apismile: Ιουνίου 2015

Bait Hive, the easiest way to catch a swarm

It's a waiting game, and you never know what kind of luck you'll have with it, but bait hives are really the easiest way to get a swarm. You set it up, walk away, and hope the bees move in. And if they do the only work that's left is to move them to a hive.

I hung this up last year, but I think I did it too late. This past week there have been a lot of swarms in the area, and my bait hive was getting a lot of attention for the past few days. Some very strange behavior. Fighting and battles at the entrance. In hind sight, I think a group of bees were staking a claim to the hive and keeping other "intruders" from getting in. It was pretty interesting to watch.

Honey bees are social insects in the family Apidae, order Hymenoptera. The most important species to humans is Apis millifera, the honey bee. Honey bees live in colonies or bee hives. Bees have two pairs of wings and compound eyes. Beekeepers make hives for the bees out of straw, pottery, or wooden boxes. Wild bees make their hives in hollow trees or logs or sometimes under the eaves of houses. Worker bees stand guard at the entrance of the hive, keeping out bees from other hives. Honey bees protect their hive by stinging intruders.

A tribe of Nepal hunt a wild honey with natural psychoactive properties ("mad honey")
they use it as a medicine and a soft drug.
Dipak, the translator of this movie is overdosing and fall unconcious.

Across the pond we meet Lemar who was attacked by bees last summer. These weren't any old bees thought, these were angry Africanised bees. Innocently driving his tractor Lemar was attacked by up to 2000 bees which left him on the brink of death.

This video features a hands-on look at the inside of a Yellowjacket colony. Yellowjackets are a common wasp, their life cycle is one of complete metamorphosis. The video shows eggs, larva, pupa and adults in the colony. This video is suitable as a resource for teaching about insects and insect life cycles

Swarm Returns to Original Hive; I was asked by a documentary company to make a high def video of a swarm departing, the queen, the swarm in swarm mode and the arrival of the swarm at the new residence... In the process of making this video, I discovered that by re-routing the Queen, the workers will, in her absence, return to the original colony location... how NOT to lose your valuable worker bees.

A video showing a beekeeper checking a mini nucleus (nuc) for a fertilized honeybee queen.

You put sugar syrup in one end of the nuc and a little bit of wax on each wood strip. Then you put a cupful of bees in the hive and seal them in for 48 hours in the dark. Release them early in the morning. They will build up the wax comb inside and start collecting stores of nectar & pollen.

Put a sealed queen cell in the next day, leave and do not touch for a week. Check after that time to see if the queen has emerged and possibly laying. If not leave and check again after another five days. Once you see eggs you know she has been mated.

Hobby-Imker Klaus Ruppert hat neben seinem Haus im Weißenbrunner Ortsteil Grün (Landkreis Kronach) vier Bienenvölker und gibt Einblicke in sein Hobby.

Kamera: Friedwald Schedel
Schnitt: Alexander Kroh

In an attempt to locate a beehive under a backyard storage shed, the base of the shed had to be moved. In order to get some distance from what they might fight, they got on the roof of the house and lifted the floor of the shed with straps they had attached to it. The person taking the video was concentrating on the bees and was taken by surprise when the snake moved.

Bee Pollen Traps,Trapping Honey Bee collected pollen from beehives of Beekeeper John Pluta in Milledgeville Georgia. More at http://georgiabees.blogspot.com Propolis trap on honeybees hive.See the color and volume amounts of 7 daily collected Bee Pollen traps from flowers,grass, weeds and trees.Beekeepers collect Pollen for human health sales and to feed back for early bee spring brood rearing.Bee pollen is produced in high volume spring and fall as a high protein energy food. Beekeeping propolis traps on honey bee hives for propolis trapping.Propolis is bee glue from tree buds used by honey bees to seal up bee hive cracks and as an antibiotic by humans for cuts,burns,stomach and dental mouth problems.

Three simple ways to process raw honey.

We have up to two tons of honey every year to process - and we keep things as simple as possible..

tags: rose, hives, extractor, centrifuge, comb, cells, tank, pure, sugar-free, beekeeping, bees, apis melifera, cold-filtered, beeswax, process, processing, self-sufficiency, Organic, Smallholding,

I'm showing my method of robbing the bees. I don't use a bee brush. I have some fairly impressive full frames of honey to show. I ended up with 14 boxes in this video plus another 8 boxes from the previous afternoon & this afternoon.

