Any Bee Keepers Here?
 

My wife and I are looking into bee keeping on the farm. We start attending classes in a few weeks - we have been reading a lot ('The Beekeepers Problem Solver', 'Keeping Honey Bees", etc.) but I am looking for some practical experience.

We have been turning over parts of the farm to native grasses and flowers so this makes sense to us.

Any A students in the class? :cool:

I'm just readin' ...my grandfather had a few hives as did lots of folks back when...y'all rock!

Bee keeing is a great hobby. I have hives that have been handed down from my grand father - father to me. Contact https://www.mdbeekeepers.org. This is a great resource for you, members of these state associations tend to be very helpful and love to get newbies started.

subscribed

Peter Sellers had a run in with a beekeeper once.

Good luck, sounds like a great project. :)

That is perfect. The class we are taking are in Southern Maryland,

We are joining MSBA and will go to the 17 February meeting.

Thanks!!! Are you in Maryland?

And yes, Livi, my dog bites:D

Yes. Unintentionally.

A few years back my left leg got nailed by two of 'em mowing the lawn. Ground bees. Look like honey bees but a little smaller. Not aggressive except when you mow over their hole.

Like I got hit with a hammer twice.

Anaphylaxis.

ER.

Touch and go for awhile. Was just about to get intubated when the reaction lifted.

Hour later, back in the yard with a can of HOT SHOT or whatever.

I've got hives.Watch Don the fat bee man on youtube.He does blogs every other Thursday. You can join or just watch him. He's very good mentor.

Seahawk,

In Georgia. You should enjoy the class. My hives are in north GA. Love the honey.

When we moved here 22 years ago, I ran from more ground bees and wasps than I care to recount, including diving in the tobacco pond.

This pretty interesting: Bees have CO2 receptors on their antennae, which allow them to detect our exhalations, and respond aggressively. This ability developed to protect the hive against the threat of bears. Common folklore states that bees sense fear, but really they are sensing fear behavior. If one is nervous around bees, they may breathe more heavily, which can lead to stings.

Northern Georgia is beautiful country, I've kayaked a lot of rivers there in the old days.

Well done and thanks for your link!

Thank you. I knew there would be folks here. Amazing.

I have no problem with bees unless they have a problem with me. In my twisted sort of self-preservation mode of thinking, I have declared chemical warfare a legitimate and reasonable defense so long as it is to maintain a well-defined perimeter or as a pre-emptive elimination of a threat.

It appears colony collapse syndrome has abated in recent years. I am thankful for that.

I am genetically disqualified from the job. Like Crowbob just one sting will send me to the hospital. BTDT, the anaphylaxis I suffered was no joke.

I'm pushing a 21" walk behind mower through some tallish weed/grass and I feel two thwacks. Hm. Musta got whipped by a stalk or hit by ricoched woodchips.

Whatever. Good time to stop so I kill the mower and go to the house for some water. My lips are numb.

Uh oh.

That's when the itching started.

I actually made a belt for holding two cans of

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1517772295.jpg

It was constant chem warfare when we reclaimed the barns and telephone poles.

Mowing was a high risk endeavor even on tractors.

Better living through chemistry.

I am a "Hive Master" LoL

I have 5 Top Bar hives on my property and the hobby is really fascinating & rewarding.
Many yeas ago I went to an Ag Boarding school in Australia and the older boys had bees, I promised myself that some day I would do it . I am about 10 years in to it now.

Ill try to dig up and post some photos.

I do this mainly as a hobby and don't sell but gift and use loads of honey.
From honey being my choice of sweeter, to my now annual mead batch.

The world needs bees!
Using the very natural system of Top Bar hive ... I believe is better than the traditional Langstroth hives (the white boxes you see in fields and orchards)
These hives have no queen excluder and all the honey harvested is taken from virgin comb. I use the wax for candles and even made mustache wax when I had my handelbar.
The top bar is almost 4 feet long with the gueen laying brood and the males staying in about the first 18".
I have the last 3 years even been able to "grow" my own queens (that's where the $ is ! $250 for a mated queen and a package of 3 to 4 pounds of bees.)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

I have an album on FB if you would like to look.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.268613316489576.87726.100000227304288&type= 1&l=b99572e5e6

You got that right, Paul

Kinda a philosophical dilemma but practicality, safety and SURVIVAL rule.

The itching started in the groinal area, pacifically along the inguinal crease. Both sides. Intense I'm telling you. Abrasive scratching like a flea-bit hound in a field of stinging deadnettle.

That is so cool.

I am interested in the Top Bar hives because of my back...so much data.

I am a complete newb.

Thanks!


Friend request sent from my wife's Facebook - Rebecca.

I only know about eating the stuff. I buy honey from a place that's on the edge of a rainforest. The honey flavors are fantastic. It contains that manuka honey that has supposed health benefits, but also contains a lot of natural flavors from the forest. Our cheap supermarket stuff is from hives in grass fields.

