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Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 1:28:46 PM

Phoenixpower

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Now, whilst of course people can talk about their views about bees...I actually mean more about bee keeping...as some folks know on the other side, I have plans on trying it out as it would also be very beneficial for the job I am doing...however, still have to wait with it until I know now where I will be moving to, but already figured out some homepages which show me where to get weekend seminars and further information in that matter etc.

ANYHOW; as I read from:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Iamsemisweet
I am venturing into bee keeping.

I decided not to hijack that thread and start a new one instead.

So, any folks on here who kept or keep bees or would like to? or any other stories?

E.g. a friend recently emailed me: "We have a school here that has a beehive indoors. Yup.! The beehive is right in the middle of the grade school library room.! It was designed and built by a local bee keeper and it has glass walls on two sides so the kids can actually watch the bees working inside the hive. The bees have a special small entrance from the outside that is high up on a wall of the building. They come in thru a large tube and down into the hive. It's an educational tool that the teachers use here to show kids just how important bees are to the world and what they do for us."

So I was just wondering if anyone has any experience in that matter and can share some ideas and advice

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 1:41:39 PM

LaTigresse

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We have two hives in the orchard and a new development they built in a hollow of an old tree. I don't actually do anything with them, other than provide them a home, out of the winter winds, so they take care of my fruit trees for me.

One thing I have discovered, skunks LOVE to eat bees. They will sneak up to the hive at night and scratch on it. When the workers investigate, the skunk eats them. With that, the bees are on their own.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 1:58:11 PM

Phoenixpower

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
One thing I have discovered, skunks LOVE to eat bees. They will sneak up to the hive at night and scratch on it. When the workers investigate, the skunk eats them.

Shame for the bees, but didn't know that, thanks for sharing

I tried to convince a colleague to join me when the time is right that I attend such courses, but sadly she won't...she only said "I learned a long time ago not to shake my butt"

My aim simply would be, apart from the fact that it interests me personally, to also involve the kids with it, with which I will be working again, once I am back at work. E.g. at my previous employer one house has goats (and these critters knew how to freak me out when they escaped and then danced in front of my door

) and another house now started to have their own fish pond where they sell smoked fish at the yearly summer fest from that childrens village...and so if I would be working there again (or alternatively at a different employer) I simply think it would be great to include bees and doing the honey, with the help from the kids...I recently got some books about it via ebay and its fascinating from me what I read in those

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 1:59:35 PM

ChatteParfaitt

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Many moons ago I moved into a place right outside the french quarter that had not been occupied in several years. The kitchen floor was covered with dead bees, it turned out there was an active bee hive in the walls.

My dom at the time called a bee man, and he showed up on crutches. Turns out, the day before he got in the middle of a war between some bees and some wasps and fell off his ladder. You could tell he had been stung numerous times.

So the dom offers to help him (with zero previous experience mind you) with the bees. Being hippies, he used marijuana to smoke the bees. That's what you do, smoke the bees, which makes them groggy, and then move the hive, making sure you get the queen, the others will follow the queen.You get the fresh honey (yum).

Well it worked fine and the dom decided he had yet another sideline, which was helping out the bee man on occasion. This worked out fine until one time he came home covered in bee stings! The bees swarmed, and angry bees are.....bad.

Anyway, that was it for helping out the bee man, although he brought me fresh honey for a couple years after that, just b/c I liked it so much. A nice man, and crazy about bees.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 2:23:56 PM

Phoenixpower

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Cool, thanks for sharing ChatteParfaitt (though not cool the falling down and being big time attacked by them).

It caught my interest when about 10 years ago I read electricity meters as a part time job and then read it at a previous colleague from the police who gave me a jar of honey from his own bee hives.

If I go into it I am likely to contact him to learn more about it from him (if he still does it, but even if he doesn't, it would still be great to talk to him about it...though, have to rely on my memory where he was living as I am not entirely sure about his surname anymore after all those years

and with a cop you have to be careful that he DOES remember you and doesn't think you are a criminal trying to talk him into anything

). ANYHOW when he so unexpectedly gave me that honey from his own bees it was the first time that I realised that you can do that stuff yourself, I simply never thought about it until then and over the last years my interest about that kept growing, in particular as I need to find new interests now with uni over and having more spare time again..after all...just knitting all the time ain't that exciting...and when you work with kids it is simply one of many ways how you can bring them the nature closer...

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 2:26:46 PM

LaTigresse

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I just remembered. Years ago, we took care of a house for a guy while he went off to California to take care of a parent. He was a beekeeper and had a thriving honey business. We used to help him. He would go out and get the frames and bring them up to the house. He had a heated knife thing that sliced the cap edges off the comb. Then we put it in a big round stainless thing with a motor that spun it around. drawing the honey out of the combs and down out the spigot. It went through a filter then we bottled it up and off to the market it went.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/21/2011 2:34:34 PM

Edwynn

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Phoenixpower

My aim simply would be, apart from the fact that it interests me personally, to also involve the kids with it, with which I will be working again, once I am back at work. E.g. at my previous employer one house has goats (and these critters knew how to freak me out when they escaped and then danced in front of my door ) and another house now started to have their own fish pond where they sell smoked fish at the yearly summer fest from that childrens village...and so if I would be working there again (or alternatively at a different employer) I simply think it would be great to include bees and doing the honey, with the help from the kids...I recently got some books about it via ebay and its fascinating from me what I read in those

That is an excellent plan, Phoenix.

