Ever wanted to watch a fellow homebrewer stung by a bee?

That was great . . . the video I mean, not you getting stung. :cross:

And yah, what did you name your queen, Grooella?

I was laughing so hard, my 13 year old had to come and see what was happening. He started laughing as well. We watched both vids and enjoyed them both.

Have you ever heard of a hanging hive? I have a girlfriend who is interested in raising bees and mentioned it. She wants to do one in her backyard in a very ritzy residential neighborhood. Bet the homeowners association ain't gonna like it much. Hell, they didn't like the vegetable and herb gardens either. lol

I'm not sure if a "hanging hive" would work, at least not here in Utah. A hive must be accessible and be able to be inspected if needed. Hanging up in the air makes that a challenge!

Chudz said:

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And yah, what did you name your queen, Grooella?

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That, my friend, was epic....

MeadWitch said:

I was laughing so hard, my 13 year old had to come and see what was happening. He started laughing as well. We watched both vids and enjoyed them both.

Have you ever heard of a hanging hive? I have a girlfriend who is interested in raising bees and mentioned it. She wants to do one in her backyard in a very ritzy residential neighborhood. Bet the homeowners association ain't gonna like it much. Hell, they didn't like the vegetable and herb gardens either. lol

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Glad you liked the video! It still makes me laugh, and I'm the one who got stung!

For those interested, my bees appear to still be alive and made it through the winter! The hive never did get as big as it was supposed to be, but I think this is the year I get some honey! I was pretty nervous they didnt have enough food stored away to get through the winter, but on a warm day yesterday they swarmed out! Encouraging sight!

Oh man! awesome video. Nothing but the best for you and your colony!

BennyN said:

Oh man! awesome video. Nothing but the best for you and your colony!

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Thanks Benny! Here's to hoping for some honey.. By God I have enough time, energy, blood, sweat, tears and stings invested in this little side project to have a little honey this year!

In a word, damn - just damn! :cross:

nebben said:

Aw man, that sucks! I got hurt by chicken wire , but so far no bee injuries to me today. They were so cooperative, it was amazing.

The worst thing though, is I've had "Eye of the tiger" in my head all weekend, with thoughts of me running around the yard blasting the smoker everywhere...

ANywho, I'll keep my bees' progress updated too and keep checking on yours too. Its fun stuff so far!

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It's been almost a year- How did your hive treat you? Any problems? Did you get a harvest?

Nope, they didn't even survive the summer. If I remember right, back in mid July, they were making a new queen cell. I asked my mentor about it, and he recommended to just pinch it off and they should be just fine. I didn't consider that they were making a new queen because the existing queen was having a hard time. A few days after this, I spotted no new brood. Then, I started seeing multiple eggs in cells. Ahh, so my queen is gone/dead and I've got laying workers.

I checked around and decided against buying a new queen, or even getting a frame of good brood from another hive, since my workers were already laying anyway. Did I mention that they hadn't filled up more than a single super's worth of comb?

Poor girls, they seem to have been doomed early and I didn't notice it fast enough to do anything.

After the last of them perished in September, I collected the remaining honey, which was about 1/2Q worth.

I've got TWO colonies on order for April now...hopefully even if one of them winds up in trouble, I can use the other hive to help out. We shall see.

nebben said:

Nope, they didn't even survive the summer. If I remember right, back in mid July, they were making a new queen cell. I asked my mentor about it, and he recommended to just pinch it off and they should be just fine. I didn't consider that they were making a new queen because the existing queen was having a hard time. A few days after this, I spotted no new brood. Then, I started seeing multiple eggs in cells. Ahh, so my queen is gone/dead and I've got laying workers.

I checked around and decided against buying a new queen, or even getting a frame of good brood from another hive, since my workers were already laying anyway. Did I mention that they hadn't filled up more than a single super's worth of comb?

Poor girls, they seem to have been doomed early and I didn't notice it fast enough to do anything.

After the last of them perished in September, I collected the remaining honey, which was about 1/2Q worth.

I've got TWO colonies on order for April now...hopefully even if one of them winds up in trouble, I can use the other hive to help out. We shall see.

