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jal_ut
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Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Beekeeping

Any Beekeepers onboard?

Beekeeping is a good hobby to go along with the gardening since we do need the pollinators. I keep bees. I just got six
packages of bees. Hived them yesterday, and today went out and released the queens. Perhaps we could have a forum for
beekeeping if there is enough interest?

Taiji
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Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito

I discovered last year a hive of bees living in an old abandoned well house on my property. There are holes in the roof and they come and go as they please. At first I was worried, but guess I'll just leave them alone. They're all over the apple and pear trees when in bloom!

I think there is a bee forum here already isn't there Jal?

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jal_ut
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OK Taiji, yes you are right. Some days my head doesn't work...........

Taiji
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Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito

Ha ha, with me it's most days! :)

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Our four hives are doing better. Two are very strong and the other two are getting stronger. We plan a small honey harvest next week.

john gault
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Location: Atlantic Beach, Fl. (USDA Hardiness Zone 9a)

I've thought about beekeeping, but I guess I'm too lazy, especially since I really don't care for honey. However, in a sense I'm kind of a bee keeper, because for the past ten years I've been gardening, much with so-called weeds, which all the bees love. I get tons of bees every year, not just honey bees, but all types of native bees and also all sorts of wasps.

I feel almost an obligation to keep my yard flowering every year for the pollinators.

P.S. My father keeps bees, so I've seen the process quite a bit.

john gault
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Location: Atlantic Beach, Fl. (USDA Hardiness Zone 9a)

jal_ut wrote:Any Beekeepers onboard?

...Perhaps we could have a forum for beekeeping if there is enough interest?
I'd be interested. Even though I don't keep bees, I'm very interested in them and always love reading about this topic...

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jal_ut
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john gault, the Beekeeping Forum is under the Homesteading Forum.

imafan26
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Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:32 am
Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

One of our hives is getting crowded. We already have a super on top of the brood box, and it is swarm season.
Any ideas on how we can keep the hive from swarming?

I was looking up walk away splits? If we have queen swarm cells, do we remove them when doing a split or give the queenless split the frames with the unopened queen cells? If they had queen cells already in progress that way they would not have to make a queen from scratch and the hive will be able to build faster? The other choice would be to make a split and introduce a new queen to the queenless split after a day or so.

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jal_ut
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I check the hives every ten days and just smash the queen cells. Once the clover blooms, throw on a queen excluder and a honey super and let them make honey.

If you want to split the hive for increase, you can just put three frames containing eggs and brood into another box and shake some bees into it. If there is a swarm cell on one of the frames this queen will hatch and then go on a mating flight then lay eggs.

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Thanks. We already edxtended the brood box with another super, but the bees don't like the plastic frames and are reluctant to build on them. We also put in excluders and honey boxes on the strong hives. We are planning a harvest on April 29.

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

I just got home. We harvested 4 supers and 1 deep of honey. We got about 160 lbs of honey and bottled about 150 12 oz jars. It took a little over 4 hours but we had plenty of help. Some people were still learning so they took their time uncapping the honey. We have not had a harvest in over a year so some of the honey was old and some from the current flow. The dark honey has a lot of bark but it is still good.

The girls were a little angry since it has been raining again the last few days and it is overcast today so they don't like us chasing them out of their hive.



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