My Italian ladies are as docile as they come, but this time of year, when the flow is kicking and they know winter is coming, you better be in full protective gear if you get near their honey.
Every agitation while working with them increases their buzz tone/freq. Every time that happens my body releases a bit more adrenaline. I can take it for about 45 min to an hour then its time to do something else.
Exhilarating to say the least.
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I dont know what to believe about all this.
I do know a few things:
1. The honey from my own backyard is delicious, and a blessing from my Creator. The time I have spent fiddling with the bees with my children and grand-children is priceless to me.
2. 50,000 bees is not very many. One large hive can have more than that.
3. Having the FDA, USDA, EPA involved is not a good thing.
4.We need a Bee-FReeper Keeper Ping list
I took bee keeping as a 4-H project many many moons. It was an amazing educational experience to understand the social hierarchy. I was given a queen pupae sp? to start my hive. It worked out for awhile but disease eventually took me out of business.
Even today, my family’s farm in SE CO allows a beekeeper to bring in @70 hives for the alfalfa in the vicinity. What a treat every fall to receive several quarts of honey as a thanks from the keeper. My elderly folks use the honey as Christmas presents.
The biggest challenge for bees in our area are the damn bears. We use lots of electric fence and it seems to work.
The honey from my own backyard is delicious
as you appear knowledgable about this situation, hopefully you can answer aquestion that’s been bothering me; the lack of honeybees on white clover...when I was a kid, 60 years ago, if I walked barefoot across the lawns, which were always mottled with white clover, I could anticipate getting stung; today, I stroll across a nearby meadow loaded with clover, and see nary a honeybee...I see plenty of bumble bees, but no honeybees...
is it simply a decline in population, or is something else happening...?