Posts Tagged ‘bee supplies’

There are many great reasons for keeping honey bees. From harvesting honey, to collecting beeswax, and even crop pollination, bees serve many helpful purposes. Here are a few helpful tips for keeping honey bees on your property.

This Great Bee Keeping Guide “Modern Beekeeping” Teaches You All You Need To Know so as to keep Your Own Healthy Bees and Produce Your Own Great Honey! Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

1. Feed Your Bees: While the bees are getting used to their new hive, or during cold weather months, you will need to provide food.  You will need to mix sugar syrup and administer it to the bees through use of a Boardman feeder, or by placing the syrup inside the top cover near the opening in the inner cover.

This type of feeding allows your bees to have access to the syrup, without attracting pests or intruders. It is important to note that bees consume a great deal when they are first establishing a hive, so make sure to check the syrup level often. Once the bees begin to produce honey, you will no longer need to supply syrup, however you should leave some honey in the hive as a food source during the winter and early spring months.

2. Make Sure Water Is Handy: Bees need to have a proper water source, especially during warm weather months. Bees use water to cool down their hive during periods of hot and humid weather, and also use it as a dilution material during honey production. That being said, you should never place a container of water too close to the hive because bees can drown quite easily.

3. Be Considerate: When keeping honey bees, you should always be considerate of others. Remember, you want the bees, your neighbors do not necessarily feel the same way.

A wooden fence around your hive can prove quite beneficial. Make sure you set the fence up in the same direction as the hive opening so the bees can fly over the fence and above nearby homes.

For More Bee Keeping Tips, Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

Some time ago I downloaded this ebook from Adam Mills and started to read it one summers evening. The first thing I found was that there was a warmth and enthusiasm to the writing which I found engrossing. This Great Bee Keeping Guide “Modern Beekeeping” Teaches You All You Need To Know so as to keep Your Own Healthy Bees and Produce Your Own Great Honey! Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

Harvesting honey is an exciting and fun process. This is the time when all of your hard work pays off, and you finally get to enjoy this sweet treat. However, before you begin, there are a few things you should know to make the process easier. Here are three simple tips for harvesting honey.

Prepare Your Area: As we all know, honey is extremely sticky. Every item you handle will become sticky (counter tops, tools, doorknobs, etc.) so you should contain the stickiness by working in a clean barn, on the porch, or in the garage rather than working in your kitchen. Keep a bucket of water handy to rinse your hands and a clean towel to dry off with. Set up all pieces of equipment and tools before handling the comb, and lay down a few drop cloths or newspapers on the floor.

Harvest In A Confined Area: Harvesting honey should be done in a closed room.  This keeps the honey clean, and it helps to keep the bees from stealing it, and bringing it back to the hive.

Warm The Honey: Warm honey flows much easier than cold honey. This will allow you to spin the honey out of the comb faster, which results in more honey being extracted from the comb. Warm honey also flows through strainers and filters much faster, without clumping up. Honey should be heated to about eighty degrees Fahrenheit (twenty-seven degrees Celsius) for optimal flow. Use caution to ensure you do not heat the honey too much or else you may melt the wax comb.

For More Bee Keeping Tips, Click Here To Download Adam Mills’s Modern Beekeeping Guide.