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Wow- That sucks! Sorry to hear about your troubles! I am surprised that your "mentor" gave you such poor advice.. That queen you pinched off may have saved your hive.. Hindsight is always 20/20 so the saying goes..

My bees only filled 9 of the ten frames in a single super last year..As of October, they had only 3 or 4 frames of honey and the rest was pollen/brood, but apparently it was enough to get them through the winter because they are still alive (I don't know about "well", but alive anyway!).. Now I am just waiting for the weather to get good enough to get in there and do an inspection.. Hoping that my queen is still alive and will be good for one more season.. I don't want to re-queen if I don't have to..Good luck with your new hives and please keep us posted!

Bringing this one back... How was the queen?

I just installed my 2 new hives two weeks ago. The poor bees have dealt with storm after storm after storm and > 20F below normal temperatures for this time of year. We have had snow every few days, including yesterday.

As far as I can tell, they're chugging away though whenever the sun comes out and the temp gets to 45F or so!

I even spotted the queen in my eastern hive on the last inspection. I'm thinking about getting on the list to pickup swarms around town too.

Finally got my first honey harvest a couple weeks ago.. Two full summers before there was enough honey for me to take a few frames.. This is definitely a hobby where patience is a virtue.

This made me remember that my wife used to have bees. I should talk to her about this for when we live someplace with more land. I think it would make her a little happier to do it again.

They are a lot of fun. My dog loves them [TO EAT, MUHAHAHAH].

I lost all 9 of my second year hives last winter. Started over with 3 new packages and didn't think they would do alot with the horrible weather we had in Spring and early Summer. Much to my surprise, they produced over 20 gallons of honey total , or about 250 pounds! We live in a really good bee area...lots of home gardens and orchards. I also used the minimal intervention approach this year and it worked good, but you would be surprised what an effort it is to pull and extract that much honey. I have fun with the hobby.

Hethen57 said:

I lost all 9 of my second year hives last winter. Started over with 3 new packages and didn't think they would do alot with the horrible weather we had in Spring and early Summer. Much to my surprise, they produced over 20 gallons of honey total , or about 250 pounds! We live in a really good bee area...lots of home gardens and orchards. I also used the minimal intervention approach this year and it worked good, but you would be surprised what an effort it is to pull and extract that much honey. I have fun with the hobby.

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250 lbs! Nice haul! I only have only have one hive. I got no honey last year, which was ok.. This year, they managed to fill 9 our of the ten frames in the honey super I installed int he spring. I wasnt sure how much I should take, so I only took a couple frames.. We got 9 quarts.. not a bad haul.. I have never medicated my bees and am quickly realizing as I enter my third year, that I still know very little about bee keeping and I have a ways to go! Thanks for sharing your story. BTW, my dad lives in Post Falls.. Are you near there?

Ya, I'm 10 minutes from Post Falls. When I said minimal intervention, I didn't mean treatment free. The new packages come treated and have a brood cycle break, so I didn't have to treat for anything prior to taking this first honey off this year, but the varroa mites will wipe you out if you don't do anything over the course of several years, and you might get wiped out anyway. Minimal intervention meant that, as opposed to prior years where I was digging and inspecting, I made sure all the hives were strong and even with brood, broodspace and supplies going into the flow, and then just monitored capacity, adding supers as necessary...no more inspecting the brood nest after swarm season had ended unless I observed a problem at the entrance or in the top super that I wanted to check on further. They seemed to do fine and then I cleaned up all the burr comb at the end of the season and got all hives ready for winter, with a late summer varroa treatment of thymol (essentially a soft chemical to knock back the varroa). I left enough honey and fed back the cappings so they didn't need any sugar feeding.

Good luck with your hive!

FYI - What I did with my 3 packages I purchased was I purchased 2 extra queens at the same time and immediately split the packages into 2 additional nucs, so 3 hives and 2 nucs from the start in April (I was able to do this because I had all drawn comb and honey filled frames from last year's dead outs. The nucs were full hives by the late honey flow we had.

Well, I am sad to say that I noticed today that there were no bees in my beehive. There were many dead bees, but not enough to think that the whole hive died off suddenly. Not sure what happend.. Since I didn't treat, coulda been anything. Lesson learned.. Will treat next years bees.

