Beekeeping

[Briar Lee]

Over last weekend I discovered the renters of my home place had two beehive boxes out.



I promised to buy a a dozen pounds of their first production, so I’ll have bragging rights having natural honey from flowering plants near Dunnegan Missouri, only two bee miles away.

Dunnegan, Missouri - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Does anyone else keep bees?

After watching my renter and his family work on the hives, I’ve decided honey at ten dollars a pound is cheap, compared to what it takes to keep bees.

We all should support our local beekeepers.

 

[mortonbriar]

I usually do get a pot when I see a local honey for sale, I love the variety of flavours available...

 

[username]

Not me as I don’t have land don’t think the neighbors would appreciate it and would probably call a exterminator on my bees. But if I ever had a big plot of land it’s a hobby I’d like to do.

 

[OzPiper]

I luuuv honey
I actively seek out honey whenever I'm on a trip

City rooftop honey is very popular in Oz.
The number of city parks and suburban gardens ensure a constant source for the bees
Its great to boast that this honey came from THAT building down the road

I'm lucky I have a friend who brings me honey from his farm regularly

 

[Servant King]

 

[chilllucky]

We keep bees on our land in southern Wisconsin. I built top bar hives, which produce less honey, but happier bees I'm told. With between 1-4 hives active in any year, we still get more honey than we can use.

 

[Pipeoff]

I have several hives on my hobby farm to pollenate a large apple grove. The varietal honey produced is very labor intensive but sells out every year. A hive has an average of 50,000 bees, worker bees travel as much as 3 miles to produce 5 gal. They actually only have a life span of 10 days , replaced by the queen. Interestingly all of the process is done in dark within the hive. Honey has many health benefit’s and nothing will spoil same no refrig. Is needed. Most of the honey sold in chain stores is cut with corn syrup because honey crystallizes mistaken by some as spoilage so only buy direct raw type. One of the major problems for me is that I am highly allergic to stings a must suit up but the smoke from the pipe calms them down big time, wish it worked the same for wife !

 

[Briar Lee]

One thing I’ve wondered about my home place renter’s honey is where the bees will get pollen.

For the last 15 years my Amish renter has cleaned my place up to where there’s no more brush, briars, or brambles. For five miles around my place the Amish have cut, dozed and sprayed and planted grass until the Dunnegan area looks like Kansas with tons of hardwood trees.

The Amish are neat. What burning every year doesn’t clean up they don’t spare chemicals.



It’s not all open. There is still lots of standing hardwood timber, mainly oak.



How good is acorn honey?.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Trees actually put off many blooms, but we just don't usually see them, but we see the pollen when it covers our cars and trucks.
I make mead, so I try to deal with mostly my local beekeepers. I never kept bees myself, because my kids were always deathly allergic.
I always talk with beekeepers at art shows, selling their honey. I offer to buy all of their honey at whatever price they sell it for at these shows. And, I cannot get a one of them to take me up on it. They are all usually like, "but then we would have nothing to sell at these shows." This always baffles me. It's obviously not the money they want. They just want to stand behind a table at these shows.

To give me the 100 pounds or so that I use for mead a year, I use a bulk honey supplier that keeps bees at blueberry farms. From blueberry bees, I can make a mead that tastes almost like a bourbon.

 

[Briar Lee]

I like to tell my kids I’m older than weed eaters and Round Up and fescue.

Fifty or sixty years ago, instead of Amish the majority of my neighbors were old time independent Scottish Christians (Cambellites).

I’m 65, and about as young as anybody that can still remember fox hounds in full cry at night chasing a fox. The Flemington Fox Hunt closed about 1970, because there weren’t any more foxes for the hounds to chase.

The old Campbelittes were pious, hardworking, and clean like the Amish but they only burned the pastures every year, and let the fence rows go wild. They also planted row crops. And we danced and sang and played a lot of musical instruments, and wore good clothes and drove nice cars.

If my father had known about chemical sprays, and good weed eaters, and fescue, he’d have had our place as slick as the Amish do.