Looking through cells for varroa, before putting the drone frame into the freezer at -18C for 3 days to kill off mits

So this was my "strong hive" until it swarmed about 2 weeks ago. Since then I had not seen the queen nor any young brood. I did see about 4 queen cells, and actually killed one of the queen larva on accedent when bringing out the frame. So i was looking thru this hive and wasnt seeing any capped or uncapped brood, and then i found the queen.. then some young larva!

Have you wanted to mark your queens but weren't sure how to go about it? Or maybe you were scared you would hurt her. Well with this simple homemade device you can safely mark your queens without any harm. This cage can be purchased through most bee equipment suppliers but I have always enjoyed making stuff myself. Plus it save a few bucks with little time invested.

Looking for the queen bee about 5 days after installing a 3 pound bee package. Also checking for workers building comb. Notice the ball of bees that falls off the inter cover when I lift it.

You can install a package of Honeybees in your hive as demonstrated in this video. You need to wear protection gear which is not shown.

Spring of the year brings hope & excitement. Just like the new blooms and flowers start blooming bring in excitement of new life and a beautiful day, Sweet Breath of Spring is here. The Aroma of a new chapter with beauty awaits the bees and the beekeeper.

What a new beekeeper needs to look for in his (her) hive. Honey (food) & pollen. Late winter or early spring, we need to be sure our bees have enough food (honey) to be sure they don't starve in case of a few days in a row of rain. You can't control the pollen very well but you sure can keep them from starving.

It's a beekeeping update. Sort of. I wanted to show ya'll how I deal with all that left over wax from my crush and strain honey extraction. It's pretty simple. Wash the wax with cold water. Then melt it in a pot with 2" of water in the bottom. Let cool over night, dump out water. Then scrape the bottom of the wax hunk with a knife. Once all the loose goo comes off, go through the process again. I took 4-5 meltings to be satisfied with the results. It's pretty easy all things considered. Just time consuming.

A Paradise Honey 120 frame extracting line. Shows the frames being rapidly uncapped and then slid into a 120 frame horizontal extractor. Contact Modern Beekeeping www.modernbeekeeping.co.uk who are the agents for Paradise Honey in the UK.

Stanislav Pilipenko describes his work and his passion as a beekeeper in Issy Kul region, Kyrgyzstan. Filmed by Robin Forestier-Walker for APTN Horizons, September 2010.

This is a video of the construction of a small hive beetle trap/bottom board. I use these on all of my hives here in the south due to the threat of small hive beetle infestation. These traps work well and will serve you many years, best of all you can build these with only basic tools. The video is long but is very detailed and after watching this video you should be able to duplicate my traps. Good luck.

This location we are at is one of several yards for this beekeeper. These hives are moved by the truck load. When these hives are moved some of the bees just can't find their way back to the hive they came out of and they cluster on branches with other lost bees. They look like swarms hanging around. They will not go back to any hive on their own. they have to be properly placed into a hive with a new queen or merged with an existing colony the right way. As big as this cluster of bees is they will die off in four to six weeks or so without a queen.

And you thought the bees were going to provide you with food? Well, hopefully they will, but in “bad” years you will be feeding them – possibly throughout the year. The following how-to is primarily based on the National Bee Unit guide to feeding bees and covers sugar, pollen and water feeding.

Indisputable is the fact that the quality of honey you as beekeeper can not change. But you can improve quality of honey and other products from the perspective of the buyer.

We all know that hobby beekeepers are vital part of beekeeping, however there is every year bigger risk that hobby beekeeping will disappear. Reason is in bigger / professional beekeepers who can afford better honey product quality for lower price. Because of that honey products has to be even from hobby beekeepers every year better.

Bees are saving the world, one again. From the report of the American Chemical Society (ASC), we can read that snake, scorpion or bee venom could form the basis of a new generation of cancer-fighting drug.

As they say, it is possible to target venom proteins specifically to malignant cells while sparing healthy ones, which reduces or eliminates side effects that the toxins would otherwise cause.

Video of Bee Venom as potential cancer-fighting drug

Late summer is the time to be on the lookout for robber bees. Robbing behavior is when foraging bees from one hive enter and rob resources from another, usually weaker, hive. If not prevented, or if not stopped once robbing has begun, the robber bees can completely empty all the stores from the target hive, causing it to starve. Even if the target hive survives, it can be greatly weakened and its remaining bees may become extremely defensive and difficult to manage.

For centuries manuka honey has been considered a ‘wonderfood,’ a powerful, healing and sticky-sweet substance that we are only beginning to understand. With roots in the therapeutic wound dressings of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand, manuka honey has transcended natural health circles and is now a coveted food, beauty regimen and medicine by many.

