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Dandelion honey

Started by MOOTHEBOVINE [2534817] on in Food & Cooking.

10 replies · 93 views · thread synced · 9 days ago · View on torn.com
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  • Judge_Doom [2140277] · 6 likes ·
    [background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)] [/background] [image: us.123rf.com] If you can't already tell lol. There's nothing much more relaxing to me than caring for bees.
  • Judge_Doom [2140277] · 5 likes ·
    But taking honey from raised bees doesn't hurt them at all. Most beekeepers deal with 8 frame beehives because they are easier to handle. A good supply of honey for bees for the winter is a full 8 frame box …
  • Judge_Doom [2140277] · 3 likes ·
    A good supply of honey for bees for the winter is a full 8 frame box full of honey. This should be around 70 pounds of honey total. All honey that is collected for human consumption goes at the top …
Judge_Doom [2140277] · #2
But taking honey from raised bees doesn't hurt them at all. Most beekeepers deal with 8 frame beehives because they are easier to handle. A good supply of honey for bees for the winter is a full 8 frame box full of honey. This should be around 70 pounds of honey total. All honey that is collected for human consumption goes at the top of the hive in what is called the honey super. There is a grill that's put in between the main hive and the honey super so the queen cannot go up and lay eggs in the honey frames.

This ensures that your brood and your honey are separated when you go to extract honey. If you don't collect honey from your hive and don't maintain it. Then it will become overcrowded and you'll lose half your hive eventually due to overcrowding. When this happens the queen and workers will swarm and leave the hive to find a larger living area.

You will be left with some workers and drones in your hive. IF YOU'RE LUCY the remaining workers will try and make a new queen so the remaining bees can stay in your hive. But when there aren't many bees in the hive this makes it susceptible to moths ruining your comb, beetles invading your hive or hornets killing the remainder of the bees.

Honey bees are NOT native to North America. They were brought here from Europe. If it wasn't human intervention and apiaries. There would be no honey bees in the United States.
MOOTHEBOVINE [2534817] · #3 · edited
while some bee keepers may be responsible and look after their bees many don't and alot of the time to make sure the queen is inseminated they use artificial insemination which involves crushing some drones. Also the queen's wings are clipped so the bees don't form multiple colonies . Also during winter it is expensive to keep the bees Alive especially if their honey has been taken and replaced with nutrient deficient sugar syrup so to save money the keepers just cull the colony. And swarming is natural for bees to do .

Honey bees are invasive as you say and can damage native species so I prefer to make honey straight from flowers to protect the bees :)
Judge_Doom [2140277] · #4
The only time you should be using sugar water to feed your bees. Is when there is nothing blooming for the bees to get pollen or nectar from.

If you're VERY serious about bee keeping then having artificially inseminated queens is the best way to do it. This makes sure you get a strong queen that will have a good laying pattern and not be a aggressive little bitch. The overall mood of the hive ALL DEPENDS on your queen. If you have a short tempered queen. Then you're more than likely going to get a mob of bees coming at your face when you crack a hive open.

Drones don't matter at all really. They just stick around the hive and eat honey. The only time they are useful is for impregnating a queen. A lot of bee keepers will kill off their drones. They'll also use a special brush to kill the drone cells before they are able to hatch. You can tell a drone cell from a workers from it protruding from the comb further than the other brood cells. As I said, if you have a bunch of drones they will just eat all the honey during the winter months. They do not go and and forage for the hive and they do not have stingers to help protect the hive. They mate and eat and that's it.

I usually don't do anything with my hives during the winter time. I just make sure leading up to it that there are no empty frames or large spaces in my hives. This will make it harder for them to keep the hive warm enough for them to survive. They SHOULD all cluster in the center and stay warm during the winter months.

I like to deal more with Carnolian and Russian than I do Italian. The Russian ones are more mite resistant and better for winter months. The Carnolian are the best at winter keeping though.
Judge_Doom [2140277] · #7 · edited
A good supply of honey for bees for the winter is a full 8 frame box full of honey. This should be around 70 pounds of honey total. All honey that is collected for human consumption goes at the top of the hive in what is called the honey super. There is a grill that's put in between the main hive and the honey super so the queen cannot go up and lay eggs in the honey frames.

You usually wait 1-2 season before you extract honey from a newly established hive too. Sometimes you can get some from the first season if you have a VERY strong hive. But it's not likely that you will.

[background color=var(--bbc-body-bg-color)] [/background]
[image: www.beverlybees.com]

The top box labeled "medium super for honey." Is where the honey for human consumption will be stored. This might be a young hive since they only have one on the top of the hive. Like in this picture, keepers usually only use medium 8 frames for honey.
Because honey gets very heavy once it's capped and is hard to handle if you use a deep or a 10 frame. The metal slab in between the box labeled "queen excluder." Is what I was talking about that is used to keep the queen out of the top boxes so she doesn't lay brood in the honey you're collecting.

Did you know that there are usually 2-3 honey flows per year? This depends a lot on your area and how hardy the area is with things to get nectar from. Most people prefer spring honey because it's lighter in color and a lot of people say that fall honey has a more bitter taste and is usually darker, The difference in color and flavor is because of what's blooming during that time of year.

Once you have the honey you want to keep you remove the top honey super and any feeders you may have on top. You then can place a empty box with honey filled frames for the bees to last through the winter. You can also make protein patties for the winter months using cake icing. You CANNOT USE sugar water during the winter months because it will draw moisture and the bees will freeze and die.

I'm not sure what you mean by "they are still exploration and still hurts native breeds." In North America we don't have native honey bees. They were all brought here from Europe. Wild colonies of honey bees in the states would get there from someone's hive swarming on them and finding another place to colonize. Before honey bees it was beetles, bumble bees and carpenter bees that pollinated the United States.


Judge_Doom [2140277] · #10
Once you have the honey you want to keep you remove the top honey super and any feeders you may have on top.

That part I went back and re-read and that was something I put that is wrong. If you're collecting honey from a hive you should NEVER be feeding the bees a sugar-water mixture at the time. What you will be getting when you harvest your honey. Is going to be sugar water and not the honey you're wanting.

[image: www.mannlakeltd.com]

That is what a top feeder looks like. You can put a sugar-water mixture in those for bees to get started. There is mesh wire that goes up in the middle that the bees crawl on to get to it. I only ever use them when I get a new colony as a NUC.

A NUC is a way of receiving a new colony of bees. You can get them in a package a NUC or get swarm from somewhere.


Farmer's Almanac Definitions.


Package Bees: To order a package of bees, contact a local beekeeper supply or local beekeeping association. Most packages will contain a queen, multiple workers, and a feeder filled with sugar syrup. The bee supplier should provide you with information on installing the package bees into their new home and introducing the queen bee to the workers. She travels safely inside a special cage within your package of bees.

The most common method of queen introducing is using the indirect method. The worker bees become familiar with the new queen as they slowly eat their way through the food plug in her cage.

NUC - Nucleus Hive: You can also order a nucleus hive. A nucleus (commonly called a “nuc”) is a half-size colony. The most common size is a 5 frame nuc. You are receiving 5 frames of comb, bees, honey, a queen, and brood (baby bees). Purchasing a nuc gives you a jump start in colony growth. However, this approach is a bit riskier than package bees, as the honeycomb can spread pests and disease from the donor hive to your hive.