beekeeping - cover me, i'm going in...

[queenlives]

2 weeks ago i bought my first bee "super" (brood hive) and painted the exterior to protect the wood.

last friday my wife and i performed a nice spring cleaning of the area we were going to place the hive - next to one of our ponds and 2 feet from a nice french lavender bush - among their favorite places to hang out.

then on saturday i picked up my first "package" of bees, brought them home and, at dusk, installed them in the super. to remove the queen (who was in her container for transport)i had to stick my hand into a shoe-box sized container that held ~20-30,000 honeybees, remove the queen and placing her in the hive, then move the bees to their new home.

uh-mazingly (to me, anyway), that worked out nicely and thus far, they've all been doing their bee-thing: orienting to their new home, drinking their sugar water solution, then heading out to gather pollen. woo hoo, nature's doing its thing.

but this afternoon i've got to suit up, light the smoker and give 'em a little puff, then remove the queen's transporter from the hive (take the lid off, reach in.). gotta tell ya, even though i'm going to be in full michelin-man bee suit regalia, i'm starting to get the willies.

cover me, i'm going in....

hal
(who wishes there was a big red "easy beesy" button on the hive so it would take care of itself.)

 

[NSXrunner]

HAHA thats crazy stuff man. Sounds interesting though. I'm allergic to bee stings so I'll just have to read about your posts, or watch the Discovery channel. :tongue: :biggrin:

 

[Dtrigg]

Good luck Hal.

I am extremely allergic to bee venom to the point that I have to carry a self injecting pen should I be stung. When I was living in Santa Barbara a guy was stung, injected himself twice and still died.

Don't think I'll be coming by your place.:biggrin:

Bee careful.

Doug

 

[queenlives]

Good luck Hal.

I am extremely allergic to bee venom to the point that I have to carry a self injecting pen should I be stung. When I was living in Santa Barbara a guy was stung, injected himself twice and still died.

Don't think I'll be coming by your place.:biggrin:

Bee careful.

Doug

thx guys.

one of our close neighbor friends is extremely allergic to bees so she's antsy about coming around now. (in fact, i just canceled the memorial day party / concert we had planned because her husband is one of the guitarists and i didn't want to risk her being injured).

just returned from doing my thing and the queen's hard at work (did i mention we named her "freddie mercury" ? and they've already got quite a bit of honeycomb started. what a trip.

we may just have honey this fall.

hal

 

[White92]

You do know that they sell honey in stores now.

I kid. Great hobby. Are you going expand to more hives and sell the honey or is this just to have around?

 

[queenlives]

You do know that they sell honey in stores now.

I kid. Great hobby. Are you going expand to more hives and sell the honey or is this just to have around?

hahaha, you know i'd heard you could buy honey in the store

i think we'll likely just build the hives as the growth of the colony dictates. we've brought them in because we have 19 (?) fruit trees that we use for making things for family & friends (donating a couple thousand pounds of overage to the local charity) and we've become concerned about the ccd (colony collapse disorder) that has impacted the bee population and thus the pollination process.

based on what our bee-guy says, we may well have more honey than we can use and at that point, will probably make it available for purchase.

it's been a very interesting experience so far and has gotten an enormously positive response from our entire neighborhood - a very good thing

 

[NSXrunner]

based on what our bee-guy says, we may well have more honey than we can use and at that point, will probably make it available for purchase.

Coming soon. All natural "NSX Honey" :biggrin:. I'll probably order a jar just for the heck of it. :tongue:

 

[robr]

Huh... my brother just got into this, his hives are supposed to be installed Saturday. I hate bees, no thanks!

 

[NeoNSX]

Didn't realize you could buy starter-kits for bee's. Count me in for a jar of NSX-Honey too!

 

[jond]

My grandfather used to keep bees. He said getting stung is good for you

 

[steveny]

I will buy a brick of honeycomb when you are ready to sell some.

When I was a kid there was this guy "Bill Dan's the bee man" He had a crap load of bees and he drove around selling the honey. He lived in this funny little shack that leaned way to the side like it was ready to fall over. He had a rotted out old pickup. BUT, he sold lots of honey. We use to buy from him, at a discount because he had a sliding scale if you were poor. I remember he got cataracts and was putting honey in his eyes saying he had taken care of the bees and now it was time for the bees to take care of him. My mom tried to convince him to go to the doctor but he said he couldn't afford the doctor as all he had was his bees and no insurance. He eventually went blind and had a guy drive him around while he sold the honey. Years later he died and over one million dollars in cash was found stashed in his house. His house has since fallen down and every trace of him ever being here is gone, except the memories of good honey and a strange little old man.

 

[DocL]

My grandfather used to keep bees. He said getting stung is good for you

LOL...

