About Beekeeping
Tree Trap Outs
On occasion there will be a colony of bees in a tree that need to be removed. It may be that the tree has fallen, or is too near a home, or needs to be cut down. It my opinion, a tree trap out is never completely successful as the queen will refuse to leave. Typically unless you cut the tree open, which tears up the comb and often kills lots of bees, you will simply catch all of the foragers and weaken the hive such that it can not survive.
Building Boxes
Being a beekeeper also often means you are frugal by nature and tend to make do, or find unusual items to fit a need rather than pay for manufactured item (and pay shipping) in order to save money. Having a table saw sure makes building your own brood boxes and supers real tempting. I build some, and I buy some, it just depends on whether I have the time available to build them. When I make them it is important and sometimes difficult to find decent straight #2 pine at the local lumber yards. Secondly, I have to buy enough lumber to make atleast 8 boxes in order to be cost effective.
Honeybee Swarms
A bee swarm is the natural reproduction method of honey bees. When conditions are right, typically in the spring, a colony will select an egg and feed it extra royal jelly so that it begins to grow as a queen with working ovaries. This takes a few weeks. Right before the new queen emerges, the old queen and a sizable chunk of the colony leaves to go find a new home. So in essence, one just became two. This group of bees fly a short distance away and settle down to take a break and let the scout bees go look around for a suitable place to move into as their new home.
Vacuum Box
Here is my version of a vacuum box. I used two old medium boxes, two old inner covers, some screen and some scrap pieces of 3/4 x 3/4 wood. One box is the capture box, the other one mates up to it and is the vacuum side and storage for hoses when not in use.The plexiglass on the capture box slides in and out of 3 sides of an old inner cover that I glued and nailed to the capture box.
Wax Melting
My first wax melter was just an old cooler that I didn’t like because it couldn’t keep ice for two days. So I unscrewed the top and tossed it. I used a plastic ice cream bucket with screen on top for a while but I couldn’t process much at a time. I bought a small tin cookie pan at a garage sale for .10 cents,(I actually bought 3) and cut open 2 inches in the middle on one end for the wax to flow out. I placed some screen across the top of the pan and crimped it with my fingers. Because the pan had a raised edge, it created a gap under the screen – made it easier for the wax to drop out and run down. I used another garage sale cheapie bread loaf pan and put fine screen across it to catch small debris as it filled up and made a wax brick.
Fun Bee Facts
Honey bees must visit some 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey. Honey bees fly about 55,000 miles to bring in enough nectar to make one pound of honey. About one ounce of honey would fuel a honey bee’s flight around the world. Honey bees have been producing honey from flowering plants for about 10-20 million years. The average honey bee worker makes 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. Honey bees are the only insects that produce food for humans.