The Treatment-Free Beekeepers' Forum

lharder

I've had that happen. Getting better with more attention to detail as I do my manipulations. The worse is when you have to do things in a hurry and some steps have to be missed. The risk of transferring the queen when you don't want to is great. I won't do this with an important queen.

lharder

So a small update. From the 35 hives I had coming out of spring, I have sold 7 nucs, and have about 40 nucs that are coming online with queens that are just beginning to lay or have queen cells. I expect to place another 15 or so cells next week. That spring queen rearing poses problems with poor we...

lharder

I've noticed a substantial shift in the 3 years I have been bee keeping and raising mostly my own queens. On the productive robust side of things I've seen a real upside. Just the energy of some of the bees has gone up substantially. On the other side, I have one hive on the edge of mean. They don't...

lharder

Sold a couple more nucs. A more experienced bee keeper dipping his toe into the TF game. He was very happy with what he saw. Nice queen, 6 frames with brood, an excellent laying pattern, they had already built 2 beautiful frames of foundationless comb laid up with some open brood. He was well prepar...

lharder

Sold a couple more, will have a couple more sold on Saturday. New owners are very happy with them. As a little bonus, they have already drawn a full frame of foundationless worker comb filled with eggs and young larvae. A beautiful sight to see.

lharder

So I had a minor milestone. I sold my first 3 nucs queened by daughters of my most successful colonies.

lharder

Nice work Nordak!

Looks promising.

lharder

Yes, I had 4 of them. 2 survived their 2nd winter, but the line kind of dwindled after that. But the genetics is still in my yard and I have some strong grand daughters from them. I don't regret getting them. Its a program that takes mites seriously and I may get more once I get a better handle on w...

lharder

Could it be supercedure?

In that case I've seen a queen and her daughter in the same hive.

lharder

So I went out to my Heffley site. I have a few mating nucs set up there. Queens are about to start laying so went through them. 4 were trying to raise their own queens so I removed them combined the nurse bees and remaining brood at one mating nuc site. Instant cell builder. I gave them a frame with...

lharder

That's not a good sight to see. We poison everything around us and ourselves. One of the reasons I've gone TF.

lharder

Yes nucs are totally useful. My first spring nucs are just coming on line. I haven't seen eggs yet, but any day now. I saw a young queen running around in what I thought was a failure. I was going to use them for a cell builder, but was totally thwarted by queen rightness. I'm sure at least one will...

lharder

I think that is when you go looking for queens, any queens, not just one but a couple for a couple of nucs. Keep the bees going until you get the queens you want. With just one package I think you need to get them as backup. I'm in a real good location for queen rearing. I'm in a rain shadow. From h...

lharder

I have 23 mating nucs that I am waiting for laying queens. The question is with the not great weather, how many queen cells made it and how many will be successful with mating flights. I've checked 2 so far. Both had queens emerge, saw one virgin. We are getting decent queen flying weather just in t...

lharder

So I just had my little apiary inspected. My bees are looking pretty good according to the inspector, and I have an official permit to sell bees. We did some mite counts and they were pretty good. I had a strong overwintered nuc with 0.67 % (just added a 5th medium box) Another boomer had 2.5 so som...

lharder

I think it is time for an update because I could not post anything since February, when I stated my hive count as 4. But one of nucs lost its queen at the beginning of March so I went into spring with 3. When I gave a frame of brood to this queenless nuc I was worried because March is seen to early...

lharder

Yes in general shake bees into the hive if they are on random bits. New queens have lots of energy and I've guided a couple back into their nuc boxes having found them running around on the outside of the box while examining it. Also lost a huge new queen in a nuc box probably during an inspection. ...

lharder

I find my good ideas are usually after the fact. How many times do I go back into a colony after thinking about it and changing plans.

I'll have to try to remember the water trick.

lharder

After working in the garage for a few days, I threw together some real nuc boxes. I really struggled last year with not having enough expansion equipment. This year I swore I wouldn't do that again. I have about 25 nuc boxes I made and have a few more to finish up. Will post a picture of them later...

lharder

Caught my first swarm this week. They moved into a bait hive on my deck. Checked it after 3 days and it looked to be only about 1.5lbs. They were storing nectar but i didnt see eggs or a queen. Im guessing it was a cast swarm with a virgin queen. I gave them a frame of brood from my best hive to gi...

lharder

I caught a swarm a couple of years ago. I used it as a brood factory. Its comb was kind of wonky, it insisted on making comb on 1 3/8 centers like the large cell bees they probably came from.

