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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jun 12, 2023 8:28:36 GMT -5
Wayne, Is the early spring honey lighter and less flavorful than honey later on? I bought some local honey and it is real light colored and a lighter taste. It’s still good though. Yes, the darker the more flavor for the most part and better for you. This year the flow was so good we had to pull some honey to stop the hives getting what we call honey bound. They fill every cell up faster than the queen can lay and then the queen can't lay and they swarm. The black locust is a light color honey with floral flavor and little less sweet. More floral verses sweet. Now adding clover to the black locust is a winner. I pulled a little for the honey bound issue, but holding off to July for the big pull of honey. The last tree to bloom is the basswood trees and that is at the end of June. Most years the clover burns out some by mid to end of July. So typically, we pull 1st two weeks of July. I'm pulling the 3rd and 4th of July. Not all dark honey tastes the best. The fall ester flower tastes like stinky feet. Buckwheat is good, but unique flavor. If you have spring allergies the spring lighter is better for you. Fall allergies then the darker honey.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jun 16, 2023 13:51:43 GMT -5
I caught another swarm yesterday. Number 14. It was a very small one. About 1200 bees and a mated queen. 1st time catching a small swarm with mated queen. Usually, those micro small swarms are virgin queens. The pictures shows about half of the swarm. I had already scooped some up with my hand and dumped in the white nuc box.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jun 20, 2023 6:54:14 GMT -5
Yesterday, I picked up 12 Buckfast virgin queens. I had three virgins that emerged yesterday per one of my splits, so 15 virgin queens. I need 12 mated queens to replace the 12 production queens. Summer solstice queens seldom swarm the following spring. Each year, I will replace the 24 production hive queens. The cost was 55 minutes of driving back and forth. I went into the swarms that I caught last two months and took 15 frames of brood. Each 4 frame mating nuc has one brood frame of bees, one comb frame and two premier plastic foundation frames. I put each queen in a cage with a hole plugged with sugar fondant. The bees will eat the fondant to release the queens in couple days. Each one received a 1-1 sugar water using soda bottles. Yes, it was raining at the start to finish. I was off yesterday. imgur.com/N897rZRBuckfast Queens beeprofessor.com/buckfast-bees/
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 5, 2023 7:38:20 GMT -5
I pulled 11 deep honey boxes and 22 medium honey supers. I still have 7 more hives to check. My guess around 4 more deep honey boxes. A deep weights 55-60 pounds and medium around 40-45. I've been getting my workout. I've extracted a few boxes last night. This year so far I have filled 5 5-gallon buckets. Each weighing 60 pounds. I think I will get about 10 more buckets filled.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 10, 2023 7:24:19 GMT -5
I have all boxes extracted, but three. To date, I've extracted 13.75 bucket. I should be close to 15 buckets. Each bucket weighs 60 pounds. That puts this year at 900 pounds. Last years was 360 pounds. Each frame is honey wet after extracting the honey in the extractor. I put the frames back in the boxes and let the bees clean up the remaining wet boxes. Yesterday I put out 28 medium wet super boxes. Here is the feeding frenzy. imgur.com/8NMsctAYes, I had hundreds of bees land on me doing the walk around.
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Post by Woody Williams on Jul 10, 2023 8:12:36 GMT -5
WOW!
That’s a lot of honey!
What do you do with all of that ?
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 10, 2023 8:20:36 GMT -5
WOW! That’s a lot of honey! What do you do with all of that ? I sell it at whole sale at a few stores and I donate some to the inner city of Cincinnati. The demand is greater than what I can produce. I'm working on a new bottle label this week.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 17, 2023 6:23:50 GMT -5
I ended up with 15 buckets of honey. Each one weighing 60 pounds. Here are 13 of the buckets. I already bottled two buckets. High demand right now. I also picked up 8 free Caucasian virgin queen cells. The queens should emerge Wednesday to Thursday. I have them in an incubator at 93 degrees. I'm in the process of replacing 12 queens for next year. Summer Solstice and later queens don't swarm the following spring. I already have 3 mated Russian queens and 5 mated Buckfast Queens. I'm trying to get the best genetics from each breed. I have two Martha Carpenter mated queens saved for grafting next year. The other 12 productions hives will get replaced next April. I will graft new daughter queens from those two. I'm already planning for 2024. The beekeeping year starts in August. Now it's time to get them ready for winter so they go into spring not swarming and ready to store some honey.