The cell builder colony is another important step in raising queen bees. The aim of this procedure is to create a situation under which bees will carefully nurture the young, developing queens. You will want to select a cell builder colony that is a strong colony that fully occupies a large hive. A 3-story hive will work to your best advantage, by reducing the available space to two hives.  Confine the queen to the bottom box. This brood chamber should be equipped with an equal amount of brood and empty drawn cells for the queen to lay eggs. Two combs of very young larvae should be placed in the center of the super (the hive body) and fill in the remaining space with combs of honey and pollen.  It is necessary to place the combs of unsealed honey and pollen along side of the combs of unsealed larvae. This makes it look like a natural brood nest. With the queen being confined, it will prevent her from entering into the super. Recruited nurse bees will feed the unsealed larvae in the super. The bees will soon become aware the queen is not occupying the nest. This begins the impulse of the nurse bees taking the steps to rear a new queen. This is the type of environment you will want to place newly grafted or started cells to be introduced for rearing. You will want to leave the cell building colony for 24 hours before inserting the newly grafted or started cells. You will want to leave a space between the two brood combs in the super. The space needs to be wide enough to fit a cell bar. A cell bar is a wooden strip that holds queen cups for rearing queens. If possible it is best not to rear queen during a heavy honey flow. A light nectar flow with ample pollen, preferably a mixture of pollens, is the best condition for rearing queens. If supplementary feeding becomes necessary, always use a mixture of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water for sugar syrup to simulate nectar. Never use diluted honey. Grafting is the process of removing worker larvae from its cell and placing it into an artificial queen cup for rearing the larvae into a queen. You start the grafting process by preparing the bars of cells by sticking 20 plastic cups onto a wax covered board. The bar must be placed into a hive for at least 24 hours before grafting. During this time the bees will clean and condition the cell cups.  You will need a grafting tool to transfer larvae. Each larva is floating on a little raft of royal jelly and must be placed undisturbed into the bottom of the conditioned cups. The grafting tool must be able to follow the curve of the bottom of the cup to allow it to be inserted under the back of the tiny floating larva without touching it. The best conditions to graft in is cool temperatures and well fed larvae, the priming of the cell cups with diluted royal jelly should not be necessary. Do not graft in very hot weather or in low humidity. The larvae could potential be damaged by dehydration. Only graft larvae that are under 24 hours of age from hatching and are floating on a good amount of royal jelly. Never expose the larvae to direct sunlight and work as quickly as possible. The grafted larvae should be placed into an abundance of nurse bees that are far enough away from a queen that they will attempt rear all the cells. The age of the nurse bees range from 9 days to 12 days after they have emerged from a cell. It is always important to have a large number of replacement young bees available to the colony in order to provide nurse bees. The production of royal jelly depends on an ample supply of pollen or pollen substitutes. Lack of pollens leads to smaller, less well-fed larvae and queens. Also the nurse bees will lose their body reserves of stored nutrients and become susceptible to disease.  It is very important to record the day the cells were grafted and the day the queens are due to emerge. A queen will emerge 16 days after the egg was laid, or 13 days after the egg hatches into a larva. Since the larva was grafted at 24 hours old, the queen will emerge 12 days later. If one of the queens emerge early, she will kill all the remaining cells. It is best if the cells are left until the day before they are due to emerge, it is then possible to move the cells from the cell build colony to the nuclei.  When you are transporting the cells to the nuclei, the cells must be handled gently to avoid damage to the immature queens. Make the transition to the mating yard. Do not shake or jar the combs or bars with cells, and avoid turning the cells from the natural position. Do not allow them to be exposed to direct sunlight, and because the queen nymph is susceptible to cold do not allow the cells out of the hive too long, or exposed to cold winds or a chilly atmosphere. Cells should be distributed to the mating yard as soon as possible after the nucleus colony has set up. You do not want too much time to lapse or the bees in the nucleus will start building cells. It will be necessary to destroy all of these cells before inserting the raised cells into the nuclei. Only one cell is given to a nucleus. A wet, sharp knife can be used to separate adjoining cells on the cell bar. Each cell must be carefully removed from the bar and placed into the nucleus hive. First a side comb is removed from the nucleus to allow room for manipulation. A small depression is pressed into the face of the center brood comb and t he plastic base of the cell gently pressed into it. Mark every nucleus with a date the young queen is due to emerge and the mother queen she was bred from should be noted. A virgin queen will mate and start laying about 10 days after she has emerged from the cell. In the fall this period can continue longer than the normal time. Do not open or move the nucleus during the mating period. It is important that the virgin queen start mating. The mating takes place while she is flying in the open and not in the hive.  The mating does not begin until the queen is sexually mature. This takes place 5 to 6 days after emerging. The queen must mate within 20 days, if not she will remain infertile. Most of the queen rears will destroy all the queens that fail to lay on time, except in the fall when mating and expected laying time can be extended because of cooler weather.

