#harphives — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #harphives, aggregated by home.social.
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Today is the first time I've thought the yellow hive is going to recover in a while. Their lack of ability to settle on a queen really set them back but while checking the camera feed this morning there is a marked increase in traffic. If they keep up the good work, their chances of surviving winter are greatly improved. With the brood breaks in yellow, their mite levels are at zero per 300 bees, same as blue. Blue wasn't brood breaks, they're just assholes.
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@billinkc I had to hand-pollinate my orchard, about 50 blossoms on each tree. But it paid off, I have first time fruit on several trees. The bees were few in May when there were blossoms, overly cold and windy on the ocean. Bees are a lot of work. Before you consider it, check out the work history and disappointments and costs of being a beekeeper. My friend Brian went all in. His hashtag is #HarpHives
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I've got something odd happening in the backyard. There are bees scouting the swarm box. It's not an unheard of occurrence but awfully late in the season and poor weather for swarming.
I meant to take that box down a few weeks ago. It will be funny if my laziness and procrastinating ends up catching us a swarm.
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The girls down south (our bees) are doing well. Yellow hive continues to rebuild and is actually getting a bit honey bound so I pulled the feeder. The sunflower field is providing enough now. The pollen is ultra yellow and pretty neat. The blue hive continues to be a power house and stung me on the back of the neck through my suit and shirt. They're assholes but productive and packing away sunflower honey.
The weather was nice too. Overall a good inspection.
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Good morning Mastodon, TGIF! For whatever reason this week seemed to drag on. We have tickets to a 70mm screening of "The Odyssey" this weekend, hopefully it lives up to the hype. Other than that it's been busy as usual. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's hive inspections. The 7-10 acres of sunflowers are blooming. If you watch the first part of the video, even at 6:50am and 65°F, blue is foraging hard.
Have a good day!
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We're going into our 3rd hour of watching Ellie compete in the National Cheerleaders Association cheer camp at Lindenwood University. The life of a girl dad.
I'll be inspecting our bees after lunch. Looking forward to seeing what's going on there.
Have a good rest of your morning!
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The kid is still sleeping so I checked on the bees remotely. The girls look to be moving in an orderly manner, handling the heat dome so far. Adjusting the sun shade over the hives was a great call IMO.
Well, I guess I'll continue my audiobook until Ellie gets up and moving.
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The blue hive has quite the morning beard. This damn humidity is brutal!
I'm now preparing for my 5-6 hour drive.
Have a wonderful Sunday!
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Hello everyone, how's it going? I spent two hours in my bee suit in 90% humidity. Now that I'm showered, I'm doing much better. 🥵 I removed the empty queen cage and saw eggs and young larvae on a couple frames so at least they're starting back up. Time will tell if it takes, we're 3 or 4 queens in on this colony between raising their own and buying. I also put their sun shade over the hives. The upcoming heat dome has me worried. 😳
Have a wonderful Saturday!
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It's always neat to watch the new generation of foragers doing their orientation flights.
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The bees had a stinky nocturnal visitor. 🦨 🐝 I didn't see any damage in the camera but will be looking around later when I uncap the new queen.
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Melissa shot some video of me clearing the super of bees for transferring. It shows my process. Some people use bee board escapes, or scent boards (a smell repellent to bees on felt) or blowers. I like the simple shake and brush method.
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We ended up harvesting 28 pounds of honey today. A respectable amount for an 8 frame medium super. The moisture content over several samples after spinning everything was closer to 15-16%. Much better for storage.
Now to clean up and start passing it out to the circling vultures. Everyone wants some of my bees sweet honey. 🍯🐝 The girls did very good this box!
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Liquid gold! The moisture content was 17-17.2% so perfectly shelf stable for years.
Final moisture level was around 15-16% after spinning everything and taking multiple readings.
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It's always super to bring home a full super! Of honey that is. 🍯 Tomorrow we spin.
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The blue hive has a little beard tonight. 🐝🐝🐝 The population is at a peak, probably 40,000 - 50,000 bees, maybe more. I'm adding another super tomorrow, the basswood and mimosa trees are in full bloom and the girls are hitting them hard.