So useful overall. Of course if you are in an area of feral bees, the genetics is useful too.

lharder

Sounds good, if you don't find any eggs your next visit, give them another frame with eggs/larvae. They will tell you whether the queen was successful by making another queen cell.

lharder

That sounds awesome, you had some great numbers pull through. Glad you have some hives that are strong. Unfortunately for me, my wintering was pretty terrible. I had 4 hives I thought would make it, only 1 did. Down from about 18 hives, I knew some smaller hives wouldn't make it, but this was prett...

lharder

Isn't there a procedure called a Taronov artificial swarm to get the queen and a few bees into a new box when they are likely to swarm?

Yes use those swarm cells. At least a few of them in a nuc. Good back up if you lose the swarm or if the new queen doesn't get mated properly.

lharder

Well its a nice problem to have. My problem will be space. I have 3 hive positions open at my sites. I need another site.

lharder

You have a table saw Nordak? My days are bee work one day, table saw work the next. I noticed my stash of boxes is running thin already. So how many top bar hives do you have and how many in standard equipment?

lharder

So I thought I would give a bit of an update. I haven't officially given a wintering success number I had 20 colonies in big boxes by the end of the last season. 8 survived, though 2 are dinks and will be requeened ASAP. 2 are outstanding and have had snelgrove boards installed recently. They are th...

lharder

Its basically what I do when I set up my snelgrove boards. Set up another one at one of my out yards yesterday. I like to shake the bees off as I am looking for the queen, unless I find her. I only have to go through the colony once. Even if I don't see her, I assume she is in the bottom 2 boxes bec...

lharder

Put 2 medium boxes on bottom board with whatever empty comb you have. Go through your colony and for each frame, look for the queen. If you can't find her, shake the bees into the medium boxes. When and If you find her, shake her into the bottom boxes, then you can stop shaking bees. While shaking, ...

lharder

Thanks, lharder. Yep, those are packages bursting with bees. Next year I'll make them roomier. I think I'm done this year unless I get the odd request. Those 6 packages came from 3 hives. Had I had the queens, I could have done twice the packages pictured. I ended up ditching my grafting attempts a...

lharder

Crazy weather here in Portland OR. Highs have been in 50's and lots of rain. Now 2 days of 80+ degree weather. Nuc I installed in outyard 10 days ago is bearding like crazy. Gonna throw a few shims in for ventilation till I can throw another deep on it. Hoping they don't get pissed and abscond. Tem...

lharder

GregV wrote:
Nordak wrote:You really need to get a camera.

Like a phone in one's pocket?

Well, I myself routinely forget about that darn phone in the pocket (I still own a real camera too).
So many potential pics lost....

I still don't have a cell phone. I drive people crazy.

lharder

Thanks, lharder. Yep, those are packages bursting with bees. Next year I'll make them roomier. I think I'm done this year unless I get the odd request. Those 6 packages came from 3 hives. Had I had the queens, I could have done twice the packages pictured. I ended up ditching my grafting attempts a...

lharder

Nice going Nordak. That looks like 6 packages full of bees? is that the end of bee selling for you or do you have more planned? How did you raise your queens? I'm just getting ready for the first round of queen rearing. I just added some empty frames in the brood nest of my boomer 3 year survivor an...

lharder

Its funny how too much regulation has painted biology into a corner. If one is too efficient about removing feral bees and treating, then nature has no way of finding a way through. I'm sure bad technique, inefficient treatment, lack of oversight has contributed to pockets of better bees in North Am...

lharder

As a general rule, most critters bees included have a dispersal stage as part of reproduction. As a rule, they do leave, but as usual in biology, its messy. Just like queens in general fly further than drones but not always. I guess it depends what scout bees find further afield. If they find nothi...

lharder

Nordak wrote:
SiWolKe wrote:Anyone here who maintains a thriving beeyard without filling the gaps with swarms?

*raises hand*

I had a couple swarm traps up last year with no success. I just dismantled them because I needed the bottom board and top cover. I guess I should put a few up anyway.

lharder

As a general rule, most critters bees included have a dispersal stage as part of reproduction. As a rule, they do leave, but as usual in biology, its messy. Just like queens in general fly further than drones but not always. I guess it depends what scout bees find further afield. If they find nothin...

lharder

My first year I thought I was damaging qc's when I placed them because of my poor return. But it was my setup instead. Much better returns the next year. If fact placing a qc early in the year increases its chance of success as you can put it right in the middle of the cluster where it will get look...

lharder

For myself, I would be selecting bees for queens that swarmed later in the build up cycle rather than earlier, and responded to some manipulation to delay swarming. So, if I had one hive that insisted on swarming in spite of my best efforts, I would let them requeen themselves, but wouldn't be takin...

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