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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Apr 7, 2021 7:43:48 GMT -5
The 1st three days all eggs get royal jelly. There is no pollen protein in it. The royal jelly is honey and other non proteins that they make. On the 4th day as a larvae they get pollen mix in with the royal jelly and that makes the worker honeybee. The queen stays with Royal Jelly diet and no pollen protein. It's all in the diet. Amazing.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Apr 19, 2021 18:59:22 GMT -5
Received my 1st swarm call today. After work I drove to the home and found a large ball of bees about 15 feet in a plum tree. I used a 5 gal bucket taped on a pole. I caught and dumped 5 to 6 lbs of bees. A huge swarm. Took about 10 stings. I didn't have my suit. I drove there from work. I had pole, bucket and nuc box for swarms. Nine on my legs and one under my eye. Best part, no RA for next couple days.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Apr 26, 2021 7:11:35 GMT -5
I had an amazing day yesterday. I just finished grafting 33 cell so the bees can make queen cells. Hoping to get 25 queens. I was putting away the last few items and I took a minute and stood about 15 feet in front of the hive stands. As I stood there I heard a good loud buzzing noise behind me. I turn around and 15 to 20 thousand bees flying right at me and around me. About 15 feet behind me are some pines and honeysuckle bushes. The bees where circling the honeysuckle bush and after a few minutes landed on the bush. A swarm flew in from the north. Not my bees swarming. imgur.com/YABumq7i.imgur.com/weHtRN9.mp4i.imgur.com/tarTIQx.mp4i.imgur.com/z0UMrQu.mp4I have 9 short videos and l plan to edit and put them together.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on May 10, 2021 7:52:04 GMT -5
Yesterday after church service I was cooking some bacon for the Mother's Day brunch get together at my in-laws. I got a call for a honeybee swarm. It was raining, but not pouring at the time. I finished frying the bacon and drove to the home. Luckily it was just a 15 minute drive. The swarm was on the pool fence. Just as I got the box set up it got darker and I could hear the thunder get louder and louder. I put my grove on my right hand and umbrella in the left. I didn't have time to let the bees walk across a homemade frame bridge to the box. Plus the bees didn't want to break their cluster. So I took my hand and swooped up 95% of the bees with the queen luckily. Got most of the bees in and closed the lid. By then the storm was right on top of me. Heavy downpour and lots of lighting. I waited 15 minutes for the remainder of the bee to get inside the box. I then put the new swarm in the car. There was only a dozen bees left on the pool fence and the cool rain did them it. My glove had at least 30 stings on it. Good thing I had it on. I knew with the weather condition they would be mad. I checked them late afternoon and all looks good. A 3 frame swarm. Guess around 15 thousand bees plus the queen. The is my 3rd swarm so far. You never know when you will get the call. I'm on three police departments honeybee swarm removal lists.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on May 14, 2021 7:42:25 GMT -5
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on May 17, 2021 6:36:34 GMT -5
I'm now a Hoosier beekeeper. I have three swarm trap boxes set out on my brother's farm. Went there Saturday to check and do a little fishing. Take a day off. Caught my 1st ever swarm trap box. All the others swarms caught where swarms on something. youtu.be/VzVQDhLAUBw
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on May 18, 2021 13:26:09 GMT -5
My brother just texted me. Swarm just showed up at the barn location swarm trap. This trap is about 1/4 mile down the gravel road from the other two traps on the hive bench. So 2 out of 3 traps this year. Last year I had two traps out and caught a big zero. I did go bigger with the boxes this time. Go big or go home I guess.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on May 28, 2021 9:36:18 GMT -5
I've been busy the last two weeks. Caught 4 more swarms that didn't come from my hives. Sold two more nucs and soon another one to a repeat customer. On 6/16 I plan to graft 45 queen cells for next year nucs. Planning on over wintering 25 nucs to sell next March/April when demand is hot. Heeding to my brothers place after work today to change out the swarm boxes to hives. On Sunday and Monday going through 14 hives and removing honey. My guess around 400 - 600 pounds. Just this past week a lot of uncapped honey should be capped now. Needed this warmer weather. By the way: cicadas does not affect the bees. It may even help when virgin queens fly to get mated. Birds bellies are full and less likely to be eaten.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jun 7, 2021 9:05:20 GMT -5
I've been blessed and have had a very good year so far. I was able to sell 7 nucleus hives all to new beekeepers. I'm mentoring 3 of them. I'm finding out that I love teaching about the honeybee and related plants. Not a plant expert yet, but learning every day. After selling 7 nucs hives I'm down to 25 hives. My guess I'll end with low 20's full hives to over winter. I'm grafting 45 cells on June 16th. Around the 28th I hope to have 30 to 35 queens cells ready to emerge. I will take 5 of my 20 plus hives to make 30 plus 2 or 3 frame queen mating nucs. Standard nuc is 5 frames. Hoping to have 20 plus queen right hives to over winter. These will go on sale 1/1/22. I checked all my hives this past weekend and have about 1000 pounds of honey on the hives. I plan to pull the honey frames and honey super boxes in early to mid July. Should be up to 1500 to 1800 pounds. The clover is booming this year.
