@Mendacity I suggest putting the hive on a remote part of the property that S/O wouldn't have to visit. The bees will pretty much keep to themselves. Thanks for the link, it looks super interesting! @BunjyWunjy It really depends on the year. You really only want to harvest honey from frames with capped cells (these have the right water content and will stay preserved). This year my main hive, Alpha, decided it wanted to goof around and party all year instead of prepare honey. So between her and Beta, (Gamma didn't produce), I only got 5 gallons of honey this year. (I know people generally measure honey in lbs, but it all fit in a 5 gallon bucket, so.)
That's what I was thinking! If worse comes to worse when we move up there I might talk to some of the local farmers and see if they'd mind a hive.
Have you had any problems with wasps/hornets hurting your bees? I don't know if that's actually a thing that happens, but my mom's stated reason for not wanting to try beekeeping is that she thinks the local (admittedly huge) wasp population would somehow kill them off before the hive got established =/
A bee friend asked this in the sillier bee thread, and it deserves more consideration than I can give it.
We've got beehives, but no beekeeping suit-a friend who also has hives has a suit and comes over every so often to see if our bees have produced enough honey for a harvest. This process also often involves dropping off grapefruit, as the friend has an excessively productive grapefruit tree. We pay her back with fejoias (spelling?), apples, and lemons. The same friend also sometimes brings new hives over to help them get established-one time she arrived and every hive had died in the ~20 minute transit from her house to ours, it was very weird and sad, but another time she arrived with about 20 small hives and our vegetable garden had hives everywhere and there were friendly bees everywhere.
From what little I know: If you have anywhere you can, plant some flowering plants with no pesticides. The pesticides can kill the bees or make their honey bad (apparently if a hive is use to pesticides they won't have instant problems with them but if you transfer that honey over to a hive that has never had pesticides it will kill them). If you are seeing bees it's always good to put up a bee watering hole. Here's a how-to using those plastic bead things but here are some easier ones that use rocks / glass marbles (but just pictures, sorry): Spoiler: Images Cut So No Stretching Basic idea is that honeybees are silly and tend to drown easy, so they need things to climb on. Now for simple hives to get and take care of, if there are any bees i the family Megachilidae near you (I call them blueberry bees or mason bees) you can set up really weird / neat hives that literally are just a bunch of tubes that you have to do absolutely nothing to. They're pollinators just like honeybees but they're solitary so you wouldn't be getting honey from them, but you would be helping local pollinators out! (And to clean the hive after everyone hatched? Just blow on the other end of the tube and it shoots all the debris out!) As a note most of this is from my own research. We use to have Mason Bees back in Memphis that we kept a nest up for but we also had wood bees. The waterers don't tend to draw lots of mosquitoes if you're good about keeping the water in motion (gravity feeders are good at that) and if you keep stones in them. You might get flies stopping by for water but if there are local bees they'll be the ones coming by. Bees go through lots of water though, remember that!
They like to hang around outside the hives and pick them off. We set up wasp traps near the hives with stuff wasps like but bees don't as bait, so the problem isn't too bad. Also @Sethrial MacCoill @bees? WRT helping save bees: Support local beekeepers and farmers by buying their products, seed bomb with plants bees like, sign petitions to help ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. If you find a sick or listless bee, put it on a flower where it can rest up and get some fuel. Bee baths like the ones @Mendacity posted are also great.
It got really cold this winter so all of our hives froze to death. We had them set up so there was too much ventilation during the cold months. So, we're starting over in April. I kind of want to repaint the hive boxes (with designs and stuff) but I read somewhere plain white is best, and also, I don't have the time. I should do research on that, and see if paint jobs really matter. Also, I've been doing research on bee bearding, which is also a thing I want to do... sometime.
Do bees like roses? If so, do they like any specific roses over others? I only have the rare bee trundle by in the summer, but I want to give them a place to rest and refuel when they do. They've been a fan of my tomatoes and lithodora in the past.
Bees like roses alright, but they seem to prefer my other flowers, so I can't really tell you a ton from personal experience. Also, have never watched Black Mirror, does it have bees?
There's lists online for which flowers bees like a lot! Lavender is a veritable bee magnet just from what I can observe in our garden!
The thing is, i dont want to attract a lot of bees. I'm the only garden for quite sone ways. (City living, am i right?) i just want flowers a bee could enjoy if it does trundle past on its way somewhere. Eta: not the only garden, but the only one with a lot if flowers. Everyone else just grows various types of grass and shrubs
New shipment of bees came in last night. I put them in their new hive, which involves setting the queen who is in a little cage in between frames. The cage's exit is blocked off by some kind of sugar or candy and the bees eat the candy trying to get to the queen. The exit to the hive is also blocked off by a little grate. By the time the bees eat all the candy and let out the queen, their scent is already all over the hive and they are used to it. There is a feeder frame filled with sugar water so they don't get hungry or thirsty while they are trapped in the hive. In a few days I will remove the grate from the hive entrance, if all goes well. The bees were pretty chill last night, all like, Hey! Hi! What's This New Place? and mostly wanted to explore. I didn't have any assistance, or I might have tried for a beard, haha. Maybe next time.
Word of advice. Bees and Deathhawks don't mix. Always wear a beesuit when your da is pissing off the bees and asks for help. My scalp hurts. (my da is good at pissing off bees. They usually like me tho)
