly by workers arriving back from the field. When a bee is in the hive and smoke puffs in, they think the place is on fire and gorge with honey before leaving the box. They can't bend themselves to sting when their belly is full of honey. The fellow I bought my Queens from (each time I started a new hive) specialized in Tupelo honey which he harvested by barging his hives around in Bahama swamp when the Tupelo's were in bloom. A water clear honey with fantastic flavor.

You should do it. It's not hard, doesn't need to be a lot of work, is not dangerous and can be a lot of fun. The honey you get will be light years ahead of whatever you can buy.

I grew up on a farm and my dad kept hives. We learned how to do it by watching a guy he worked with who kept bees. It was that easy to pick up. We started out all paranoid about stings and with the usual protective gear. Within a year my dad was harvesting honey in nothing more than his usual heavy chore clothes, a helmet and gloves. After a while he ditched the helmet and gloves because they were more worth than they were worth. The key is to move slowly, go at the right time of day, etc.

Honey bees are not wasps. They are not yellow jackets. They are not hornets. They are not Africanized flying death misiles. They're quite docile and very, very useful.

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com...5970765586.jpg


I've been thinking about bees also. I wonder if my cats and dog will be stupid enough to mess with the bee boxes, and if they do will the little death missiles kill my pets?

Will the bees stay in the boxes, or will they start trying to nest in the walls of my home and garage?

Are bees able to contract the zombie virus, and thus become zombie bees?

Was thinking the same thing... get what you have on your plate right now done, then look for new challenges!

My dad has considered getting a hive to pollinate our fruit trees.

One note about honey. Locally "grown" honey is supposed to help with allergies. Helps you build up a tolerance to local pollens.

Feel free to stop by my yard and gather all the bees that gather around our apple tree every year - no charge, take as many bees as you want. :)

Best of luck with this new endeavour and keep us updated.

Honey bees will stay in their hives. They will not move into your house, invade your car, become zombie killer flying missiles, etc. Hives will grow, so what you do is add a super, or another layer to the hive. When the hive gets big enough that it loses critical mass, you just place an empty hive right next door, spike it with a little honey or sugar water, and they take care of themselves.

Every once in a while we would love our hives over winter. If we did, we'd usually just leave the hive out and a new hive would usually move in over time. Otherwise we'd just order a new hive and the mail man would deliver them. A package of bees in the mail. It is pretty cool to see.

Tim, what you're seeing is mostly wasps and yellow jackets, but I'm sure some of them are honey bees. Most of the pesticides used these days are designed to kill honey bees immediately so they don't track the poison back to the hive. Bees are pretty fragile. There was a bunch of litigation over this in the 80s. The result was a change in the pesticides to make them more toxic to drop the bees before they got back to the hives. Still something to be careful with, though.

Honey is hypoallergenic, repells zombies, and is the one food that never spoils. It does not support the growth of bacteria. Honey burried 3000 years ago in the pyramids is still good for use today.

Now you got me all excited to get a couple of hives.

MRM, you are correct, they are mostly yellow jackets and the offer still stands - free to anyone that wants them. ;)