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digdan

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2005
Messages
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Location
Pasadena, CA
Took my obsession for mead to the next level. Just hived two bee colonies. Right now they are going to feed on wild sage and 1600 acres of alfalfa.

Now I need suggestions of what to plant to make the perfect show mead.
 
I think we're all interested in the bees...I know I am. I've been doing some reading lately. I may go the same route

How much did you pay for the skeps?

Did you buy one of those "bee sets" (1 queen and some drones)
 
I read BeeKeeping for Dummies to get me started. I then purchased a starter kit, another hive kit, and two top feeders from Beekeeping Equipment, Beekeeper Supplies and Beekeeping Starter Kits, spent around $300 for everything.

Then I found a local beekeeper and purchased "nucs" or small startup colonies for $75/colony.

After everything is said and done I spent $450 for the whole shabang. Thats all the investment I need(besides honey extraction, but I'll do that in the fall). As long as I can make hives, I can expand my bees, and of course expand my honey. Each colony can product 50 to 100+ lbs of honey per year. In turn, after a couple years, I'm saving money I would of spent on honey for my meads in the long run, and turning a profit with the excess honey.

I think we're all interested in the bees...I know I am. I've been doing some reading lately. I may go the same route

How much did you pay for the skeps?

Did you buy one of those "bee sets" (1 queen and some drones)
 
its like a snake eating its own tail! Wow man, good luck. I know that here in cunuck land the government is having a hard time finding new young people to get into Apiculture...so there are lots of grants/help....and free courses. If I had a tiny bit of land...I would be doing this now.
 
Very cool. Please keep us posted as you get this process going.
 
Yesterday I found a colony of wild bees in my yard. Any idea how to tempt them down out of a hollow tree 30' off the ground without getting stung or breaking my neck?

I tried starting a hive from a nuc three years ago, but the colony absconded while I was on vacation. I wonder if they have been up in that tree ever since.
 
There are some great videos on bee keeping on Youtube. Just do a search for "bee keeping for beginners". 11 part series that goes through almost everything. I'm about to get some bees from a friend who had an acquaintance beekeeper pass away.
 
I get my non-brewing mead loving buddy to buy the honey and I make the mead. We split it 50/50 and I don't have to pay for anything except nutrient, yeast, water, and fruit if we use it.
 
I've drawn up my own plans based upon the ones you can get from backyardhive.com which is a completely different hive to what you can buy.

I was going to go the whole kit and kaboodle into Langstroth hives until I started reading BeeGuardian.org - Honey bee, Pollination, Bee Guardian and decided I'll give my hand a go at organic beekeeping, no smoker, no extractor, no queen excluder, no medicines and modern chemicals, just plain and simple beekeeping which appeals to me as primarily a mead maker and secondarily a gardner.

I still want honey so I took the Golden Hive dimensions and redrew the plans I had up calculating all the new angles and dimensions.

That said Top Bar hives are made in Kenya for like $5, so I'm not about to drop $300 on a fancy one, I'll just build my own :)
 
I've drawn up my own plans based upon the ones you can get from backyardhive.com which is a completely different hive to what you can buy.

I was going to go the whole kit and kaboodle into Langstroth hives until I started reading BeeGuardian.org - Honey bee, Pollination, Bee Guardian and decided I'll give my hand a go at organic beekeeping, no smoker, no extractor, no queen excluder, no medicines and modern chemicals, just plain and simple beekeeping which appeals to me as primarily a mead maker and secondarily a gardner.

I still want honey so I took the Golden Hive dimensions and redrew the plans I had up calculating all the new angles and dimensions.

That said Top Bar hives are made in Kenya for like $5, so I'm not about to drop $300 on a fancy one, I'll just build my own :)

How do you seperate the honey from the brood without an queen excluder?
 
Beevac sounds like a joke, but it looks like it might work. I wonder if a woodworker's dust collector would do the same thing.
 
How do you seperate the honey from the brood without an queen excluder?

In the top bar hives there is no queen excluder, but the bees will natually separate their hive into a brood portion and a honey portion. IIRC, the brood is usually near the entrance and the honey is farther back in the hive. You just lift out the bars starting from the back until you find one that is full of capped honey and steal the whole thing. The comb has to be crushed and strained because it is too fragile to spin in a separator.
 
I was talking to a guy who had a hive at the bottom of a closed chimney and he built a bee vac and removed almost all of them, even the queen with that wooden box vac. Looks like a joke but I guess it works pretty good.

Beevac sounds like a joke, but it looks like it might work. I wonder if a woodworker's dust collector would do the same thing.
 
Honestly...IMHO its not worth the time to grab those "wild bees" for three reasons:

1) A queen and a few drones are CHEAP ..why bother with the wild ones?
2) Bees are bread for a reason....maximum production with a "tame nature"
3) Getting stung sucks.

:)
 
How is this endeavour going???... it is something that I've been interested in for a while....
 
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