Honey Bee Keeping and other pollinators

[blissful]

This is what old comb and old honey looks like when scraping it off the foundation, note how dark it is, dirty from little bee feet with capping it over. Later in the season when we have new comb and honey and start harvesting it, if we do, I'll show pictures of how light colored it is, both the comb and the honey.
Old or new honey or stored honey, remember, honey lasts for years and doesn't go bad. (with a water % of less than 19%) If you have some in the cabinet, it is good. It might be clear, it might have crystalized, it is still good. To liquefy crystallized honey place the container in warm water.

 

[taxlady]

I used to have a honey dipper like this one. I thought it was nifty and it worked well for stirring honey into coffee or tea. But, I think it was dripping liquid back into the honey jar and raising the water content. That jar of honey is the only time I have ever had honey get mouldy.

 

[dragnlaw]

LOL, so I guess you then figured out it wasn't meant for stirring into something in the first place!

Drizzling over something was the intention. The ridges held on long enough for no drips between pot and ... bread, ice cream, whatever but still delivered a goodly amount.

Alas, we had one too - and I think I was the only one who constantly "drizzled" honey all across the table.

 

[taxlady]

My point was that honey can get mouldy if the water content goes up too much and I gave an example of how that could happen. I wanted people to be aware that they might want to be cautious about unintentionally diluting the honey.

 

[blissful]

I've been rendering wax from the old comb, today, yesterday, and tomorrow...my back is yelling at me, all the crouching and skimming. Swarming bees around my head, they like me, lol.
This is just the first step, then I take the rendered wax and heat it in the roaster with fresh water, two more times, cooling to solid each time.
So far I have about 6 or so lbs of it. It's messy, more difficult than I thought it would be. I'll be glad when it is done. I'll try to remember to take some pictures tomorrow.

 

[GotGarlic]

What is the process you're using to render the wax? We put the wax on a rack covered with cheesecloth to catch the impurities. We put the rack on a roasting pan about half filled with water and put it in the oven on low heat (don't remember exactly) for a couple of hours. We took it out of the oven and let it cool and the wax solidified on the water. I don't think we had to do that more than once to get clean wax. And there were no bees around

 

[Badjak]

Sorry, bit late in answering.
I'm in Zambia.
In the Zambezi valley. Last rain we had was in March, 22 mm.
The river is close by, but until I get my irrigation scheme in place, nothing much is going to happen.
Not many bee hives around either
But I enjoy reading about the experiences

 

[blissful]

@Badjak it looks like the Zambezi valley is in the south eastern part, near Zimbabwe? Right? There's more information about bee keepers in Zimbabwe than Zambia. They use the hollow trunks method hanging those in trees. Thanks for reading.

 

[blissful]

It looks like we're stretching out the wax rendering, this part, another day, into tomorrow.

This is 2 of the 2-gallon paint strainers jammed with old comb going into the 18 qt roaster.

And this is when 5 (of 25) of those bags melt down into the hot water. We move them around with a stick.

Skim wax from the top into these old tupperware lids.

Then weigh down the bags in the water with hardware cloth and rocks, let cool, and take the wax slab in the morning.

The skimmed was has layers of wax and water/dirt and looks like this. It needs to be rendered again.

All the slabs of wax go into a bag, seems like we have around 15 lbs of it at this point. All from comb that was going to be thrown out.

The slumgum waste product (black dirt like pellets) is used for baiting swarm traps so we put some in containers to take to the swarm traps today. It can also be used, rolled into balls for a fire starter. It can be added to ornamental flower beds and it has been used for starting seedlings. It's not something you'd want to keep inside the house. It would attract bugs and moths and serve as food for them. The smell of it is pleasant like wax/honey/dirt. It smells live old hives. (this is the current smell of my hands even after washing up repeatedly)

 

[Badjak]

@Badjak it looks like the Zambezi valley is in the south eastern part, near Zimbabwe? Right? There's more information about bee keepers in Zimbabwe than Zambia. They use the hollow trunks method hanging those in trees. Thanks for reading.

Yep. Correct
The river is the border between Zim and Zam.

 

[blissful]

Yesterday we took 1/2 the rendered dirty wax and re-rendered it with more water, let it cool into a slab, then repeated that with the second 1/2 of the rendered dirty wax.
This morning I scraped the bottom of both slabs so it was cleaner, then in the roaster, with a foil pan, with hardware cloth over top, with paper towel, melted the wax through the paper towel into the foil pan. I almost got one slab done.
This is the roaster/foil pan/hardware cloth/paper towel/wax.

The wax is liquid collected in the foil pan. I put the liquid wax in molds. It is at different stages of cooling.

I have to do the second slab tomorrow. It's a hot all day job running out to the roaster every 30 minutes. I'm beat.