Varroa mites were first discovered in the United States in 1987, and then the mites were detected in North Carolina three years later. The mites have since spread throughout the rest of the country. They are considered to be the most serious pest of honeybees worldwide. Infested colonies will die within 1 to 2 years unless the beekeeper takes the necessary actions to rid the colony of the mites. The Varroa mites are external parasites of the drone and worker bees. They prefer drones, but will infect the workers also. Varroa mites are visible with the naked eye and look somewhat like a tick. The mated female moves into a brood cell with older bee larvae. Mites will feed on the larvae food or puncture the larval body and feed on the bee’s blood. The mated female mite will lay an egg every 36 hours on the side of the cell. The first egg will be unfertilized and develop into a male. The other eggs are fertilized will hatch into females. The young mites feed on the developing pupa. The young females will then mate with the male and emerge from the cell when the bee emerges. The female mites will then enter another cell or attach themselves to an adult bee to feed on. The Varroa mites are transported from colony to colony by drifting or robbing bees. There are visible symptoms of the damage from the mites on the newly emerged bees, which is due to the mites feeding on the immature bee in the cell. The newly emerged bee will be smaller than normal, have crumpled or disjointed wings, and shortened abdomens. The life span of the infected bee is also shortened. Severe infestations from the mite within the cell, which is several mated adult female mites in one cell, can cause death to the pupa. Other symptoms of mite infestations are the rapid decline of the colony, reduced adult bee population, evacuation of the hive by crawling bees, queen’s lack of performance, spotty brood, and abnormal brood. Detection is the first step to control. There are methods used to detect the presence of the Varroa mites as follows: Extract drone brood when present and visually examine larvae and cells for mites. There are visible against a light colored background. Fill a quart jar about 1/4 full of live bees. Cover and insert a 2-second blast from an aerosol ether-based engine starter fluid or aerosol oil cooking spray. Shake the jar for 20 seconds. Turn the jar on its side and rotate slowly and look for mites clinging to the sides of the jar. If you do not spot any mites, remove the bees and rinse in alcohol. Shake and remove the bees so you can examine the alcohol. The best and most reliable method is to use Apistan@ (fluvalinate) strips or US: Check Mite+ strips.. Place a piece of waxed or white paper sprayed with aerosol oil cooking spray and covered with 8-8 squares/inch of mesh wire on the bottom board. Insert strips according to label directions. Check the paper in one hour. If there are no mites, check again the next day. You can request a free inspection from you local NCDA bee inspector. Never treat during a nectar flow because the chemicals can contaminate the honey and never leave strips in hives after the recommended time this can cause sublethal doses of the chemical. However, if mites are detected, you may need to treat to save your colony. In recent years mite have become resistant to Apistan strips and has become a problem throughout the world. Therefore, rotating chemical, delaying treatment and using cultural control are recommended to manage mites in a more bearable fashion. Delaying treatment can be accomplished if you monitor the level of Varroa mite infestation in your colonies. There are ways to check the colony for the number of mites present. Knowing the level of infestation in your colonies will help you determining whether treat is required immediately or if it can wait until after the nectar flow season has passed.

Marketing honey in today’s market is going to pose a bit of a challenge since you have so many commercial level sellers doing this with the resources to promote and market the product since not all places will purchase and carry your product. This is why many small businesses who do this sell to lower end stores and mom and pop places because when they get people buying that’s how many of them end up in large scale stores like Whole Foods Market and other stores that carry name brand organic food. Part of the marketing strategy is to be able to utilize the internet as well since people can open up online stores to sell their products, but you also have to have an effective system in place to pack and ship items all over the world because you will have customers who will be buying your product as far away as England or even Japan. Your business should reflect handling online orders or you can sub-contract a company to pack and ship your items and take the guesswork out of your hands so you’re not stuck having to deal with lost or misdirected packages. Starting at the bottom for marketing helps you to learn little things that will make your business successful and can thrive in years to come when you know what it takes to make it work. Promotion isn’t a skill placed on auto-pilot you have to spend time working it every single day because a business doesn’t run itself it takes a good deal of persistence and effort to make it work and to make it where you want it to be. It’s easier for people who have prior experience in running a business to be able to effectively carry out a sure-fire way to market a single product and still gain revenue. It’s just that when you market products you have to know what is actually the demand for that particular product in question. Selling honey is always a product that people will buy and is in demand, but it’s the companies that make it are the ones who are having to deal with a lot of competition since many small end businesses are extending themselves to the outside world and relying on larger companies to do the larger scale selling. Websites are effective because this is how many co-ops are formed because many food production companies try to find cost effective ways to produce a product through sub-contracting farms and contractors to handle the mass production of honey making and making products out of beeswax. This is why so many small businesses are reaching out to bigger companies, but it’s helpful to give small businesses the tools needed to increase their exposure for business and even clients with farmers and suppliers. Beekeeping is more than just a hobby it’s a full time job and business. It may look difficult because it requires you to be in all kinds of weather wearing a puncture and sting proof body suit with a face net just to put that sweetener you use for your biscuits and toast in the morning or that cup of hot chamomile tea, remember the beekeepers who endured that to make it possible to have that sticky sweet indulgence you put in your food and drinks.

