Bee's

[woodlandfarms]

Intersting stuff.... Harry, wish you had been around last year. We had a hive in a tree, wanted to remove the tree and did not want to loose the hive. Saddly, the hive died out over the winter and we decided to not loose the tree. I would love to start a hive, but we are not around enough to do the maintenance.

A good friend of mine is an expert on Bees. His doctorate was on killer and now he is doing research on hive death. I read some article that said that the death is now being related to caffeine in a fertilizer (man, it sounds so whacky writing this I need to find out if that is true).

Anyway.. How hard is it to keep those bees Harry, love to hear more.

 

[HarryVanderpool]

Woodland, before we go any farther, and because this is the safety forum I MUST warn you about "beekeepers disease".
Some folks never catch it.
They have a hive or two in their back yard, make a little honey, go to fun beekeepers meetings; they do very well.
Then there are the others like myself that just barely get into beekeeping and !!BAM!! ...

...they are hit right between the eyes with "beekeepers disease.

Here are some symptoms and how the disease progresses:
You start with 2 hives and in the next year increase to 4.
"Wow! those 4 hives sure made a lot of honey! I'll bet 8 would sure make a lot!" Then you take all of the money that you made (of course you turned a blind eye to expenses) from the 8 hives and crank up another 8.
Now in your 4th year with 16 hives, one of your friends from the local bee association who is a commercial beekeeper asks you if you want to rent them out for a few weeks at $45.00 each.
That leaves you foaming at the mouth all winter building boxes so that next spring you will have 50 hives!
Next year 100....
...250...500...1250......

Thats beekeepers disease.

 

[sunspot]

Txdon.
That hive has sure gotten big. It's bigger than the one I once hived and said "never again". That is good to hear that they are giving you some pollination services.

Harry. Tell woodlandfarms what your honey house costs to equip. That'll shock him.

How many frames does your extractor hold? I worked with a guy that had 250 colonies and he used a 72 frame extractor.

I use a 4 frame that I have to reverse the frames.

I just went online to Weavers Bee's in TX. They get $110 for 3 pounds of bee's and a queen. The last time I bought some in GA they were $50.