"Limitation is the mother of good management", Michael Evanari
Location: Southwestern Oregon (Jackson County), Zone 7
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
It's time to get positive about negative thinking -Art Donnelly
"When there is no life in the soil it is just dirt."
"MagicDave"
nancy sutton wrote:Clifford, beautiful hive. Question... do you put a condenser box in your roof? If you do, can you describe it's dimensions and contents?
Pobably a dumb question, but it seems that it is one of the advantages of the Warre hive.
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
Clifford Reinke wrote:
nancy sutton wrote:Clifford, beautiful hive. Question... do you put a condenser box in your roof? If you do, can you describe it's dimensions and contents?
Pobably a dumb question, but it seems that it is one of the advantages of the Warre hive.
I'm very new to bees. I don't even know about condenser boxes, do I need one??? I do have a 1/4" cut piece of plywood that fits directly on top of the top bars in case I get condensation drips from the metal roof.
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
Cynndara Morgan wrote:OK. I looked over a few pages on Warre's method and Perone's concerns. Neither seems too terribly off to me, but neither really seems to mandate that I junk all my woodenware, either.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:Basically, Perone says not to feed bees sugar, and not to rip off more honey than they can spare.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:Meds, well, my ex struggled with those and with the varroa, and I've read a bit of the alternative literature. The natural hive structure looks like it might be useful with the varroa; the logic is similar to the people who claim that using small-cell starter comb encourages a more natural comb size that doesn't leave the varroa room to grow. Tracheal mites were never much of a problem for us and mint works just fine on them. I wasn't too keen on the terramycin patties every spring, I was intending to "wait and see" if there really was a need for them as the ex never really settled that issue.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:All that said, the Warre system requires lifting the ENTIRE COLONY up to place new supers on the bottom. Being under five feet and over fifty, that just ain't gonna fly for me.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:I can use a stepladder to get up and place a couple of shallow honey supers; we used one or two deeps for the brood area, which would only be disturbed if the ex was trying to mess with the queens. Swarming and supercession was a problem for us; it's better to intentionally place a young queen in an old hive than suddenly find the colony going queenless when you're unprepared. But, that's an issue the ex never really solved on a systematic basis, just tried to deal with as it came up.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:Looking at these references, I do remember a vague impression that colonies given two full, deep boxes as brood area ("doubles") seemed to do better than his sources were telling him they ought to, and were some of his best.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:And, uh, given what the mice did to the frames and comb that were left in those boxes, those were a dead loss anyway. I recall that it takes bees a good deal of time and effort to make comb when you rather would like if they were socking away honey. But if it saves me a couple hundred dollars at the outset, I might do best to let the girls do it their own way. Especially if that lets them incorporate their own defense strategies.
Cynndara Morgan wrote:Are any of you raising bees in Appalachia?
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
tel jetson wrote:supersedure is also rarely an issue. if a new queen fails for some reason, a colony that is allowed plenty of brood can easily create an emergency queen.
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
Cynndara Morgan wrote:And considering that swarm/supersedure season is in May/June in my neck of the woods, during which the Monsoon inevitably brings a two-week period of constant rain at temps of about 50, that could have been some of the problem right there.
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)
Cynndara Morgan wrote:Even somebody like myself who's never had a serious allergic reaction to bees in fifty years should keep emergency Epi on hand in case the unpredictable happens. Unless they are likely to have a deadly reaction to Epi.
find religion! church
kiva! hyvä! iloinen! pikkumaatila
get stung! beehives
be hospitable! host-a-hive
be antisocial! facespace
I think he's gonna try to grab my monkey. Do we have a monkey outfit for this tiny ad?
Willow Feeder Movie Kickstarter is happening now!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/willow-feeders
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