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~ Another source of information are a group of
beekeepers who want to share their knowledge and experience with you. Hands
on classes offered on a regular basis in several New York locations,
including on the VT/NY border in Granville, NY. www.HoneybeeLives.org.
~ We
found a bee hive built at the base of a tree near our brook where the
water had eroded some of the dirt under the tree. This isn't exactly
natural beekeeping, but it is bees in nature. It seems that this was
probably a swarm from a beekeepers hive, though as far as I know it
didn't come from any of my hives (which are only about 100 feet away).
I'll try to measure the cells - maybe this was a feral colony. Anyway, check it out ! I sure wish there had been a live colony when we found it.
~ Are
you thinking about making your own skep so that you'll be ready for
swarm season? Swarms, apparently, like the shape and eventual smell of
a natural skep. For more information please visit BeeData, The art and mystery of skep making.
~ Interesting
info: "Bees use 8-9 kilos of honey and pollen to produce one kilo of
wax. Wax is produced by eight abdominal glands turning out tiny 0.2 mm
specks. The building of 80,000 cells takes 80,000 hours of work and
991,000 specks of wax." (Éric Tourneret).
I believe that there are around 87,000 cells in one 10 frame Langstroth
deep super. Hence, 8,000 cells (just less than one, two-sided
Langstroth deep frame) takes 8,000 hours of work. Wow.
Cell Size
~ What effect on mites might result in reducing the cell size on our
frames? BeeSource has a large number of historical articles on the
subject (dated from 1887 to 2000) that can be read here: http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/celldata.htm as well as some more recent information http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/
It
seems that we should study up and consider changing what we've got. It
could take a few years to move our hives from larger cell foundation to
smaller, but do we think it will help counter CCD or the ability of our
honey bees to naturally deal with mites?
Dee Lusby discusses how she would recommend the regression of foundation
(scroll down her article for domesticated colonies), but I think we'd
need to heed her advise to the letter. And what about when we need to
buy new bees or queens?
Betterbee and Brushy Mountain
are now offering crimp-wired foundation with a 4.9mm cell size for deep
brood chambers but most bees will need to be regressed to the smaller
cell size. How do we figure out what the comb size is on our existing
foundation? Betterbee says it could be anywhere between 5.1 and 5.6 mm.
http://www.honeybeeworld.com/misc/cellcount.htm
More later ...
VSH bees, winter hardy cross breeds and splitting your own hives
I recently decided that Gib's advise about splitting our own strong
hives, and maybe even using Vermont bred Queens, made sense. Here's
more info on Splitting Your Hives.
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