I’m going to be taking over for my late uncle, he had some hives here on the family property. Apparently one did collapse but one is very healthy and strong. My cousin, his daughter, learned a lot from him and keeps bees of her own and will help me out a lot later in the month.
I’ll definitely be scouring your topic, Bob. I hope I’ll be able to snap some photos of this coming honey harvest.
I think of silver as anti-bacterial and sulfur as anti-fungal, in terms of simple/elemental treatments.
I seems unlikely to me that radio-waves affect bee health but I am open minded to a point? Radio-wave shielding is well worn territory. You want something electrically conductive surrounding the thing to be shielded. It should be conductive over the whole object and if not, over an area similar to the wave-length you are trying to shield. “Faraday Cage” is the search term for the curious.
Without knowing the frequencies to be blocked and what not… I might just glue aluminum foil on the outside and paint it like those cell phone bags.
That is the part that sounded suspect to me too. They are grinding up bucky balls into the paint and then not grounded. However, I am not seeing any evidence demonstrating they absorb radio frequency. Ultraviolet and Infrared yes.
They are an insulator not a conductor as near as I can tell.
However, they are diamagnetic, so it repels a magnetic field… And bees use the magnetic field and have magnetic receptors on their abdomens. Sunspots also create magnetism that reaches the earth.
This COULD indicate they work, but it is a different cause and effect then they guessed.
Took a look at my only hive left.
I informed the ladies that I’ll be their new caretaker and broke the sad news of Otis’ passing.
The population is huge! I definitely know why they swarmed. There were two big boxes but no honey supers on top. I extracted 4 frames that were mostly honey and inspected for brood. Fair bit of brood in good consistent patterns. I put a honey super on top for the Autumn harvest, no big deal if they don’t fill those up.
I think I extracted maybe 8 or 9 pounds of delicious dark amber honey.
I’m heavily considering converting over to a horizontal hive, there are free plans for a horizontal that still uses Langstroth frames and another that uses European Layens frames.
https://www.horizontalhive.com/how-to-build/long-langstroth-plans.shtml
Here’s plans for a screened bottom with an oil trap for pests.
https://www.horizontalhive.com/how-to-build/screened-bottom-plans.shtml
You need to add another super when they start doing that. The problem with the horizontal hives is you only want to give them a little bit of extra space at a time so they use the whole super. It keeps the colony tighter and makes they use the corners which they don’t like to do, but if they don’t have the space they will fill out those as well. Then add the next super. It also gives them less area to protect.
Yeah, I added a honey super after this extraction with previously drawn out comb. Provided there’s no dirth maybe I’ll have a good fall harvest before winterizing.
And yeah with horizontal hives you only want to add one or two frames at a time, especially the European frames which are narrow and tall, lot more surface area than even the large Langstroth frames. Horizontal hive users also almost never use foundation I’ve noticed, or if they do it’s just a sliver of foundation to encourage straight comb laying.
A lot of the european beekeepers don’t extract the honey. they like the comb honey. If the bees have space they will build their own comb, and it isn’t straight. it takes more work for them to make comb so you typically get less honey. But you do get wax which for some people is worth more then the honey. 
Well down to one colony of bees now the others have left the hives. I don’t try to keep them, I just provide a place for them to stay. If for their own reason they want to leave they can go. No new swarms this year to put into the hive boxes.
We were down at the river today and wow there were a lot of bees working the golden rod and other wild flowers. The rabbit bush is starting to bloom so there is no durth happing here. If this colony servies this winter I will try a split with them. And try put out more nukes boxes in the spring for more bees. It is all up the the Yehovah Almighty God because they are His bees not mine. Built one more hive box and need to finish the other when it cools down here in the fall. They are a smaller verion of the Layen hives I have. I might cut my other two Layen hive boxes in two giving me four and making them easyer to handle. I am still making them out of used pallet wood simple a cheap to build and one sheet of 1/8" plywood for the inside walls, floor.
Bob I’d like to eventually move to the Layens hives, I finally got a Long Langstroth built and painted just today. I saw a honeybee checking out the hive while I was making the lid, I’ll take that as a good sign. I’d need to make a centrifuge for the Layens frames, most likely just make a new center piece on my uncle’s Mann Lake centrifuge, or adapt the baskets to accept Layens.
Nice looking bee hive house you have There, I got diagnosed pre diabeties 3 years ago, And finally threw out my brown sugar bowl, guess I thought brown sugar was less processed and much safer, So I had to dump all processed sugars and most fruits other than a few low carb fruits once or twice a week . The rest of the time I been eating mostly carnivore diet, I stopped drinking milk in my coffee, and use butter, though I eat about a stick of butter daily, in coffee or on some broccoli.I feel it’s easier fasting, just eating less carbs and mostly animal food.If I had the know how I would get a calf or two and plant some excellent grass for them.organic beef expensive, 365 pounds would last most of the year, not sure if county would allow a calf or two on 4 access.
that is neat looking. The odd frame sizes remind me I need to chase down reviews for the self-extracting hive
Any restrictions would be a township issue, and as much how well you get along with your neighbors… beef is 1.5-2 years for maturity, and 1.5-2 acres per animal for grazing. You may be better served with different animals like poultry (chickens/ducks), sheep or pigs.
