On this Thanksgiving weekend (in Canada), I’m thankful I’m not a male honey bee.
Canadian Thanksgiving Day is the traditional time of year when drones are expelled from honey bee hives, pestered to leave until they die, though I’ve seen drones kicked out of the hive as early as August.
I can now add wild roses to my casual list of honey bee friendly flowers in Newfoundland.
I know many beekeepers who feed their bees sugar syrup in the fall and stop feeding after the first frost.
We got our first hit of heavy frost this morning. If I followed hard and fast beekeeping rules, I would stop feeding now.
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Honey bees poop on cars and nobody ever talks about it. We’re all too busy idealising beekeepers to notice it. But they do. My bees poop all over my neighbours’ cars in the spring after holding it in all winter. Cars, clothes hanging on the line, living room windows — they all take a hit, and it’s not always easy to clean off. Furthermore, not everybody likes it, especially in suburban areas where people often demand that their tax dollars protect them from having to deal with things like bee poop. So look out.
Here’s a video that shows how I clean bee poop off my car. (If this video doesn’t change the course of Western Civilisation, I don’t know what will.) I get up to go to work and the cold dew on the car somehow seems to lift the poop right off the car, poop that is normally super-glued to anything it touches. I simply wipe it off. If I have to get up early from time to time to wipe the bee poop off my neighbours’ cars, well, that’s what good neighbours do.
Winter is a good time to learn about beekeeping before taking the plunge. The Beekeeper’s Handbook might be the best guide to beekeeping I’ve come across. I only recently picked it up because I kept hearing how if there’s one book new beekeepers should have, this is the one. I’m not getting paid to say this, but I second that recommendation.
Every time I get stung, after I’m done cursing, my first thought is usually, “I deserved that.”
Here’s a less-than-5-minute video of me extracting some honey outdoors, something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone new at this beekeeping foolishness. (Cut down from a 15-minute video.) The video works as a review of the Maxant 3100p extractor which cost me $1400 (Canadian) after taxes and shipping a few years ago. Spoiler alert: The 9-frame extractor does the job, but the legs that come with it are useless. Don’t even bother with them. The base of the extractor needs to be bolted down to something unmovable and secure to operate properly and safely.
So I pulled out my honey extractor and used it to whip some honey out of about six or seven medium frames. The honey wasn’t completely cured. That is, it wasn’t completely capped and some of the nectar was still floating around fancy and loose and therefore, technically, it wasn’t honey. But it was (and is) technically delicious, so who cares? Not me. I don’t sell it for public consumption, but I eat it all the time and so do my friends. It’s probably not a bad honey for making mead.
Here’s a 15-minute video that shows how the whole thing played out (and a less-than-5-minute version for those who want to cut to the chase):
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I’ve always heard about how honey bees won’t draw comb on plastic foundation, but I didn’t experience it in a big way until this summer. I had three nucs set up in deeps that I wanted to expand into medium supers because I want to try on the all-medium-super beekeeping game and see if I like it because I know I don’t like lifting 40kg deeps full of honey (about 100 pounds). If I was a seniorish citizen with back, hip or leg problems, or just a regular human being who wasn’t in the mood for any heavy lifting in their beekeeping, I’d consider switching to all shallow supers. For now, though, I’ll see how it goes with mediums.
Waxless plastic foundation and a foundationless section the bees had no problem building on.
I’ve been told by people with a better eye for flowers than me that this is likely a variant of Elderberry, probably Sambucus canadensis.
Elderberry, Sambucus canadensis (August 20th, 2019, Portugal Cove, NL.)
My honey bees seem to like it, though I didn’t get a photo of a honey bee on it in this series of photos.
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