You will find the adult and larvae of the small hive beetle are found in active beehives and stored bee equipment where they feed on pollen and honey. The small hive beetle is native to Africa where it requires 38-81 days to develop from egg to adult. Beetle larvae on not spin webs or cocoons in the beehive but rather pupate in the ground outside the hive. This first record of this beetle in the Western Hemisphere was determined from a commercial apiary in Florida in May 1998. The small hive beetle behaved as a scavenger of weakened colonies in Africa. They were relegated to secondary pest status. Here in Florida it has not been the case. The apiaries suffered extensive damage and colony loss. Beetle larvae tunneled through combs, killing bee brood and ruining combs. Bees in Florid have abandoned combs and entire colonies once they are infested. The beetles would defecate in the honey causing it to ferment, producing a frothy mess in supers and honey houses. Honey contaminated can no longer be sold and cannot be used as bee feed.  In heavily infested apiaries in Florida, larvae could be seen crawling out of the colony entrances or across honey house floors by the thousands trying to reach soil to dig in and complete their development. It has been cause for some concern regarding the beetles behavior in Florida compared to its behavior in Africa. The following precautions are suggested to help maintain control of the beetle. Make sure the area around the honey house is clean. Extract honey from filled supers as soon as possible rather than let them stand too long. Leaving the cappings exposed for too long is another bad idea. Beetles can multiple rapidly in stored honey, because the honey is away from the protective bees. Avoid stacking infested supers in strong colonies. Notice when *supering colonies are making splits, exchanging combs or use of *Porter bee escapes can spread the beetles or provide room for beetles to become established away from the cluster of protective bees. Watch colonies for sanitary behavior, such as bees showing the ability of ridding themselves of the larvae and adult small hive beetle. Breed queen lines found to be beetle resistant. See if it is possible to trap the beetle larvae as they make the trek to reach the soil. Moving colonies might be useful in keeping a beetle population from growing. The beetle may be adverse to certain soils. In this case fire ants may be a predator for the beetle larvae as they are pupating. Bees will not normally clean-up equipment or supers full of beetle-fermented honey. Bees, however, will finish the job after the beekeeper fist washes out as much honey as possible with a high-pressure hose. By treating the soil in front of the affected hive with a soil insecticide the larvae may not reach adult stage. Treat colonies with Check Mite+ beehive pest control strip according to label instructions. supering the filling of the supers with excess honey Porter bee escape originally designed to clear bees from supers that were to be extracted.