Thanks Bob for the beef to lamb IDEA, THAT would be much easier to get the ok on or less likely to have any trouble.Probley easier to manage.
sheep are 2-3 per acre but only dress out like 30lbs of meat per animal, however that is only like 9 months for lamb.(lamb are under 12months of age, then there is like mutton that is older then 2 years, and a category inbetween). The bigger issues with sheep are they can bloat from overeating (there is a shot for it), and artificial insemination is sketchy so you probably need a ram or send them out for breeding and keep track of the breeding records. A good ewe will produce twins so increasing herd size isn’t quite as hard as with cattle.
I might try raising a larger breed lamb, though I don’t have a tractor, all I really got clear no trees is about a accer . Though it is not fenced in, would it be enough to move them around on a long chain in circles, THAT SEEMS CRUEL IF I DID IT THAT WAY WHEN FEEDING, I WOULD WANT AT LEISTE 2 LAMB SO THEY HAVE COMPANY.?
You mean the Flow style hives? My late Uncle and my cousin, his daughter, have had issues getting their bees to cap off the combs. That typically means they’re not dehydrating the nectar off very well. I’ve seen on YouTube some people have fair success with the Flow hives but even the knockoffs are pricey to me.
I know the Flow hives you absolutely must use a queen excluder and have a big enough brood/laying area to prevent swarming. I’d only put a Flow box on top of a Double Deep hive so they have enough room to make their winter stores and have a lot of room for brood in the spring and summer.
I meant the flow hives. I would do the 2 deep supers. You can get away with a little less around here like a medium.
I actually did some looking at it, and it is pretty much what you say. queen excluder that bees don’t like to go through and it looks like they had ventilation issues in gen1, so they have a gen 2+ now that has controllable ventilation.
The cost of bee equipment has always been expensive. I will be looking for knock-offs or maybe go with the alternatives to langstroths. I don’t need that much honey. Even if i go back to old school and drip out the frames, I am left with wax, and that is a useful commodity.
Not to completely swipe the thread, and this is probably be my last post here. It is kind of like bees, everything seems expensive and it is to get started. I would get the fence, and use small paddocks, and move them around. It keeps the initial investment down. Sheep will eat brush, they just don’t eat all the brush like goats do.
This guy did it and the only reason why I am including the link is because he calculated out small paddock sizes on a per head basis. They are a rough guideline, and when you get to the last video, you will see the soil improvement.
Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing for Sheep – The Grovestead
This video might be better, although I would probably do smaller paddocks and shorter rotations, more like the first link. but I like the idea of not moving the water and shelter, and his paddocks look bigger then 1/2 acre to me.
This lady has a neat fencing system, and cheaper portable shelters, and a whole series of videos on it. but she is now on 20 acres, however she started I think doing smaller paddocks and fewer sheep.
Warning: Proud father ahead.
When our sons were starting out beekeeping, their budget was quite modest. One son found someone who wanted a board fence removed. The fence was transformed into a large number of boxes. The only project to rival that was the 50 or so boxes made over a couple of days as a family project out of mylar-faced styrofoam. The current project is hives made of two-inch insulation board. These seem to do better with the colder winters we now enjoy. Not as cheap, but still not too bad considering the improvement in survival.
Kevin, you’re right about two as a minimum. Let me put in a good word for goats, unless you have a use for the wool. Tethers work fine with two, just be sure the two corresponding circles don’t quite overlap. If the goats can get close to each other, they’ll be calmer. I suspect overlapping circles would lead to goat knitting or macrame, but I’m not about to try it. I used 10 or 12 inch spikes and roughly 10 foot cables with snap hooks on both ends (Harbor Freight close-outs). They never pulled the spikes, but they were smaller goats, and I watched for quite a while to be sure. They did a surprisingly neat job of grass clipping. I had expected them to strip the ground bare, but since they each had a twenty foot circle, they could be picky. You could also get four stock panels, and join the corners with quick links or snap hooks. The 16-foot panels will handle ten goats for several hours if the grass is high. Weeds are a bonus. Roses and berries are a delicacy. Moving once during the day will fill up the ten goats quite nicely with our 1 to 1 1/2 foot (say half a meter) high mixed pasture. A few goats should be good for a few days. Even with the heavy grazing/browsing it’s rare to see any bare ground.