As the days get longer, the weather becomes milder, and the air begins to sweeten with hints of the first spring blossoms, my thoughts turn increasingly to my bees. I’ve spied them scouting out the first dandelions and daffodils for nectar and bringing the pollen back to their hives which tells me that the queen is gearing up for spring and laying lots of eggs. This is a time of year when it is crucial for beekeepers to pay attention to what’s going on in each of their beehives.

Everyone feels refreshed after a good night’s sleep, but sleep does more than just rejuvenate, it can also consolidate memories.

‘The rapid eye movement form of sleep and slow wave sleep are involved in cognitive forms of memory such as learning motor skills and consciously accessible memory’, explains Randolf Menzel from the Freie Universtät Berlin, Germany.

You would think something this simple would not be controversial, but it is. On several fronts.

First, WHEN do you feed?

"Q. When is the best time to feed the bees?

Mt. Grey Caucasians are GENTLE. As a race, Caucasians are the most gentle bee in the world. However as with any other bee, they vary in temperament from one colony to another. We select the colonies that display the desired gentle characteristics as breeders to assure that these bees meet our high standards. Any bees that show any defensiveness are immediately removed from our breeding program to assure that these undesired characteristics are not passed on to production queens sent to our customers.

I'm not sure who wrote these, or I would credit them. But they are so full of outright opinions and in many cases opinions that I disagree with, that I just had to respond

The wax moth feeds on wax combs and their content. It drills its way through wax, thus destroying the comb. In order to avoid comb losses the wax moth should be controlled. There are different control methods. In the brochure "Protection of honey combs from moth damage“ the biology, prevention and control of the wax moth are described.

Bees get vaccinated at the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Bern

Swiss beekeepers are hoping for a cold autumn and spring after last year's mild temperatures turned honeycombs into honeyed tombs – mostly because of the Varroa mite, which feeds on healthy bees.

The past few years have been tough for bee colonies almost everywhere. For example, colony collapse disorder was a massive problem in the United States in 2007. But this year has proven disastrous for honeybees and their keepers in Switzerland. A study of a thousand Swiss hives shows that 50 per cent of the bees did not survive the winter of 2011-2012.

The small hive beetle Aethina tumida (SHB) is an invasive pest of bee hives, originally from sub-Saharan Africa. These beetles inhabit almost all honey bee colonies in their native range, but they do little damage there and are rarely considered a serious hive pest.

It is unknown how this pest found its way into the U.S., but was first discovered to be damaging honey bee colonies in Florida in the late 1990s. It has since spread to more than 30 states, being particularly prevalent in the southeast. The beetles have likely been transported with package bees and by migratory beekeepers, but the adult beetles are strong fliers and are capable of traveling several miles at a time on their own.

When our new Queen out of the cell is very kinetic.

This may be due to various reasons, such as being afraid there is another queen in the hive, or fear the daylight as it has never seen before, or do not feel dominant feeling in the hive, since the bees workers will recognize and treat it like a queen when you started giving birth.

So if the beekeeper opens the hive before the new queen started giving us eggs, and suddenly getting daylight into bee house, then scared and runs on Honeycomb running with long legs over workers.

Following numerous pesticides used in agriculture

NEW YORK President Barack Obama created a special force to combat the plague of bees in hives in the United States, and further claims that the Americans are aware of the need to protect the industrious insect.

"Given the severity, extent and persistence of decline, it is essential to expand federal efforts to reverse the loss of bees," the president wrote in a memo released from the White House.

SAN FRANCISCO — Early snowmelt in Colorado's Rocky Mountains has cued flowers to bloom early, causing honeybees and hummingbirds to miss feeding opportunities, new research suggests. The animals arrive at their usual feeding times, but are now too late.

The findings, presented Monday (Dec. 3) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), suggest that climate change can disrupt a cascade of animal species in the mountains.

Honey bees, like all other living things, vary among themselves in traits such as temperament, disease resistance, and productivity. The environment has a large effect on differences among bee colonies (for example, plants in different areas yield different honey crops), but the genetic makeup of a colony can also impact the characteristics that define a particular group. Beekeepers have long known that different genetic stocks have distinctive characteristics, so they have utilized different strains to suit their particular purpose, whether it be pollination, a honey crop, or bee production.

Last December, the European Union adopted the "Commission Decision of executing 12 December 2014 concerning certain protection measures following the confirmed presence of the small hive beetle in Italy" N. 2014/909 / EU. A measure by which the European Commission called on Italy to take protective measures that prevent the spread of

Los apicultores perdieron el 36% de sus colmenas en promedio durante todo el invierno, según los datos publicados por la Federación Belga de Apicultura (BBF). La tasa de mortalidad alcanzó el 42%