 

[fullracehonda]

thats a heck of a story steveny




if you put a cool nsx sticker on the honey jars i will buy one

 

[queenlives]

(after reading everyone's posts, i'm sitting here chuckling out loud - thx for the morning laugh

i hear getting stung by bees in 1-off / smaller hits might be a good thing for building immunities, etc, but i'm hoping to skip it whenever possible. comes with the territory, i guess.

as for selling honey, thx very much for the interest and let's see what we end up with as the year rolls on. it's unlikely i can use either NSX or NSX Honey, but if we get enough, maybe we can convince lud to let us make "NSX Prime" Honey and put a portion of the $'s to a Prime fund - either directly to Prime / lud or a charity he would like to support. let's not get ahead of ourselves, though, so let's see what the bees bring us.

good luck to your brother with his new package / installation this weekend - you might recommend him to the website www.beemaster.com, the guy's got a great 9 minute video showing the newbie just how to do it... mine went just like that!

thx again for the chuckles and the interest, guys.
hal

 

[davidf]

I watched Jerry Seinfelds "Bee movie" I learned alot. LOL.

 

[White92]

You should make NSX-R Honey, but never make it available for sale to anyone outside of Japan.

 

[steveny]

You should make NSX-R Honey, but never make it available for sale to anyone outside of Japan.

:biggrin: That's a good one. It could have a carbon fiber lid. Maybe Tomoske could make the lids and the honey could be available for sale in 2050.

 

[White92]

:biggrin: That's a good one. It could have a carbon fiber lid. Maybe Tomoske could make the lids and the honey could be available for sale in 2050.

That's so odd! Tomoske just randomly pm'd me about making these!:smile:

 

[Red]

Coming soon. All natural "NSX Honey" :biggrin:. I'll probably order a jar just for the heck of it. :tongue:

I need some, I hear having a jar in your car is good for +15hp on a dyno!

:biggrin: That's a good one. It could have a carbon fiber lid. Maybe Tomoske could make the lids and the honey could be available for sale in 2050.

Why stop there? Why not have Downforce make a Honey Scoop? With Tomoske's 2050 delivery window we'll all have it for our cataracts!:tongue:

That's so odd! Tomoske just randomly pm'd me about making these!:smile:

You must have posted something nice about him!:tongue:

 

[robr]

good luck to your brother with his new package / installation this weekend - you might recommend him to the website www.beemaster.com, the guy's got a great 9 minute video showing the newbie just how to do it... mine went just like that!

thanks, i forwarded the link to him... and to think, now 'queenlives' takes on a new meaning...

Here's your new avatar

 

[queenlives]

thanks, i forwarded the link to him... and to think, now 'queenlives' takes on a new meaning...

Here's your new avatar

rob,

i hope your brother likes the link as much as i like the avatar! (i'll be putting it up soon

as for the rest of you, i can see the youtube video now:

location: racetrack @ nsxpo '08

scene: pacific raceways track, a gaggle / herd / troupe... er, bunch of red-hot, smokin' nsx's come to a screeching halt and the camera leans in to the cabin of the first nsx and catches the driver (possibly steveny) as he turns off his ipod and picks up a jar of our stuff, then turns to the camera and says:

"after a few hot laps in my NSX, licking Prime Honey always re-starts my engine".

video fades as the announcer's voice says, "re-start your engine today with a Prime Honey, Prime Honey not available in all stores. Batteries not included. Please consult your physician before using Prime Honey. Should you want to do more than 4 laps per hour, please consult your physician - or contact your female neighbors to, er, ride along with you. "

going for my bike ride now
hal

 

[queenlives]

UPDATE:

well, my first season as a beekeeper has been interesting and educational, but underwhelming in terms of honey production.

it seems that some time back the queen either croaked or left the building and they didn't replace her. the rest of the colony continued going about their business, filling one of the two supers (boxes that are stacked to make a "hive") with honey until about two weeks ago when they apparently left the building, too

this afternoon i moved the hive in to my garage to begin a slow warming process (using a 60w light @ the base of the hive) designed to liquefy the honey in the capped honeycomb cells. i'll let them warm until sat / sun, then begin removing the frames (that the honeycomb is built on), using an electric knife to cap (remove) the comb, then insert the frames in to a dual frame manual centrifugal honey extractor.

hopefully i'll crank out some honey by the end of the weekend

i've taken some pics of the hive process today and will post those over the next day or so.
hal

 

[docjohn]

Save me the" Royal gelly":wink: Might be better than zymol!!

 

[robr]

sort of wondered what happened, thanks for the update! i think my brother ran into something similar, no queen in one, two queens in the other.

 

[queenlives]

well, harvesting was an interesting, time-consuming and laborious process.

basic honey extraction process description follows: (1) remove the frames from the super (2) using an electrically heated knife, remove the caps from the honeycomb (3) place the "capped" comb frames in the (hand-crank, centrifugal force) extractor (4) turn the crank like making ice cream the old fashioned way. honey gets thrown to the interior walls of the extractor container and when you have enough, open the honey waste gate and xfer honey to straining cloth (hung over large pot), honey drips through filter, removing yucky-stuff / particulates and voila... you've got fresh honey for 4x what you would have paid for it at the store

the weather here was ~50degrees +/- so my lightbulb-warms-the-hive and gets-the-honey-flowing was nice in theory but was unsuccessful in warming the honey

so, on to plan b: i used the electric knife to remove the comb / honey down to the frame foundation, then filtered the heck out of that "comb/honey" mash and we've now got about 4 gallons of raw, local honey (i think i dated that girl a coupla times - raw, local honey - baddabump.

the downside of taking this approach is the new package of bees i install next month will have to rebuild the comb and "clean" up the frames the previous residents left behind before their queen can begin laying eggs, etc.