Sorry about the bees. Thanks for keeping this updated, I would not have found it otherwise. I was thinking about going to a beekeeping class later this winter. Having my own honey for mead would be great, and I could get into watching the bees do their thing. It kind of makes me think of the old defrag animation in windows. I could watch that for a long time.

BrewersKaramazov said:

Sorry about the bees. Thanks for keeping this updated, I would not have found it otherwise. I was thinking about going to a beekeeping class later this winter. Having my own honey for mead would be great, and I could get into watching the bees do their thing. It kind of makes me think of the old defrag animation in windows. I could watch that for a long time.

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I know what you mean about watching the bees. I am perfectly content to just sit out there with a beer and watch the bees come and go. Very cool stuff. Social insects are very cool to me for some reason. BTW, my wife is from Vancouver.. Actually, Battleground.. and to refine even further, she's truly form Amboy.. Small world..

I would highly recommend a class. I wish I had taken one. I bought a book and away I went.. Learned alot though.. Good luck with whatever you decide.. And try to have a better install than I did! lol

GroosBrewz said:

Well, I am sad to say that I noticed today that there were no bees in my beehive. There were many dead bees, but not enough to think that the whole hive died off suddenly. Not sure what happend.. Since I didn't treat, coulda been anything. Lesson learned.. Will treat next years bees.

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How did this year go?

I think that I've finally convinced my wife to give this a go. I can't keep bees in the town that I live in, but my uncle has 30-some acres about 20 minutes away. I haven't talked to him yet, but I have a feeling he'd love the idea. If all goes well, I'll spend some of my winter building boxes.

I got quite a bit of honey from my hives this year. Still processing it.

lustreking said:

How did this year go?

I think that I've finally convinced my wife to give this a go. I can't keep bees in the town that I live in, but my uncle has 30-some acres about 20 minutes away. I haven't talked to him yet, but I have a feeling he'd love the idea. If all goes well, I'll spend some of my winter building boxes.

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I had a bit of hard time at the beginning of the year.. I did two hives instead of one and accidentally let one of the queens from the package loose when I was trying to install it.. So I had one box of bees with no queen.. Had to fed ex a $25 queen from Florida and pay $40 just to get her here within three days! But eventually got both hives installed.. I had one of the hives swarm this year and had to order a replacement queen for the hive.. Normally they would raise a new queen before swarming, and they did, except that I accidentally desroyed the cell that the new queen was forming in when i pulled two frames apart.. The swarm cell was formed between two frames so when I pulled the frames apart, the queen cell ripped in half.. So I had to order another queen.. Long story short, the hives made it through all my stupidity alright and it looks like I will be getting some honey! Good luck with your endeavors!

BoomerHarley said:

I got quite a bit of honey from my hives this year. Still processing it.

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Great job! nothing like fresh honey!

GroosBrewz said:

I had a bit of hard time at the beginning of the year.. I did two hives instead of one and accidentally let one of the queens from the package loose when I was trying to install it.. So I had one box of bees with no queen.. Had to fed ex a $25 queen from Florida and pay $40 just to get her here within three days! But eventually got both hives installed.. I had one of the hives swarm this year and had to order a replacement queen for the hive.. Normally they would raise a new queen before swarming, and they did, except that I accidentally desroyed the cell that the new queen was forming in when i pulled two frames apart.. The swarm cell was formed between two frames so when I pulled the frames apart, the queen cell ripped in half.. So I had to order another queen.. Long story short, the hives made it through all my stupidity alright and it looks like I will be getting some honey! Good luck with your endeavors!

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Glad to hear that this year went a little better for you. Did you go foundationless and treatment-free again this year? I'm interested in going that route. I'm currently reading The Complete Idiots Guide to Beekeeping as well as Michael Bush's book.

I did have a set back, though. I was hoping to place my hives on my uncle's property and he was cool with the idea, by my aunt shut it down. My wife said, "She's a buzz-kill", after laughing at her pun for a bit I said, "Thanks, that kind of takes the sting out of the news." I have to find a new place now.