In order to get honey from your beehive you have to be able to extract the honey from the honey comb. In order to do this you have to have to have a honey extractor. There are manufactured honey extractors available on the market, they typically cost approximately $200 to $300, the average cost of starting a new hive of honey bees. If there is a group of beekeepers in an area they will sometimes pool their money together to purchase a honey extractor that they share. If you are not in a large beekeeping environment and do not want to spend a few hundred dollars on a manufactured honey extractor you might want to make your own. The materials you will need to build a honey extractor include; a metal rod that is at least one meter long and is thickly threaded, two bicycle wheel rims, two pieces of wood, one meter of 2-3mm fencing wire, a large metal drum, ten bolts for the metal rod, four 400mm sections of 8mm threaded rod, a self centering bearing, six coach screws, and one pillow block bearing. When choosing a large metal drum for your homemade honey extractor make sure that is was never used to store potentially toxic materials. The tools you will need for constructing your honey extractor include; an electric drill, a welding machine (and preferably some welding experience), a socket set, and a hack saw. The first thing your going to do is remove the end of the drum that does not have two pouring holes, the newly opened end will be the top of your honey extractor. Use the coach screws to attach one of the pieces of wood across the bottom of the drum. Once the wood is in place use coach screws to secure the pillow block. After inserting the threaded rod through the center of the first bicycle rim, securely bolt the rim to the rod approximately ten centimeters from the end of the rod. At the opposite end of the rod you will want to thread a but for the other wheel, the second wheel will rest on this nut. When both of the wheel rims are in place you will want to drill holes in four spots around each wheel, when this task is complete you use the 8mm rods to lock the wheel rims together. Use two nuts onto the rod. Make sure that two cm of rod protrude. When this is complete you are going to cut a slit that is10mm deep and 3mm wide into the end of the rod. After this thread the lock the nuts together at the end of the rod. After you think the nuts are in place use the welding machine to permanently lock them into place. Fasten the wire to the the spokes of the bottom wheel rim, approximately 5-8cm from the rim. You have now successfully made the basket of your honey extractor. Take your newly crafted extractor basket and place it into the drum, settling it on the pillow bearing. Now you’re going to want to bolt a second piece of wood to the sides of the drum and the self centering bearing. After drilling a screwdriver bit into the chuck, place the chuck into the slit into the slot in the top of the threaded rod.

Nosema is the most widespread of the adult honey bee diseases. A single celled animal named Nosema apis, a small, unicellular parasite specific to the honeybee, causes it. Nosema cannot exist in a laboratory culture, as with most bacteria and fungi. It will only thrive and multiply in the epithelial cells of the honey bee ventriculus which causes dysentery.  Queens, drones and workers are all susceptible to Nosema. The spores of the Nosema must be ingested for the bee to be infected. The spore takes root in the midgut, where they will penetrate a midgut cell and grow by absorbing nutrients from that cell. The parasite will increase in size until it is large enough to divide in half. Each new parasite will continue to feed on the nutrients of the cell until they are depleted. In a matter of time, about 6 to 10 days, 100 new spores are formed in the infected cell. The infected cell when depleted of all the nutrients ruptures releasing all the newly formed spores into the midgut to start the process again. The damaged intestinal tissue is susceptible to secondary diseases. Dysentery is a common symptom of this disease.  You will be able to spot the dysentery on the outside of the hive by the little brown spots, but the diseased bees will also defecate inside the hive. contaminating combs with millions of infectious spores. The disease is spread to other colony members through fecal matter. Nosema having infected one bee will be spread to others in the colony. The disease lowers the life span of the bees. If you have a colony of bees infected with Nosema in late fall, come spring it is likely that most of the colony will have died off. Nosema is a difficult disease to diganose without using laboratory equipment. Decapitating a bee and pulling out the last abdominal segments usually will remove the intestinal tract while still intact. An infected midgut will become swollen, whitish and lose its visible constrictions. However, other causes of dysentery, such as ingesting honeydew, fermented syrups, etc. can result in similar intestinal changes. Treatment for Nosema is based on the most appropriate times to prevent comb contamination and to prevent the development of disease in bees that clean up fecal deposits from combs while they are still trying to expand the brood nest. A few bees are always infected, but the diseased late season bees are the only one of any concern. If they develop high levels of infection, they defecate on the combs in October, November, and December, and then they die. The use of fumagillin has been field tested by some beekeepers with acceptable results. When treating use the manufacturer’s instructions.