 

[Pipeoff]

Trees actually put off many blooms, but we just don't usually see them, but we see the pollen when it covers our cars and trucks.
I make mead, so I try to deal with mostly my local beekeepers. I never kept bees myself, because my kids were always deathly allergic.
I always talk with beekeepers at art shows, selling their honey. I offer to buy all of their honey at whatever price they sell it for at these shows. And, I cannot get a one of them to take me up on it. They are all usually like, "but then we would have nothing to sell at these shows." This always baffles me. It's obviously not the money they want. They just want to stand behind a table at these shows.

To give me the 100 pounds or so that I use for mead a year, I use a bulk honey supplier that keeps bees at blueberry farms. From blueberry bees, I can make a mead that tastes almost like a bourbon.

I can’t sell in bulk because of limited supply and would be unfair to loyal customers who are addicted to the apple blossom varietal produced. One made a mistake only one time when.an a Amish man waved some $100 bills in my face. Must confess I distilled some but so many good old boys started to hang around that I got paranoid about the tax man when helos hovered low overhead.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Must confess I distilled some but so many good old boys started to hang around that I got paranoid about the tax man when helos hovered low overhead.

Yeh, I don't distill the mead, but it is possible. I just make the mead to about 18 APV, and then oak it for a couple of years. It doesn't have the "kick" a bourbon has, but it has the flavors.
I don't distill because my state actively persecutes bootleggers still. Doesn't even have to be revenuers. The local PD will get ya.

 

[Pipeoff]

One thing I’ve wondered about my home place renter’s honey is where the bees will get pollen.

For the last 15 years my Amish renter has cleaned my place up to where there’s no more brush, briars, or brambles. For five miles around my place the Amish have cut, dozed and sprayed and planted grass until the Dunnegan area looks like Kansas with tons of hardwood trees.

The Amish are neat. What burning every year doesn’t clean up they don’t spare chemicals.

View attachment 218444View attachment 218445View attachment 218446View attachment 218447

It’s not all open. There is still lots of standing hardwood timber, mainly oak.

View attachment 218448

How good is acorn honey?.

I admire the Amish in my home area, many rundown dairy farms have been transformed into a park like with no junk in the yard.

 

[Pipeoff]

Yeh, I don't distill the mead, but it is possible. I just make the mead to about 18 APV, and then oak it for a couple of years. It doesn't have the "kick" a bourbon has, but it has the flavors.
I don't distill because my state actively persecutes bootleggers still. Doesn't even have to be revenuers. The local PD will get ya.

No worry about the country cops around here, they were the first to show up for a free sample !

 

[SBC]

I've been keenly interested to build top bar hives like @chilllucky, because we're as interested in beeswax as honey, and TBHs produce vastly more wax by requiring bees to build their own combs (vs. giving them an artificial structure to work on). But the tradeoff is a more natural vs. commercial rate of honey production.

I currently live in WI's Northwoods, mainly coniferous forest, so I'm unsure how bees would fare here. I haven't tried it yet.

We're toying with a move to southern WI (also like chilllucky ... we should probably meet up sometime), and it probably makes more sense to try this there.

 

[woodsroad]

I've kept bees since 1991 or so. Always something new to learn from the girls. We're down to just the one hive right now, but there's a commercial beekeeper neighbor that I'm friends with who helps me out when the hive needs help.

Keep in mind that the honeybee is an invasive species on the American continent, and that keeping bees in man-made boxes is completely artificial. There is nothing natural or earthy-crunch-feel-good about it. In fact, the domestication of apis mellifera and our outsized dependency on it for food production has been achieved at the great cost to natural pollinator populations. Still, I love the little creatures.

Tell your renters to get foundation in those frames. Top bar hives just get really messy and (in my opinion) are more prone to swarming and mites. And make sure that they are medicating. Due to the proliferation of honeybee diseases and parasites it is now impossible to keep bees without a disciplined regimen of testing and medication. We had several hives that successfully requeened themselves and stayed mite/disease-free for years in our rural area, until more neighbors started hobby beekeeping and didn't properly test and treat the bees they brought up as packages from the south. Remember: beekeeping is a completely artificial pursuit, so any fantasy of "natural" beekeeping is just that: a fantasy.