I wanted to sign up for the new beekeeping trend, because a) honey b) heard the beekeeper people are cool but then I found out my next door neighbor is deadly allergic and decided that we were too close (we own a half acre) to be attracting tons of bees to the area.
This is awesome ā Iāve been thinking about getting into beekeeping, but hadnāt heard about this approach. Iām curious as to why you only pulled 4 of the 24 frames ā is there something behind that ratio?
Not reallyāhoney just has things filtered out of it commercially, not added in. (No need to add preservatives to something that lasts thousands of years on its ownā¦) I mean, itās less likely to be Chinese honey, but I wonder if you donāt have better control over what might be in the honey of commercial beehives planted in tandem with agriculture just because you can verify what the neighbors are using more definitively than in a suburbā¦ but probably nothing to worry about.
Does anyone know anything that compliments the flavor of chestnut honey? I find it alarmingly unfamiliar but I have a cute jar sitting aroundā¦ Anyway, dark color, dark flavor, from Germany.
i want to hear more of this reasonable debate. iām thinking of starting a hive next year. markās post was great. backwards beekeepers are great. they advocate for wild bees that are better able to take care of themselves. not pets. YES itās all about a healthy hive, but iām skeptical that more output is a sign of health. for instance, pumped up milk output from a cow or higher yield from a cornfield is usually a sign that something unhealthy and unsustainable is happening.
As a beekeeper then, youāre aware of that old saying that begins with āYou can attract more bees with honeyā¦ā
Beekeeping is a learning process and for many, a lifelong passion. The local beekeepers tell me it can also be heartbreaking. Before you accuse (in a self-satisfied and arrogant tone) Mark of harm, perhaps you could generously delve into your wealth of beekeeping wisdom and ask some useful questions or offer a few pointers.
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The difference in honey colors from year to year is interesting. It indicates a major shift in the flowers that bees are harvesting honey from, which indicates a strong shift in ecology from the previous year. Did you have significantly more (or less) rain than last year?
Central Minnesota was very dry (like it was last year), and so the goldenrod bloomed strongly in the fall. That makes honey a very bright yellow. Three years ago we had a wet summer, the purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) bloomed strongly, and our honey at a greenish tinge (rather like motor oil) and a magnificent flavor.
Which is the larger part of the reason your honey is so dark. It is tainted with the feces of bee babies.
Uhhh, what about last yearās harvest? He didnāt say he did anything differently.
And thatās my problem: the city limits end at my backyard fence. Iām in Pasadena. My cock-loving neighbors are in unincorporated Altadena. Damn them.
all roosters are chickens, but not all chickens are roosters. (a rooster (cock) is a male chicken, a hen is a female chicken)
in most suburban towns and/or cities, roosters are not allowed due to their loud crowing.
my neighbors have two hens and the mild clucking noises they make are adorable, when audible (right next to the fence)
If you want to be the resident pedant, prove to me that roosters arenāt actually the devilās work. If you can manage that, I may believe theyāre indeed related to chickens, er, hens.
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Just curious, not a bee expert; how do you know he used the ābrood combā.
Experience. The comb pictured is self-evidently brood comb.
If heās using 4 out of 24 combs, thereās hardly a need?
If his hive only has 24 combs, I expect thereās not going to be any other choice. The brood nest will occupy this entire shoebox ābeehiveā, leaving no room for them to store honey outside of the brood nest. An unfortunate situation, for both the bees, and the beekeeper.
Sadly, such mismanagement is what passes for ānaturalā beekeeping these days.
Is every dark honey full of bee poo?
Of course not, but thereās no indication this is a varietal honey. Given that heā using brood comb, the cause of the dark color is clear.
Always thought the colour was more to do with the pollen used.
Honey comes from nectar, not pollen - Although in the case of brood comb that has been crushed, there will be excessive pollen in it as well. A net nutritional benefit, but at the cost of tainting the flavor of the honey.
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backwards beekeepers are great.
They certainly have their own way, and I donāt entirely disagree with it. The difference is that their leaders have a deep understanding, which enables them to practice their own flavor of beekeeping in a nuanced and mindful manner.
Merely mimicking their practices, without the accompanying understanding, however, is not beekeeping. The resulting negligence inconveniences other beekeepers, through spreading disease, and inconveniences neighbors through the generation of swarms. And I wouldnāt consider it bee-friendly either.
YES itās all about a healthy hive, but iām skeptical that more output is a sign of health.
You are correct - But weāre not talking about ugly compromises made to push the bees past reasonable limits in the name of productivity. Weāre talking about bees in a managed context that have not been properly enabled to do what they compulsively do - Make honey.
What is considered a ānormalā harvest varies from area to area, and honey output is only one of many indicators of health. That being said, I can read this situation enough to know that these bees are sick, and being artificially limited from doing what they like to do.
Such practices, visited upon any other creature, would be considered neglect - But with bees, it is considered āNaturalā.
It is a disservice to bees, and a disservice to the concept of āNaturalā.
The primary reason to have roosters is actually to protect the chickens. So depending on where you live there might be very good reason to have them. Raccoons, foxes, coyotes, or even neighborhood dogs and cats might have been giving the chickens grief. On the other hand very few people with chickens seem to understand that this is the reason to have roosters so who knows.
Sweet. I get to use this again. I like my roosters like I like my chickens:
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Thereās hardly reason to assume the bees are unhealthy. Mark pretty specifically refers to only harvesting part of the honey and only doing so once a year. Presumably because he doesnāt need any more than a gallons worth of honey. Do you pull 10 gallons off just 4 frames in a single go? That doesnāt seem likely. The better comparison would be how much honey you pull from a single frame. A quick Google search tells me the rule of thumb is 1 quart per medium frame. Which is exactly how much Mark got. So if volume of honey is how were judging the health of the bees than these bees would be perfectly healthy.
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We donāt have foxes around here, but we have everything else. These neighbors keep their chickens in a coop, so I donāt think they use the rooster for protection. More likely for cockfighting. Or maybe they just feel their own neighbors donāt mind hearing a rooster crowing at 3:45 am since our houses are a generous 20 or 30 feet apart.
My dad told me that when he was a kid, his family kept their rooster(s) in a coop with a very, very low ceiling at night. The bird couldnāt comfortably stretch his neck out to crow, so heād stay quiet all night until somebody took him out in the morning, whereupon heād catch up on all his backlogged cockadoodling. Anecdotal anecdote is anecdotal; I donāt know if this really reliably works.
The coop is immaterial if something wants to eat the birds itāll get in. Or as my uncle learned tear the birds apart while still alive in an attempt to pull them through the wire. But in all likely hood they just think the rooster is pretty. Which is a shame as theyāre nasty, violent, serial rapists. My mother still has scars from childhood attempts to collect eggs without penning the rooster first. I remember having to carry a large stick for protection when venturing into my grandfatherās backyard. And then there was the time my uncleās rooster hate fucked his best chicken to death and he found it still going to town on the corpse hours later.
According to science*, the crowing of a rooster is enough to scare the devil away. Other known alternatives are the ringing of a church bell and thunder.
*by science I of course mean Lithuanian mythology.
heh. sorry, i guess i missed your sarcasm in your previous post.