The country is full of apple orchards. Apple orchards are where the apples you buy in the supermarket come from. Applesauce is made out of apples grown in orchards. People who drink apple juice and apple cider enjoy the produce provided by the hardworking orchard owners. Without apple orchards there would be no apple pies. The world would be a sadder place without apple orchards. In the springtime people drive past apple orchards and see tidy row after tidy row of apple trees, their spreading boughs fragrant with the scent of delicate apple blossoms. In the summer they can drive past the same orchard and see the same trees, leaves shining in the sunshine. In the fall those same trees are laden with apples, crunchy and full of juice. In the winter, the spreading limbs of the apple trees spread wide and are blanketed with a layer of glittering snow. When they stop to admire the artistic trees they notice that unlike other types of agriculture endeavors the only time they see anyone working amongst the trees is when the trees are heavy with fruit and the farmers are picking the apples. It doesn’t take very long for the passer bys to start thinking about how easy it would be to own an orchard. When the opportunity to purchase an apple orchard comes along, these people can hardly walk away from the opportunity. The reality is that there is a lot more to owning an apple orchard then picking apples and pulling in money. The casual passerby thinks that owning an apple orchard won’t be much work, the reality is that a great deal of backbreaking labor goes into maintaining the orchard. The trees have to be pruned. The trees have to be sprayed to protect them from being ravished by insects. In addition to caring for the trees there is a lot of general maintenance chores that have to be taken care of. There is also the task of removing the old, unproductive trees and replacing them with young trees. The next thing to consider when purchasing an apple orchard is the size of the orchard. According to the experts an apple orchard has to be at least ten acres large in order to break even. That’s just breaking even. In theory a larger orchard means a larger profit margin for the orchard owner, but a larger orchard also means that the owner will have to buy more insecticide, rotate more trees, hire more employees, and spend more money on the equipment needed to maintain the orchard and harvest the apple crop. Perhaps the biggest error newcomers to the apple orchard business make in the spring time when the apple trees are in bloom. In order for the trees to bear fruit the flowers have to be pollinated. Although the wind can help pollinate the flowers, honey bees are better. Many new orchard owners think that there are enough bees in the wild to pollinate the acres of apple trees. These owners are making an assumption that could harm their yearly yield. Experienced owners know that to ensure they get a profitable harvest they need to work with local beekeepers. They lease the hives and the honey bees from the beekeepers. The hive owners set up the hives in the orchards. The extra bees assist in the pollination.

There are several ways to acquire bees. No matter the method you choose spring is the best time to purchase bees. Listed below are methods by which to acquiring bees. Established colonies will cost you more, but they can be worth the extra money. Before you purchase the bees have them and their equipment inspected by a state bee inspector. Dilapidated equipment or weak colonies you will want to stay away from When purchasing established colonies, the equipment will not require any assembly. Since the queen is already laying eggs, will be able to judge her brood pattern. The chance of producing a honey crop the first year with an established colony is very good. The previous owner should be able to give you any history or background information of the bees. If you are a beginner, a strong colony may be more than you are ready to handle. The equipment may be old and need replacing, or it may not be standard equipment. The nucleus colony is a smaller colony of bees taken from an established colony. The “nucs” hives have fewer frames than a standard hive. The nucleus colony consists of only four or five frames instead of the standard 10-frames. They can house extra queens and they can be used to raise new queens. The nucleus colony comes with the four or five frames of brood, honey and pollen, a laying queen, and every frame should be full of adult bees. Nucleus colonies are less expensive than established colonies. The queens are usually new, giving you the opportunity to judge her brood pattern. If the nucleus colony has a strong nectar flow, there is a possibility of a honey crop the first year. Usually they can be purchased locally. Since the nucleus colony is not as strong as an established colony, they may be easier for a beginner to handle. You still need to have them inspected for disease. Package bee producers produce package bees in southern United States. The package bees consists of 2 or 3 pounds of bees, a queen in a separate cage, and a canister of sugar syrup used to feed the bees during transport. They are shipped in a special screen mailing cages through the U.S. Postal Service. The package bees are cheaper than the established or the nucleus colonies. Beginners should be able to handle them easily. The possibility of the broods having a disease is slim. The package bees may not produce a honey crop the first year. It will be more difficult to judge the queen with no brood. Because of the strain of being transported, a queen may be out-dated which can lead to an unproductive queen. If the weather is bad, you will have a difficult time in introducing the bees into the hives. The bees will have to be fed until the start of the nectar flow. Swarms can be a fun way to get bees, and they are free. They can be easily collected and placed in prepared equipment. It is usually a good idea to introduce a new queen as soon as possible to the swarm. The swarms can be rather large by they can be easily handled. You will not get a brood so you will not be able to judge the new queen. The swarms are unlikely to produce honey crop the first year, but that does depend on the size of the swarm. The availability of swarms is very unpredictable.