Any Bee keepers in here?

Wasn't our bees, but that really sucks. What a mess.

 

Swarm catch. After half a dozen failed attempts at shaking them down i finally went up there and just cut the top off and carried it down.

 

Nice work! That couldn't have been too easy.

 

"Ok kids. Get back in the truck. Daddy gonna shake the bees again"

 

black locust just about to start blooming here. this hive is chock full of bees. come on girls!

 

Looks great CR Im going to harvest on Friday Im hoping for somewhere around 100lbs.

 

Set about 600 supers today to stop swarming. Should be a good honey crop this year! Going to pull some honey tomorrow.

 

600 supers, thats disgusting! is it cool to work that many hives and do you still enjoy it? gotta be a site to see in person with a good flow on and all them bees.

 

nope. very strong flow here right now. i mentioned that the BL should be blooming now as i saw some in yards starting to open. this may be another couple of weeks as the tulip poplars just blossomed yesterday! perhaps the BL i saw was some ornamental variety. this year is running way late for me.
i am trying to get away from feeding (sugar water i assume you are reffering to) all together unless absolutly necessary. trying to leave them enough stores to do what they need and also save some frames of honey to help in the winter if needed or boost new hives. there is an argument that syrup is not good for thier guts. and then there is the hassle of it. i am also trying to transition to foundationless. shall see how that goes...
are yours still taking the feed?

 

by super do you mean honey super? or hive body (likely deep)? if honey super, you dont want to be feeding because then they will put sugar water where you want to be harvesting honey from. you probably mean hive body since IIRC this is a new hive from package bees, in which case you are doing fine. you should have all pretty white comb now!
"CRAZY!" pollen is great. bees loaded down with nectar you may notice as having trouble landing gracefully at the entrance. sometimes they will fall short and have to get up and try it again. often you will also see them coming back to the hives in "waves" of bees as well, like a dozen or so all at the same time and then a pause and then another wave.

 

anybody ever do a trap-out? came across some old pics i thought i would share from one i did in 2012.

 

Never done that looks pretty cool though

 

Dave its one way to extract bees that have taken up residence somewhere they dont belong. Basically you find all the possible entrances and exits and seal them up but one on which you place a one way entrance.

 

yeah so the intent is to have the returning bees move into the hive body placed near that cone since they cannot get back into thier own hive. after a period of time when most of the remaining brood has emerged the queen will realize that there is not any resources coming back into her hive. she will then leave with the remaining nurse bees and hopefully set up residence in the now established hivebody next to the cone. at this point you can remove the cone and the bees will actaully go back into the original hive to clean up remaining honey and pollen while returning to the hive body. kind of a long process. i visited this location (north side of warehouse that backed up to train tracks) a total of five times between 27MAY and 13JUL. this was successful for me. i did not get into the block to remove the empty comb. just sealed off where they were going in next to the pipe. no problems since.