Author Topic: Only a beekeeping forum would understand my excitment over this phone call (Read 26069 times)

Yankee11 · « **Reply #40 on:** July 07, 2014, 11:10:37 am »

yes it is.

This hive has a ton of bees in it and they are sitting next to fields of soybeans. I put a super with pulled comb above the excluder because I bet they make honey between now and when the goldenrod starts to bloom.

Although I may rethink this and remove the super and put some feed on them and force them to get those 10 new frame drawn out so I can get the old 10 out. Would be nice going into winter as a double deep all new.

Yankee11 · « **Reply #41 on:** July 07, 2014, 02:19:07 pm »

I feel better now. This should help them pull those 10 new foundations quickly.

apisbees · « **Reply #42 on:** July 07, 2014, 05:55:09 pm »

With going back often to move the others hives over you can keep an eye on them but watch that they don't backfill all the comb in the brood box with nectar. If they have a good flow with lots of bees they can do both. They will draw out in the frames in the brood box to get rid of the bare foundation and give the queen more space to lay, as well as store in the honey super above.

tmrschessie · « **Reply #43 on:** July 07, 2014, 07:18:57 pm »

Chapter one looks like a nice read....now on to chapter two...Thanks for this post. Very interesting. Tom

Jen · « **Reply #44 on:** July 08, 2014, 12:39:56 am »

Reply 38 ~ That Is An Awesome Picture. All these hive just reek history

apisbees · « **Reply #45 on:** July 08, 2014, 01:41:56 pm »

Quote

Reply 38 ~ That Is An Awesome Picture. All these hive just reek history

A history of neglect and abuse. The bees are going to need therapeutic counseling for the next 20 years.
It is a good thing they have the Yankee11 doctor working on their case now.

barry42001 · « **Reply #46 on:** July 08, 2014, 03:07:56 pm »

Third pic looks like silk or wax moth larvae strings between top bars of frames?

Jen · « **Reply #47 on:** July 08, 2014, 03:09:57 pm »

Apis- "A history of neglect and abuse. The bees are going to need therapeutic counseling for the next 20 years.
It is a good thing they have the Yankee11 doctor working on their case now.

That might be the case Apis, these bees just might have abandonment issues, poor self esteem, tossed into street to survive... I could just cry...

But maybe, years ago, the owner of these hives died... and her/his bees were not figured into the equation ~sniff~

Yankee11 · « **Reply #48 on:** July 08, 2014, 10:27:24 pm »

Barry,

If your talking about those things inside the box, they were wires from the wired wax foundation. They were all like that, I don't know why they were all sticking out like that. It was multiple frames.

I ended up clipping them all off, they were bugging me.

apisbees · « **Reply #49 on:** July 09, 2014, 01:22:11 am »

The exposed wires result when the comb gets eaten off by mice or distroide by wax moths. New bees move in and the old disteoyed combs ger stripped off and rebuilt. But once the comb is removed The crimp in the wire causes it to curve out but the bees build the comb straight.

Sent from my LG-P500h using Tapatalk 2

LazyBkpr · « **Reply #50 on:** July 09, 2014, 10:13:21 am »

Fantastic pics and story here.....

My luck has not been nearly as good as yours with old hives. Tha large majority of older/abandoned hives I have dealt with were a complete MESS to deal with.. Separating the brood frames took some major surgery to accomplish. I have high hopes each of the resurections you do will be as straight forward as the first one!
Keep the story rolling, and especially those Pictures.. really enjoying this one Yank!
Scott

Yankee11 · « **Reply #51 on:** July 17, 2014, 06:50:29 pm »

OK,
Finally got some time to get back in abandoned yard. First things first. I got to meet with the lady that owns the land. She said a couple of guys asked her
husband to set up the bee yard out there. She said since then both brothers as well as her husband have passed away. She does not their names or where they were from.

I asked her how long ago and she said "probably close to 20 years ago"

She said she was so excited to hear that there were still some of those hives still alive and was very happy that we were going to take them over.

She also said in the spring time there are always swarms every where. Said I could put traps up and she would call me whenever she saw one from now on. I want to go looking in the woods for bee trees when I get a chance :-)

LazyBkpr · « **Reply #52 on:** July 17, 2014, 06:53:09 pm »

Oh YEAH! The proverbial HONEY HOLE has found YOU.. I am John Deere GREEN with envy!!

Yankee11 · « **Reply #53 on:** July 17, 2014, 07:09:19 pm »

Here we go with pictures.

These are hives number 2, 3 and 4. Very bad shape. Rotten wood, ants and termites.

It was easier to just take the sides off instead of trying to removes frames from the top.

Found the queen and caged her, she was actually on one of the side boards we removed at the very first.

We released her when we were done. Thats her walking out of the left side of the cage.

Yankee11 · « **Reply #54 on:** July 17, 2014, 07:23:46 pm »

Used 2 frames of brood and this one put together. And 1 frame of honey/pollen. All other deep frames were culled and replaced with new.

The shallow super was full of capped honey. I checkerboarded the shallow capped frames in between pulled empty medium frames and sat the mediums on top.

New home. There were a glob of bees on the ground under front entrance. I put a put a piece of wood in the middle of them up to the entrance and they crawled up it.

Yankee11 · « **Reply #55 on:** July 17, 2014, 07:33:17 pm »

#3.

This one is a whopper.

Same story, side boards were rotten and shallow super was full of capped Honey. Check out these brood frames. All 10 were this way.

Did not see the queen in this one but I feel good we got here in ok.

LazyBkpr · « **Reply #56 on:** July 17, 2014, 07:39:28 pm »

HOLY Smokes Yank.. You REALLY needed to vid this... There went 20 minutes looking at the pictures... I hope you notice I didnt say a WASTED 20 minutes..

That looks like WORK, if you can consider sorting a buried treasure work... Absolutely fantastic! Enjoying this completely!!

Yankee11 · « **Reply #57 on:** July 17, 2014, 07:49:04 pm »

#4

Notice the nuc in this picture? Here is the story on this one. We opened it up and had a decent amount of bees. As we went through it we found no brood, no larvae and now eggs. But they did not act queenless. We looked and looked. So finally we just decided to shake them on the ground. After we had everything picked up and were leaving I noticed they were all balled up on the ground where the old hive was. I went over and was looking through the bees.

Yep, you guessed it. There was a queen walking around. I yelled my partner to bring me a cage. When he got there I had her on a stick and she flew. I told him lets just stand here for a bit. After about a minute I saw her on the ground. Put her in a cage a rubberbanded her to a frame and put her inside the nuc. Sat the nuc on the ground for the night.

I went back out this morning and took a frame of brood from hive number 3 and put in a frame of honey. I released her. I think they will stay.

I decided to start me a burn pile onsite instead of carrying all this old wood back to my house and getting my hives all stirred up.

So here is a before and after picture up till now. 3 hives left to go.

apisbees · « **Reply #58 on:** July 17, 2014, 09:34:47 pm »

Hive # 3 looks good the comb has not been torn down and rebuilt like it has bees in most the other hives. Itr amazes me how well comb strands up when it has bees on it continuity. out of all the hives posted so far this one looks like it has always had bees in it and never got over run with wax moths or the wax eaten by mice. It looks good what you are doing and it looks like some nice queen stock may come out of this project.

tbonekel · « **Reply #59 on:** July 17, 2014, 10:41:17 pm »

I wonder how old that honey is? It looks very aged! Did you try it? Maybe it's like a fine wine. Looks like an awesome time!