I think it is cool. Bees are very good for pretty much everything.
Nice! Wife and I will eventually add bees to our little homestead. I make mead. Someday I wanna make it with our own honey.
Learn all you can before getting bees. Especially if you want to get honey from them. It takes weekly inspections to stay on top of them. Especially swarm prevention and what to do if they swarm.
Definitely. I do appreciate the tip.
Being on year 9 of living out here and slowly growing as a homesteader, I understand nothing comes easy. Adding anything new and the learning curve is usually a long one.
Kaymon Reynolds on YouTube gives very good information. He's a commercial bee keeper but his information works for backyard bee keepers too. There's a lot of popular channels on YouTube that are bee sellers and I don't recommend those for wanting to learn how to produce honey. They will have you splitting them to make more hives. It's a learning curve to find the sweet spot on bee numbers and not making weak hives that don't produce.
Old time beekeeper here, 30+ years. We called them Welfare Bees because you gotta feed them and fuss and mess with them and hope they survive.
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I've got a double stack deep nuc I can put a double screen inner cover on and put this little cluster on top and gain some heat from the bottom hive. That is unless this is from one of my hives and then I'll tear any queen cells out and newspaper combine.
But these little dink late swarms are more trouble then their worth but it's a queen that might come in handy.
I've tried with bees and could never get them through the winter.
Now I just refuse to throw money away to buy bees.
Still have all my stuff and tell everyone to "call me" if they have a swarm, I'll gladly come get it!
Thinking back I should have spent the money on maple syrup equipment.
Now I just refuse to throw money away to buy bees.
Still have all my stuff and tell everyone to "call me" if they have a swarm, I'll gladly come get it!
Thinking back I should have spent the money on maple syrup equipment.
Use your old hives for swarm traps. Put a couple drops of lemon grass oil in them next spring.
Been thinking of doing something like that.
Also.......
I planted some buckwheat (kinda late) this year to use as a cover crop and to help the soil.
I hope to harvest (without a combine) as much as I can.
Want to try and use some for chicken feed and to replant some next year.
It is too late for this year, (the buckwheat is seeding out), but I was thinking of setting up a hive body next to the blooming buckwheat and see what happened.
Buckwheat is amazing with bee life when it is in full bloom! The field just hums with a bzzzzz!
