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Honey Bee SwarmsSubmitted by farmer leaf on April 14, 2009 - 10:49am.
This is the season of honey bee swarms, and if you have seen a bee swarm (large ball of bees hanging from a tree branch) and live within 20-25 miles of our farm, we would appreciate you informing us. We can safely move the bees into a hive here on the Broadened Horizons Farm. Thank-you,
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Most people just get out the bee spray. They don't realize the importance of honey bees and our environment and some of our food sourses.
Thanks for the warning Rick.
BEFORE YOU SPRAY, things you need to know.
Honey bees have a life of there own, and you are not a part of it so their behavior is NOT to be taken personally.
Bees are about working. If you get in their way while they are working, you MIGHT get stung.
They are not to be feared, as they are very peaceful if left undisturbed. Sort of like good-natured folks. But get mixed up in their business and they will sure get riled up!
Call a professional beekeeper to remove the bees, not the pest control company.
We think so highly of the intrinsic value of these little workers that we gladly move them safely to a well situated bee yard.
-farmer leaf
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
If any wasp keepers are out there, let us know! :)
-- OneTahiti
to play in the garden as well. However, unlike the honeybee, they tend to be a bit more sensitive to human intrusion.
Only the queen wasp (check out her hairdo) survives the Winter, and that is who you see nosing around on these warm days looking for a good nesting site.
NOTE: Bees and wasps don't have an overview or big picture approach to life. If it looks good, quiet at the moment, then it could be home-even if you are already living there and use that space on a regular basis.
Some wasps make good garden predators, killing some notorious garden pests like hornworms. Others act as pollinators, such as the tiny (1 millimeter long) wasp that burrows into figs to pollinate the internal flower.
A shop vacuum works well to move the wasps outdoors and away from your residence. Suck them in, then open the top outside for release. They will be a bit dazed and dusty, but okay.
Thank-you.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
WhitesCreek recently printed a link to a site claiming, "Good news, the cause of honeybee colony collapse had been discovered by two Spanish scientists." They blamed the worldwide (agribusiness nations) problem on a recently discovered parasitic fungus, Noxema ceranae in two hives after eliminating other possible causes.
Call me simpleminded if you must, but to natural management beekeepers in the real natural world, this is pretty weak science. It is reductionist science taken to the absurd. I know enough about health and medicine to know parasitic anythings require a weakened host in order to get a stranglehold. The whole natural world paradigm is parasitic by its very nature. Humans have placed themselves at the top of the parasite food chain, but ironically, can in an unhealthy state, be brought to death by lowly perceived parasitic viruses.
No, the problem with the bees will not be deduced by following the same industrial / scientific logic that created factory reared chickens and eggs, mega-sized cattle feedlots, genetically modified organisms, DDT, and high fructose corn syrup. The systemic problem is much deeper than a single virus.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
Running out of food and causing population crashes is one of Mom Nature's ways of keeping things in balance. One of the worst things to have been done in the name of good was to provide lifesaving drugs to third world countries without simultaneously offering widespread access to family planning. I think that more people are dying badly now than before this type of intervention. Most cultures move to sustainable birthrates when given access to the resources. At some point we will limit the population on this planet. We can choose to do this while there are still remnants of Eden, or we can wait until "nature" simply doesn't exist anymore.
To answer the answerable question in your list of rhetoricals, If we were to eat healthy quantities and qualities, small scale and organic farming is quite capable of filling the needs of today's world. That calculation has been done. On the flip side, millions are currently starving in the midst of mass produced "looks like food but doesn't taste like food" food.
the planet"s ability to sustain us. That is why one can observe environmental resource collapses around the world. For example, trees stripped from the land for fuel such as in Haiti and in some African countries will lead to desertification and mass starvation. Overfishing the oceans and causing precipitous declines in world fisheries is an ominous trend that is being mirrored in clear-cut based forest extraction pressures (global).
Particularly regressive ideas about reproduction and family planning dictated by religious belief systems, and unsustainable birthrates seem to go hand in hand. As long as we think of the earth as being all about, and just about- humans, our overshoot will speed us toward a mass collapse. Organic farming cannot stop that process.
You can't keep increasing the number of cows on a set amount of pasture. If 20 cows are trying to live on 10 acres of land, they will eventually starve no matter how good the land.