 

[blissful]

Finished up yesterday with wax, Thank God.
78 flower shaped molds and 36 cupcake shaped molds of beeswax.
The cardboard box w/wax weighed 16 lbs.
I'm so glad to be done.

 

[dragnlaw]

Rest, tonight is freezer night for supper, just haul it out and heat it up... no work.

 

[blissful]

I'm so glad to be done with the wax. Wax on, wax off...
Today we did beecheck #7.
We removed the virus strips, found the queens, checked the hives, deeps, and supers.
We're waiting for the deeps to be completely capped with honey, which may happen by next week or the week after.
Our neighbor guy Zack helped which is great when lifting the 50 lb deeps, partially full of honey.
There's a crazy amount of bees, and brood in the hives, which is good. No sign of queen cells or it being cramped, so they probably won't swarm-something we watch for every time we check.
Afterwards we visited at the picnic table with honey lemonade and plum/apple ww bread.
They'll be good for another week and we'll check them again.

 

[blissful]

Beecheck #8 will be tonight. Zach is coming to be involved, and I'm bringing lemonade and plum zucchini bread for afterwards.
We moved a hive frame with brood from a more populated hive to a less populated hive a week ago. We're hoping that switch 'shares the wealth' with the three hives, a more equal distribution of population.

We'll probably be removing some of all of the deep frames if the honey is capped. Due to the heat we added entry holes in the supers that will go on top, about 3/4ths inch which can be stopped up in the fall.

Right now we have a tarp propped up over the hives because the heat is 90 deg F outside, too hot for the bees. They are hanging out on the front of the hives above the lower entrance. This is a picture from last night.

 

[blissful]

We did beecheck #8 and today #9, removed two deep 8 frame boxes, full of capped honey, some uncapped nectar, storing it in the empty fridge in the basement until we spin it out. (probably August 1st or later) The hives are FULL of bees, not just the frames drawn out in wax, capped brood, hatching brood, but the population is crazy in each hive. I didn't count them, something like 50-80,000 per hive, standing thick in not only the long hive boxes but in the deeps and supers on both sides of the frames. The whole process of population explosion is invisible to us, we see it for 1 hour once a week and now they are looking amazing.

Our neighbor Zach helped us again this beecheck and he even brushed bees off of frames so we could bring them in. It was a really calm beecheck, the rain was just starting and the bees don't fly in rain, so they didn't create clouds of bees around us. I didn't suit up and they didn't get agitated. Right now there is one hive with a deep and super, the other two have 2 supers on top of the hives. Soon we'll remove the last deep and put on another super. The deep full of honey, mr bliss said weighed 70ish lbs on his estimation.

With the populations so high, we're contemplating splitting a hive or two, to create more hives, buying queens and hoping they make it through winter. I'm not sure what we'll do yet. None of the hives at this point show any signs of creating new queens or swarming. We may or may not have new hive boxes ready when we need them. We have one extra hive ready on the deck, but we might need 2 or 3. In addition to needing the hives, we'll need to prepare the ground-remove grass, lay down landscape fabric, bricks....and decide where they could go in the yard.

Then on top of the hives we'll need supers-but that can wait until next year and we can build them (boxes and frames) in winter. We'll need honey storage, and I think I have 8 cases of quart jars, so that's more than enough, overkill really.

If I can find some glass, to fit over the top of the roaster, I can melt and filter wax that we are collecting, in the roaster, by making it a solar melter on hot days. Once the honey is uncapped we'll have all those cappings to melt.

 

[blissful]

There's been one or maybe two bears in the area for the past month, within 4-6 miles of us. Bears are not that common in our area. We're keeping tabs on its location. Neighbors within 10 miles are reporting the location each time there is a sighting. Each morning I get up and first check to see that the hives are up right. So far, so good!

 

[dragnlaw]

My friend in Northern Ontario had to put electric wires around his hives. I believe he had solar batteries on them as they were far and wide dispersed around various farmers fields.
Just a single wire strand about 2 maybe 3 feet off the ground.

 

[blissful]

@dragnlaw, it would work, but bears still do crash through electric wires if they want things bad enough. We have farmer fields with subdivisions around, some small acreages. Since they aren't common here, it will probably stay on farmland and in the park system, people scare bears. Electric wires around children isn't a good idea for us, since we have neighbors with 5 boys, we'd rather not risk it.

 

[dragnlaw]

Absolutely right bliss, even horses have/can crashed thru electric fences. Bears can step on them or over them - but if they first contact them with their adorable wet noses... doesn't take much to envision the result
As for the kids, those fences are will not harm a child over the age of 2, it will give them a zap - instant lesson learned fast. (and anyone who is letting a 2 year old run loose needs to be wrapped up in one themselves.) That is unless you do a homemade job - different story.
But yeah, now visualizing your hives and your yard - nope, don't think it's necessary.