Goats scare you more than bees, but you seem to be able to handle the situation in any regard. Pass that on to the children (die Kinder).

Goats are funny brats, and so are bees, except that bees are much easier to figure out. If you are digging out the honey, then you need a suit on. But aside from that, the kids can get fairly close to the hive with out any harm. I walk by this yellow jacket nest everyday, and not one sting from it, and yellow jackets are actually wasps, not bees, but they behave somewhat alike, but the wasps are more aggressive. They still don't care when I walk right by the nest.

Don't forget to take the kids to where the bees go to bring something back to the nest, that is, the flowers, etc.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/22/2011 5:24:43 AM

Phoenixpower

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse
He would go out and get the frames and bring them up to the house. He had a heated knife thing that sliced the cap edges off the comb. Then we put it in a big round stainless thing with a motor that spun it around. drawing the honey out of the combs and down out the spigot. It went through a filter then we bottled it up and off to the market it went.

Yep, in a similar way I have seen it, too.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/22/2011 5:43:09 AM

Phoenixpower

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

That is an excellent plan, Phoenix.

Goats scare you more than bees, but you seem to be able to handle the situation in any regard. Pass that on to the children (die Kinder).

Goats are funny brats, and so are bees, except that bees are much easier to figure out. If you are digging out the honey, then you need a suit on. But aside from that, the kids can get fairly close to the hive with out any harm. I walk by this yellow jacket nest everyday, and not one sting from it, and yellow jackets are actually wasps, not bees, but they behave somewhat alike, but the wasps are more aggressive. They still don't care when I walk right by the nest.

Don't forget to take the kids to where the bees go to bring something back to the nest, that is, the flowers, etc.

Thank you Edwynn,

but yes, bees and wasps never scared me, though I do have respect from hornets, and I simply think that implementing that into my work can teach the kids I work with more about the importance from nature and that bees aren't just evil creatures...

though for now I still have to wait until I know where I will be working...for example if I would go back to my previous employer then it would be no problem at all to implement it...but if I end up somewhere else then it might not fit into their system, which then means I can only implement it once I found my own place to live in which I am able to start it and then bring it closer to the kids from my place, which isn't quite the same as if it would be in the place where they are living.

Either way, I am looking forward to start that...as it is very exciting for me

I was thrilled when a colleague from my previous employer told me that a different house started to sell their own smoked fish at their yearly summer festival, cause IMO it simply shows a much better standard to sell stuff you produced yourself, than just to buy something to put it on the grill to sell it (though they are necessary too, to provide variety for the different visitors)...and so in such a setting being able to sell self made honey (amongst other stuff) would fit well to that view...

Anyhow, I will see....just hope to soon be able to get more into it

And I agree in regards to your mentioned flowers, thats again where the picture of the importance of nature gets clearer for kids. Most of the kids we work with are real trouble makers who are excluded from public school due to their behaviour, and who also often are heading towards a criminal career, but once you get them hooked into new things they can change a lot...and start to show that they do care...at least as long as you know to offer them opportunities where they can experience themselves, see results and achievements and not just set them on front of the TV all the time to just have your own peace...

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/22/2011 6:53:03 AM

LadyConstanze

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Great grandfather used to have bees and an orchard and loved his bees, as a child I sometimes got honey in the combs to such on, it was amazing even the wax tasted of honey. A cousin of mine in Italy has a big orchard and claims since he keeps bees the harvest is much better, he claims if you got aggressive bees, all you got to do is kill the queen, the hive then will raise a new queen and the whole hive mentality depends on the queen, if she's "friendly" the bees are not aggressive, but the most aggressive bees also tend to be the most productive ones, so it's a bit of a delicate balance.

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RE: Lets talk about bees - 6/22/2011 7:14:29 AM

AlwaysLisa

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I have no personal experience, however we have several organic honey farms nearby and I have picked their brain on occassion! Love bees, hate hornets, but I acknowledge their contribution to our gardens. I learned that the honey produced will have the flavor of whatever pollen the bees gather, orange blossoms, cherry, sage, etc... and that you can place hives in such a manner to assure the honey they produce will have the taste you wish. Making the bees work smart!

They had a program on recently about the plight of the honey bee's, working to solve the mysterious disease that is eradicating the population. They "think" it is a mutation of some form of parasite that is derived from the chemicals sprayed on crops, but last I heard they don't know for sure.

www.vanishingbees.com

Good luck on your new venture!

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