It is socially and ecologically irresponsible for parents to birth large families in our current population situation. Family planning is not just a good idea, it is a necessity if we are to pull back from the brink of ecological collapse. While the earth can tolerate a few of us living way beyond our ecological means, it can't survive as a viable life sustaining planet if we all live that way.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
I think basic responsibility, and a society that shows its appreciation for it, would go far in keeping our numbers down. Allow people their two children, but after that, tax them more -- not less.
Instead of treating people who choose not to have children or organizations that emphasize sustainable numbers like paraiahs, embrace them.
Having too many people really is the biggest problem this planet faces. I'm shocked at how society refuses to face this.
Don't know quite how this thread went from swarms to saving the planet from over population but whatever. I used to keep bees. Moved my hives down to a friends farm in the valley. He bought ten additional hives (nukes)sp? from a reputable local dealer. Lost all ten of them in a year to CCD we believe. The only hive still going strong is one I gave him from the mountain. We're gonna split that sucker and I'm bringing one of them back. Bee keeping is fun as a hobby but, as bee's swarm and you catch them and make additional hives it turns into WORK. I'm gonna start letting them go. I think the honey bee will make it's comeback in the wild.
Creek
some of these discussion threads, but somehow they manage to circle around like a bee coming back to the hive.
I certainly encourage letting bees go wild. I also think that it is their best chance. We handle our bees as little as possible as they know a whole lot better how to manage themselves. My mentor advised me to step back and get out of their way. Learn from them (the bees) he said, humans have difficulty thinking like bees.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
We are thinking about establishing a few bee hives for the collection of honey. Any idea where we could obtain information on raising bees? for instance, where do you obtain those white bee hives? Any information is appreciated!
you need to make certain there is an available, non-toxic source of nectar for them. Where are you planning to locate the hives? What kind of vegetation is growing in the forage area?
The physical hive is the easy part, it's the occupants that have special needs.
I've used up my lunch time on this site, and now it's back to the fields for the rest of the day. I will answer your question in more depth after watching Frontline (PBS) tonight. Please answer the above questions in your post.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
I live on Swan Pond Circle on a near 40 acre row crop farm which has been converted into hay fields consisting of timothy and fescue and white clover as well as dry lots for our horses. There are many trees along the sides of the fields and an abundance of blackberries and muscedines (spelled?). On both sides of my property there are addituonal fields with one side with Emory River access.
Up toward the house, we will have a flower and vegetable garden.
Thoughts on bee hive establishment or reference to books/websites?
Are there any classes at the area colleges? Clubs?
Thanks for the info in advance!
SM
it doesn't sound like enough forage for more than a couple of hives. Honey bees can work in yellow sweet clover, but mostly leave white and crimson alone. Maple, wild cherry, willow, tulip poplar, sumac, blackberry, privet, brassica, dandelion, asters, sumac, and vetch are the usual local valley sources of nectar. Unless fields are grown up in blackberries and wildflowers, there is usually not too much suitable forage. The heaviest bloom and flow is spring and early summer, after that, especially if it turns dry, there is little honey produced.
A family sized vegetable garden usually can be easily handled by a small colony and is not a significant source of nectar. Remember, they have to store enough honey to get them through the winter and then produce enough for you to rob some honey without shortchanging them. A lot of flowers are pollinated by bumble bees because of the flower shape.
There are "backyard bee-raising" books available from Mother Earth News Bookstore and other sources. Try the local library.
Conventional beekeeping, especially that taught through the extension service is very dependent on chemical bee protection products (toxic chemicals), which I don't use. There is a lot that can go wrong when raising bees, so I would advise you to go carefully and learn as much as you can before starting. With bees, the learn as you go method is a recipe for failure. Maybe you can find an old beekeeper who can mentor you and would be willing to sell you a hive or two.
There are county bee associations that have meetings you could attend.
Bee Facts :
A worker bee lives six to eight weeks.
A worker bee visits about 100 flowers per trip and makes about 15 trips per day.
One worker bee produces 1/12 of a teaspon of honey in its' lifetime.
Bees visit 2 million flowers to produce a pound of honey.
Bees travel a total of 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey.
Bees travel at 15 mph and flap their wings 11,400 time per second.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
Bee Facts are amazing and I had no idea. It would be horrible to try to introduce bees and then allow them to starve due to mismanagment and my ignorance.