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Post by saltydog on Jul 17, 2023 8:06:41 GMT -5
PM sent
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 18, 2023 6:44:17 GMT -5
Yesterday after work, I was checking the moisture level in the incubator and noticed one had emerged. In the next 2 hours 7 of the 8 emerged. One was dead. These queens emerged after 15 days verses the standard 17 days. The warm temperature speeded up the process. Here is a video of the Caucasian queen emerging from her cell. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeH-_7CU4VM
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 21, 2023 10:04:01 GMT -5
Next Tuesday the bee inspector will be here to check on mites and hive diseases. I'm currently treating for mites using Apivar strips so numbers hopefully are good. Most strips have been in for two week of the 6 weeks process. I will let you know what he finds or how many he checks.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Jul 25, 2023 12:17:20 GMT -5
The inspector was here this morning from 10 -12:30. He checked 4 on my 37 hives and zero (0) mites found. After 4 he know the rest where good. He peaked in two more hive to see if healthy and that's it. No testing. We kill around 300 bees per hive and count mites on the bottom of the clear container. My treatment method is working. The rest of the time we talked bee stuff.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 3, 2023 6:20:30 GMT -5
Here is my August picture of my apiary. It is almost setup for winter. I need to added 1.5 inch feeder shims for sugar blocks for over wintering. I'll add those in early October before the good deer hunting starts. That all extreme winter weather 4x8x.5 needs a straightening. Those two sheets are for the horizontal hive hiding behind the barn next to the one you can just see the left side of the horizontal hive behind the purple horizontal hive.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 15, 2023 12:48:54 GMT -5
I picked up a big new addition to the beekeeping. A pizza warmer. It will be used for queen rearing and to un-crystalize honey. It has temperature and humidity controls. For queen rearing the queen cells will be placed on trays in the warmer at 93 F degrees. This way I can separate the queens and mark paint each one with a small circle. This year it's red. The best part it was free and I only had to drive 15 minutes to pickup. I will place a small 2-4" box fan to move the air a little. I'll wiring it into the control circuit.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 16, 2023 6:25:38 GMT -5
I picked up a big new addition to the beekeeping. A pizza warmer. It will be used for queen rearing and to un-crystalize honey. It has temperature and humidity controls. For queen rearing the queen cells will be placed on trays in the warmer at 93 F degrees. This way I can separate the queens and mark paint each one with a small circle. This year it's red. The best part it was free and I only had to drive 15 minutes to pickup. I will place a small 2-4" box fan to move the air a little. I'll wiring it into the control circuit. It works and it already has a circulating fan. Now I need to find or make some bakers trays. I think I only need two trays for queen rearing.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 23, 2023 6:37:31 GMT -5
The early goldenrod is blooming and the common goldenrod will be in a week or two. The apiary (bee yard) will start smelling like butterscotch. Goldenrod nectar smells and tastes like butterscotch. For the 1st time I've put on three honey supers and hopefully get a few jars of it. There is one flower nectar that I don't want in the supers. Aster flower nectar smells and tastes like stinky feet. I saw some aster a few weeks ago which is very early, but none now. Most years aster blooms about half way to end of goldenrod blooms.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 24, 2023 6:46:07 GMT -5
Looks like there will be a big fall flow this year with the rain today. I'm going to need to add supers on most of the hives. Typically, we are taking boxes off since the hive size is decreasing. Not this year. I have 4 supers on 4 hives now. I can add to 7 more hives. Some might get two boxes. Nine of my hives where split into 18 hive stacked on top of each other and separated by a double screen board.
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Aug 31, 2023 11:43:37 GMT -5
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Post by Mack Apiary Bees on Sept 7, 2023 12:55:01 GMT -5
Mackabees (Mack Apiary Bees) September setup. Currently, I have 8 3-pound sugar block made. I need about 90 more and I have enough sugar for around 85 bricks. Sometime late October to December, I'll be putting 1.5 inch shims on the top boxes and placing two sugar blocks per hive on the frames. Nine of the hives are double hives with double screen boards. So lower and upper half each get a shim and two sugar bricks. I try to hold off until the last upper 50 day that is forecasted. It's about a half day (4 hours) of work. I will go fast. Open lid, apply shim add sugar bricks, add R6.5 insulation board on top and put wooden lid back on. I took this picture on the 1st. You can see how green the grass is. This is on the top ridge of the hill in full sun.
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Post by indianajoe on Sept 11, 2023 20:34:05 GMT -5
Aster flower nectar smells and tastes like stinky feet.
as one who often opens mouth ND inserts foot, I also know what stinky feet taste like. all jokes aside this is an intthread.
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