Posted on 02/03/2011 3:36:22 AM PST by Daffynition
George W Bush, Sarah Palin, and talk radio.
Question for you. Last year I had a swarm arrive one afternoon and attach to a stucco wall. Gigantic and scary to me (about 5 ft high - 4 feet wide and piled out from the wall about 6-8 inches). I called someone and paid them to take them away safely. They did. Question: Would they have just gone away on their own?
My neighbor had me convinced they would get into my attic, so maybe I over reacted.
My beekeeper friend never thought it was pesticides. 12 years ago my son, when in high school, was mentored by this beekeeper friend and with two hives in our garden they produced 50 pounds of blackberry honey in one season. He also learned how to artifically inseminate a queen bee.
The mesh is of a size that the larger queen cannot squeeze through to the upper part of the hive. It is called a queen excluder. The beekeeper will not be happy if she does make to the top supers (boxes). Normally what one would do is to find the queen & put her below the excluder again. The eggs she lays in the wrong place would develop in three weeks and the combs would be available for honey storage again.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR POSTS TO THIS ARTICLE! FReepers are the BEST!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR POSTS TO THIS ARTICLE! FReepers are the BEST!
You can say that again!
Makes me look forward to spring....Will there bee one?
we inspect the hives regularly, so we know where the queen is. Making sure that the queen in indeed in one of the two bottom boxes.... we then put the wire mesh "queen excluder" between these two boxes and all the other boxes. The wire mesh is two small for the queen to fit through because she is bigger than the other bees. All the other bees can fit through the mesh in order to move freely about. But since it is only the queen who lays eggs, then all the egg laying will happen in the bottom two boxes.
Also frequent inspection will show us if she has accidentally gotten into one of those upper boxes (they are called "supers" by the way) and then, you are correct, we would just move any frames that she has layed eggs on. I have never seen that happen, but I think my husband has, but it's easy to deal with since the frames are so easy to move about. It would be very difficult if using the "top bar" system like what is used in the fancy hive from the article.
Maybe... maybe not. So you did the right thing calling a beekeeper to remove them. That was a win-win all around (you, the beekeeper, and the bees)
The swarm will move several times before they decide on a good place to set up housekeeping. If they liked your attic, they very well may have stayed and once they build comb and fill it then it's expensive to get it removed.
Most beekeepers will come (at no change) and remove a swarm that has not yet taken residence. We do it for free because we go home with a new hive of bees and usually a strong hive since they have proven to be "survivors".
One thing to keep in mind is that bees, while swarming" are mostly harmless. They have no brood or honey to protect so they are very docile. All we have to do is bring along a nice hive body with some drawn-out comb with a little honey on it.... and the bees will practically happily walk right on into the new box.
I was merely taking the Sting out of your double post...
What surprised me about your post is that I live in Santa Monica and didn’t know bee keeping is allowed here. I could not find anyone but a licensed commercial guy to do this for $200. Is there a bee society listing somewhere of people who want them?
And you are right they “happily” accepted their new little “egg-carton-material-type” canisters and drove away.
Articles have been published all over the place saying someone got to the bottom of it....... I don't have to remind a FReeper how untrustworthy the news media is, do I?
The truth is that the official study has NOT determined a full enough correlation in all the cases to say that there is a positive identified cause. Ask any real beekeeper and they will agree to what I am saying here.
Bunster,
Apparently beekeepers are charging for swarm removal in California.... but why am I surprised. Isn’t everything there way too expensive...LOL
I live in Georgia and we also have half of our hives on our farm property up in the NC mountains. There are plenty of local beekeepers in both of those areas who will “rescue” on-the-move swarms at no cost, well, if we have to travel more than 20 miles, we might charge for just gas.... that’s all.
I have always wanted to keep a few hives and now being retired everything is in place except our property has over one hundred rhododendrons and about thirty azaleas planted by the previous owners. The honey would then be toxic and thus not so good on your biscuits, research tells me.
Removing the shrubs is not an option, according to my wife.
Good article, thanks.
I’ve built something like that before. They’re much easier to make than the standard supers, and if you hinge the top, it doesn’t require any heavy lifting to maintain it.
This is also a problem with Jimson Weed, which grows wild around here. A little is not a problem, but if your hive is next to a field gone wild with it you would want to move your hive.
Our boyscout troop keeps several hives, and as far as we know, we are the only troop in the country to do so. We helped harvest the honey this year. I don't know what they were feeding on, (we had a pretty serious drought for a while) but I was disappointed with the flavor.
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