Theres a place near me that sells local honey. There's a hundred hives just off the main road. All summer long my windshield gets plastered with yellow blobs of bee against which I've learned NOT to turn on the wipers.

Honey grown in a wild, uncultivated area has the best all-around antigen (anti-allergy) composition. Hives bordering clover fields has the best flavor (IMO). Honey does not spoil.

My father kept bees on the farm I grew up on and I helped him a little. There really isn't that much to do, so I didn't give much help. Mostly carrying hives and boxes and things, but I got to see how to do things. Bee keeping can be very simple and is pretty intuitive. My father picked it up by watching a friend of his who kept hives on our property and just following him around. Where we live the biggest challenge is keeping them alive through winter. Finally we figured out we needed to feed them in the winter, so my dad would make sugar water for them by dissolving sugar in boiling water and setting it just outside the hive on sunny days. They would fly even on winter days if it was warm enough and the would bring the sugar water back into hive and survive off it all winter long. As long as they got enough to eat the cold didn't affect them.

You don't need to plant fancy wild flowers or prairie grasses. The only effect on the honey is that lighter flowers like alfalfa or clover makes a lighter, clearer honey. Our bees were in the deep woods and pollinated basswoods and box elders and goldenrod. Our honey was quite dark and thick. Some like the lighter honey better, but this summer at the local farmer's market the honey vendor had marked up the darker basswood honey like we use to get.

Bees don't need a lot of work. They're pretty docile too. If you have coveralls it only takes a puff of smoke to pacify them. We never even bothered with the smoke after we got used to handling the bees. My dad had a mask and helmet and an old welders outfit. After a while the bees got used to him and he didn't even use his outfit most of the time. He just moved slowly and deliberately and they pretty much left him alone.

Get the basic setup and a couple of hives of bees and just set them out. Start in the spring and just follow them a little over the summer. Don't bug them too much and they should be fine.

So in-between macerating the nether regions I notice I'm breathing hard.

Call the GF:

Stop making sandwiches so you can pick me up on the way to urgent care, I said.

I'm not on my way to urgent care, she said.

You are now!, I said.

Meanwhile the crotchitch migrated to the scalp area.

After a longish few minutes of scratching, puffing and hearing the sound of my heart inside my head, I call the GF back:

Hello?

Are you coming?

Yes, why?

Oh, just curious, I said.

I asked relatively calmly if she could put just a tiny little more pressure on the accelerator.

Then like a LED she comes up with an idea:

EMERGENCY!

You have no idea. My wife is a Master Gardener...seed catalogs arrive in January and February by the truckload. She gives lectures locally, she judges at three county fairs. She is insane.

Look, you can see her garden from space:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1517775117.jpg

We are planting native grasses and flowers because...it really doesn't matter: the bee thing means no cows or goats or...

Paul, sir.

I do have difficulty finding the words exemplary enough to describe what you share with us.

I appreciate that. My wife is the best thing that ever happened to me other than my parents...now get back to the GF who seems to have ignored your plea for help. :D

OK.

In that coy, sexually-charged attitude we all have heard about she asks:

If you're so god-damned sick why didn't you drive yourself?

Well, it's mostly because I need somebody to call the shots if I become totally incapacitated.

Then the tears. Hers.

The shots of adrenaline and the IV insertion went well.

Somebody had already said something about a shocky patient in ER.

So I'm thinking I'm where I need to be under the circumstances. Let it play out. RELAX!

My heart rate zoomed which is apparently something to keep an eye on. V-fib. Maybe A-fib. Didn't seem to matter which at that point.

Then the diaphoresis just stopped. From drenching sweat to clammy coolness.

Deep breaths, no itch.

It seemed like somebody dialed down the pressure.

On the way home we stopped at Ace Hardware for bug ****.

Back in the car the GF tells me the doc told her there was nothing more they could do if the reaction were to continue.

If you're observant you can follow ground bees back to their subterranian homes wherupon you can unleash the dogs of hell and annihilate the innocent and beneficial critters.

You cross this perimeter, you die. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Ground bees (hornets, wasps-everybody calls them different things, depending) and me can not and will not C0ÈX1$T.

I've wanted to get into bee keeping for years. Never had time. Great info from MRM. We planted an area of wild grasses and wildflowers about 15 years ago with an eye to providing pollen for bees. I thought the wildflower meadow would be low maintenance - no mowing etc. Not quite so. Invasive, non-native species took over about every 5 years. I tried burning it off every fall or spring for a while and then just plowed it up and started over. Never got around to getting the bees.

I ment to say this earlier.
Net-flick has a show called rotten, it's the first show and it's about Bee's. Please go check it out. I haven't followed this but they have others.