The yellow is still struggling but we're hoping another new queen of the specific Carniolan stock they are might help. Time will tell.
Have a good night! 🌃
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The bees are back to tease me again... My swarm box is always a bridesmaid, never a bride. 😕
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We had a good new / bad news day with the bees. The yellow hive has no brood nor could I spot the new queen introduced. There's a good population still so Melissa and I discussed it and decided to get another queen but from a different supplier. Maybe we'll have better luck. Now the blue hive on the other hand is booming and I almost threw out my back pulling the super. It should be capped by next weekend. 🍯🐝
We're definitely adding another hive or two next year. 🐝🐝
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Hello everyone, hope you're doing well! We went down to the apiary today to install a sun shade and put on the fully vented covers. From the angle it's hard to tell but the shade extends past the hives about a foot on each side. It's to block the intense afternoon sun. I prefer full sun most of the day to keep pests like small hive beetles at bay. Oh and the new queen is out of her cage.
Well it's time for a shower and lunch.
Have a wonderful afternoon!
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The swarm box is seeing some serious interest. First time in a while.
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A hawk landed on one of the hives a little while ago. The bee yard is surrounded by nature, so we share the space.
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Some pictures from Saturday's hive inspection, blue specifically. It was packed with bees, very tight brood patterns and good stores. In the two middle pictures, drone brood sticking out further than the workers is visible. The 3rd picture has a frame with a large honey store in an upper corner.
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I had a longer queen install video to share but it was too big for Mastodon. It's only 42 seconds but high quality video takes up too much space. Then I remembered I have a PeerTube channel so I posted it there. At 00:31 in the video you can see a bee cleaning the cage with it's proboscis or tongue.
I'm not talking in it so that might be a plus for some. 😉
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I've been up since four and running around all day. Drove to the bee yard, then back home, to the beekeeping store, back home, back to the bee yard to be caught in a downpour, back home, then back to the bee yard to install the queen finally. My fun hobby is becoming much more though I was warned by several veteran beekeepers in advance. 🤦🏼♂️
Their advice, get more hive to have more resources to prop up other hives.
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We had to buy a new queen for one hive. They had requeened themselves and she was laying eggs but I guess something happened to her. I couldn't find a queen or larvae during today's inspection so I was lucky enough to secure one from Isabee's, with varroa resistance. When picking it up several other beekeepers told me it had been a rough spring for them too, and they all have way more experience, so I guess I'm not doing anything wrong. 🤷🏼♂️
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I put some fresh foundations in two more honey supers. They will probably not be needed for another week or two but better to have them ready and not need them, than to need them and not have them ready. The girls in the blue hive were kicking butt in their super so maybe they'll surprise me. Once all these foundations are drawn with wax I'll use my spacer to run 7 frames for fat comb.
Have a pleasant evening! 🌆
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I really enjoy watching the girls on the webcam. Sounds a bit dirty but the bees don't mind. 😁
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I was just informed the farmer adjacent to my bee yard planted 10 acres of sunflowers a week ago. A major plus for the HarpHives Apiary! Sunflowers bloom late in the summer and it's pollen is a natural medicine to bees that can treat gut issues. Apparently the honey is tasty too but that's about third or fourth on my list of pros, the overwintering aspects is what I care most about. Sunflowers will provided great nourishment for the bees.
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Hello everyone. How's it going? Business as usual here though after work tonight I have a two hour beekeeping class. All book learning basically but I like to have all the knowledge on a subject I can so the $85 for (4) two hour classes seemed fair. Each class covers a different topic at the various steps of the season. Hopefully these thunderstorms here stop before I'm heading out.
Have a great rest of your afternoon!
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I had some really good news in the apiary today. One of my nucs balled (killed) their queen in the 1st week and create 9 queen cells. I culled 7 and crossed my fingers, hoping for the best. Part of my goal in being self sustainable is letting strong colonies raise their own queens. These guys stung me 4 times the first day, they're pretty scrappy.
Today I found a lovely set of eggs and larvae, so they were very successful! I've been stressing out for weeks.