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Post by esshup on Jun 7, 2021 10:22:39 GMT -5
Thanks for the reminder, I need to talk to my local apiarist about getting some honey this year.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jun 15, 2021 6:55:21 GMT -5
Did my 1st tree cutout yesterday evening. My homemade bee-vac worked great. Didn't kill one bee. I built it last year and yesterday was my 1st time using it. Vacuumed up about 40,000 bees. I didn't find the queen and hoping I vacuumed her up with the rest of the bees. The tree is only a 11 minute drive from home. I dumped the bee into a hive and none came pouring out. That's a good sign. I did frame up 3 frames of brood and placed inside the hive. The comb was not in good shape after falling to the ground. I left the hive there to pick up today. Hoping the remaining bees go in as it got dark last night. Hopefully, the queen survived the tree fall and is in the hive.
I will be grafting today instead of tomorrow. Fits my schedule a little better.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 12, 2021 12:23:29 GMT -5
July update: My grafting was a bust. The day I got home from vacation one of the 15 queens emerged and that one killed the other 14 queens still in their queen cells. I was just a couple hours late.
I pulled 100 lbs of honey two weeks ago and the next week to two I'll be pulling around 700 lbs from the 16 hives. While pulling the honey I'm doing 20 to 26 splits (new hives) and treating for varroa mites. This will be my last pull of honey and making splits. The nucleus splits are 5 frame nucs. The plan is to over winter the nucs to sell next year. It will take me a couple more weeks to process and bottle the honey. Around the 1st or 2nd week of August I'll be ready to spend my time getting ready for deer season.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 18, 2021 19:00:28 GMT -5
Went through all my hives this weekend. Pulled about 250 pounds of honey. I still have about 400 pounds that is not ready. Frames full, but not capped. Maybe in a few weeks it will be.
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Post by esshup on Jul 19, 2021 0:33:26 GMT -5
I talked to the local beekeeper and he said he wouldn't be pulling any for honey until August.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 21, 2021 6:42:22 GMT -5
I talked to the local beekeeper and he said he wouldn't be pulling any for honey until August. I think the reason is a good one. The spring flowers creates a sweet light honey flavor. The clover flowers adds a real nice flavor additive to the sweet light spring honey. The clover thickens the honey. Most people like the combination. If you wait to August then there is a better chance to get the combined flavor. It's my favorite honey flavor. 1 more good reason. Right now the Sumac is blooming and in some areas that is a good flow. That is about the last major bush/tree until goldenrod, ragweed and ester fall flow.
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Post by esshup on Jul 21, 2021 11:25:17 GMT -5
If you are talking about Ragweed, I wouldn't mind if it NEVER bloomed. That's the only thing that I am allergic to.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 21, 2021 12:52:43 GMT -5
If you are talking about Ragweed, I wouldn't mind if it NEVER bloomed. That's the only thing that I am allergic to. I agree. A lot of people blame Golden Rod, but it darn ragweed.
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Post by bullseye69 on Jul 24, 2021 12:14:19 GMT -5
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 26, 2021 7:28:26 GMT -5
Funny article. Honyebees are native to Great Britain. The author doesn't know much about their native species. Not enough wild life!
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 26, 2021 7:46:11 GMT -5
I pulled and extracted four more boxes of honey this weekend. Extracted 11 gallons. I still have 10 medium supers on the hive. Plan to pull a few of those later this week. I will only take a few. The others supers will get moved to hives that are weaker and need a little help for winter.
There is a master beekeeper on the eastside of Cincinnati. He grafts about 90 to 180 queen cells a day. He is a year older than I and we have become friends. I made a deal with him to graft 180 cells of my Martha Carpenter breed queen. I'm picking up 25 queens later this week and he keeps the remainder. Out of the 180 cells he will get around 150 to 160 good queens cells. Win-win. Later this week I will be very busy setting up 24 nucleus (nucs) hives and each one will get a queen. One queen will go to a new keeper that needs a queen. Helping them out. Their queen is getting replaced. She is not a good producing queen. I'll take that bad laying queen and put in a hive and see what happens. Not sure why the queen is not laying. Just like everything else. Some queens are better than others.
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