TBH Bee Keepers

[LloydMcCoy]

If it wasn’t 6 Hrs, I’d be all over it

Can stay the weekend and hog hunt too


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[txbassnaholic]

Masters, i'm in year 4 of beekeeping...question, you do not use supers? you use deeps in place of your supers?

[txbassnaholic]

gotta watch the shady area where you keep your hives. My wife and I did that when we first started beekeeping and had a tough fight with hive beetles. Lost a couple of hives to them. We found that if you keep the hives in direct sunlight, it gets too warm in the hive for the beetles. Since we have changed to a sunny area, our beetle problem as been very few.

[lovemylegacy]

Ok whats the difference between a Deep and a Super?

Well, I answered my own question.

A Super is around 5-6inches deep, a Deep is the same size as a Brood box or similar in size. Didn't know that. I have usually seen, heard a Deep labeled as a Super.

[MASTERS]

I’ve got a hive in the bottom of a camper in spur TX. Trailer Has a false floor that can be unscrewed from underneath to access. Anyone who wants to rescue this hive can do so. This is the year to get them as they will not be here next year no matter what. They are massive A-holes and we are tired of getting stung for nothing. Pm me if you want them


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lmao, some of the meanest bees I ever caught were in a popup camper....

[TreeDaddy]

Question for Masters.....

What do you do with honey left over from winter?

Checked my 3 hives last week and i have about 3 supers full of honey

Should I spin it down? Try to store it and save for a possible summer dearth?

thanks,

bill

[MASTERS]

Masters, i'm in year 4 of beekeeping...question, you do not use supers? you use deeps in place of your supers?

Shallow or medium drawn comb is useless to me and my bees 8 months out

of the year. I do not use shallow or medium supers for that very reason. For

the bees, the most valuable thing they make is drawn comb. Takes 8-12

pounds of honey to draw out one pound of wax. I make a fair amount of

splits each year, so after extracting the honey from the deep frames I either

freeze the drawn comb wet or use the back when I make splits directly after

puling all my honey and there is a surplus of bees in each hive. It puts the

splits a little ahead for when we get a little nectar flow early fall. Each deep

super nets about 56-58 pounds of honey which I store in 5 gallon buckets till

I pour it in 1 pound bottles to label and sell. During a heavy spring nectar

flow the bees will draw and fill 10 deep frames with nectar in about 5-7

days. Id hate to have to keep up with them using medium or shallow supers.

you'd risk them shrinking the brood pattern with nectar and having them

swarm in between checks about every 5 days. Just my 2 cents, I'm not a

commercial beekeeper so take it for what its worth.

[tdwinklr]

My hives the other day were pretty active so I was pretty happy with that, coming out of winter slowly. I want to insure my queens are still there because I'm wanting to split these hives when the numbers get back up. Should I split them according to their population or when the pollen starts coming in? I can't really find anyone that has told me for certain when.
Don't want to screw this up for the year. (Am in NE Texas) thx

[MASTERS]

Question for Masters.....

What do you do with honey left over from winter?

Checked my 3 hives last week and i have about 3 supers full of honey

Should I spin it down? Try to store it and save for a possible summer dearth?

thanks,

bill

I winter 90% of my bees in double deeps. The top brood box will be all

honey and the bottom will be 5-6 frames of honey. If they still have excess

honey right now, just give it a minute. When the pollen from dandelion,

texas groundsel and agarita start blooming heavier (its been in my area for

a week 10 days now) the bees will expand the brood pattern to collect as

much pollen as they can off of that. The only downfall is there is very little

nectar available to forage on so the bees will uncap and consume their

available honey to get by until the rest of the nectar producing flowers catch

up and start blooming. That's just my opinion so don't take it for the gospel.

[LloydMcCoy]

lmao, some of the meanest bees I ever caught were in a popup camper....

These are nowhere near that mean come get em. [emoji6]


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[MASTERS]

My hives the other day were pretty active so I was pretty happy with that, coming out of winter slowly. I want to insure my queens are still there because I'm wanting to split these hives when the numbers get back up. Should I split them according to their population or when the pollen starts coming in? I can't really find anyone that has told me for certain when. Don't want to screw this up for the year. (Am in NE Texas) thx

Its kinda of and open ended subject that depends on your area. Pollen in my

area of Wilson County has been steadily picking up for the past

2 weeks. Very little nectar, and with the risk of a few more cold days

knocking the pollen producers back I fed my first round of pollen sub today

and will feed syrup to some of the bigger hives that are getting lighter than

Id like towards the first of next week. A hive that has 5-8 deep frames of

brood could end up consuming near all of its stored honey in 10 days to two

weeks, shrink the brood pattern back down to a couple of frames and

wasted all that effort on their part, be low on food and not have enough

bees to keep the moths and beetles fended off. When the bees are rolling I

like to keep them rolling till I make the first splits and the nectar flow picks

up and they really take off. My hives are starting to produce a fair amount of

drones in the burr comb. I like to make my first splits of the year around the

second to third week of March. I do not make walk away splits as the feral

bee population in my area is pretty hot. Thus meaning I have to wait for the

first shipment of queens bred far outside of the Africanized zone to arrive

about the third week of March. In my area its still about 2 weeks early to

make walkaway splits (If that's what you are planning on doing).

[MASTERS]

I own ten acres and will be getting bees very soon. The spot I have picked out to place the boxes is almost directly under some large power lines. A friend that has a family history with bee keeping mentioned that it could potentially bother the bees. Any one have any experience with bees being bothered by over head power lines?

I have transmission lines within 80 yards of one of my bee yards that I keep about 15-18 hives at, and never had them interfere with any of my bee keeping.

[MASTERS]

Masters, you are the man

Hahaha, when you think you've got them all figured out, they WILL humble you!


Keeping bees will certainly make you be more in tune with range conditions in your area. Dictating the bees response to certain range conditions is the hard part. Its the million dollar question so to speak....

[MASTERS]

gotta watch the shady area where you keep your hives. My wife and I did that when we first started beekeeping and had a tough fight with hive beetles. Lost a couple of hives to them. We found that if you keep the hives in direct sunlight, it gets too warm in the hive for the beetles. Since we have changed to a sunny area, our beetle problem as been very few.

Im not saying what Im about to mention pertains to 100% of the situations

such as you mentioned about losing a hive to small hive beetles, but in my

experience small hive beetles(SHB) and wax moths are usually a secondary

problem. The primary problem is usually varroa related. By the time a hive

is weakened to the point by varroa to be able to succumb to SHB or wax

moths, beeks often fail to have noticed the primary problem that caused the

secondary problem and just chalk the loss up to the secondary problem. I've

had to learn the hard way how devastating varroa can be to a bee yard if

you tend to ignore it or think it doesn't exist.

[MASTERS]

Giving them a hand up this morning....