These facts are valued and I appreciate your taking time to share.
We have a lot of blackberries and areas grown up, coverts between the fields, but I will need to assess the available sources of nectar. And, we will rethink having goats eliminate the weeds as they will likely eliminate the natural sources of nectar for bees.
Kindest regards,
SM
See if you can find the Roane-Morgan Beekeepers Association. They run items of upcoming meetings every now and then in the local paper.
With all the disheartening news about honeybees dying off, my wife Cielo and I got to witness a rather unique occurrence this afternoon. But first some background.
A few days ago I was checking our one remaining hive, and I noticed that it was vigorously growing in size. Thinking they might soon be out of room and swarm, I moved a partially filled (with last year's honey) deep super (box) from a hive that froze this winter to this remaining hive. A couple of days later when I checked, I noticed a lot of drones returning to the hive. They had obviously been out flying in large numbers. My though-"must be new queen getting mated."
Two days ago, I noticed about 30 or so bees noisily buzzing about some empty supers I had stacked up under the back steps. Their flying and buzzing was notched up considerably from bees just out working. I had seen this before, but didn't realize that they were a scouting party looking for a new home. Yesterday they were back, so I went to the bee yard looking for a swarm hanging in the tree there. Nothing.
Before I went to bed last night, I made a mental note to make a bottom board and set up a hive body just in case. After some early morning garden work, I then constructed a new hive bottom board, painted it, and set it in place. I then went indoors for lunch.
After I ate, I was in the process of washing my dishes, and noticed out the window that there seemed to be an awful lot of bees buzzing around the yard. I went downstairs to check the hive. To my utter amazement and joy, thousands of bees were draped in a long beard from the new bottom board. By the hundreds they approached the entrance slot and entered the hive. I put on a bee veil and opened the hive. Bees were swarming over every surface. The air was full of buzzing bees in a high state of activity.
I sat and watched this activity for quite some time. These bees had done the dance of the swarming funnel, a truly spine tingling event. Then cleansed and energized, they had eventually come to this, their new home. No factory raised (artificially) bees, shipped in a box could ever match the energy and vigor of this swarm. This was the way nature intended them to spread and multiply. Within a couple of hours, they were inside and hard at work building comb and cleaning out the debris.
Where did the swarm come from? I checked our existing hive, and observed no change in numbers. We'll never know where they originated from, but we were grateful that they came to us on their own. Maybe they knew they would be safe to act naturally and would be free of toxic chemicals at the Broadened Horizons Organic Farm.
After it became dark, we moved the hive to the bee-yard and placed it upon a prepared stand next to the other hive. Hearing the two hives quietly humming with internal activity gave us a wonderful sense of being in tune.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.
Thank you for the positive and encouraging story. What good news! :)
-- OneTahiti
Link...
All the buzz on swarming, bee society, etc.
Pardon the pun.
In an earlier post, I told the story of how a swarm of bees flew to one of our empty hives and moved in as a colony. We received this natural world gift with much gratitude. Then yesterday, while cutting hay near our bee yard, I saw our biggest (most bees) hive swarm out of their hive and up into the big and old hackberry tree that shelters the beehives. They were out of reach, even on an extension ladder. I rejected the idea of cutting the large branch they were hanging from, as inappropriate treatment for this wonderful old tree.
I set out some empty hives, hoping to attract bee scouts and perhaps lure the swarm back. Five hours after they swarmed, it became real still up in the tree-the moment for them to move had arrived. The bee ball quickly came apart as the bees took to flight. With much buzzing and flying about, the swarm began to slowly drift west southwest toward the house and one of our empty hives.
I stood and watched, even walked under them a bit as they were moving so slowly. Then I stopped and watched this bee cloud continue its WSW drift, and it soon became apparent, they were heading off the farm.
I watched them slowly fade off toward the distant tree line. I was disappointed that they were leaving, but I was also mindful that this created another "wild" hive that might increase the native density and survival of bees in our area. And for us the bottom line is "What is best for the bees?"
This was a great lesson in the circle of give and take. In truth, who can really own a bee? They serve their own nature, and while we may manage them for awhile, ultimately, they operate without regard to human needs.
Living and teaching Earth friendly sustainable agricultural practices.