Wild bees are not affected by the verora mite, tracael mite or hive beetles. they are affected badly by pesticides and habitat loss. Honey bees are not native to N America and thus can never be considered wild. there are escapee feral bees but no wild ones.
Well, on further inspection, I've found out my niece is slightly allergic to insect stings. Not very serious, but she does swell up sometimes bad enough that she needs trip to the doctor for a shot. So, no large colonies of stinging insects. Guess I just gotta keep buying my honey at the store. Though I do have a healthy population of bumble bees with the occasional honey bee thrown in from time to time. Next year I think I'll buy one of those tubes of mason bees as well.
Sorry I haven't gotten back to this--I've either been teaching or in my garden. 80+ degrees here in eastern SoDak yesterday. Got some Parmex carrots in--a 50' double row.
Looked again--there are 4 hives. They were abandoned by their keeper (though I do still have some contact with her--maybe I can get whatever equipment she has not sold). I'm thinking I should get in there and check things out, but I want to know what I'm doing when I lift the lid. I do know about wearing white, tucking pants into socks, hat and veil, etc. I just don't what do do when I get in there. They weren't wrapped for winter or anything, but it has been a really mild one. Still, this is South Dakota...
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I did pick up two used books--one written in the 70s (I think it's the old version of the Roger Morse book) and The Hive and the Honeybee, written, I think, in the 40s or 50s. From what the newer book says, not much has changed in beekeeping over the last 100 years. But I don't assume to know.
I recently purchased a Nova vhs tape called "Tales from the hive." This is excellent. I also took a beekeeping class from the local botanic gardens. There are two ways to keep bees. Learn as you go or learn first then go. Sounds like you are in the first category. Beekeeping for Dummies is a good book. All the tapes and books are at Amazon. They even have tapes on beekeeping itself, but I have not seen them. Learning from a teacher was a lot less intimidating than just reading books. Good luck!
I have more time to read (in the evenings after my son has gone to bed) than to dive in and do. The reading is really to get an idea if I can do it before I really try to do anything. I just don't want them to die or swarm and leave before I get a chance to figure out how to help them stay. :x
Sometimes I wish they'd quit asking me to teach so many classes and just let me garden! But I suppose it's nice to pay the mortgage for now...
Yes, you can keep bees in the city. Here in the great city of Chicago we have hives in the roof garden on top of City Hall, right in the heart of the business section (the Loop)!
I've also seen bee hives in the urban demonstration garden outside the Garfield Park Conservatory on the west side of the city. The honey produced by the City Hall and Conservatory bees is packaged and sold through gift shops, as are products made from the beeswax.
Last year I had a small colony of bees in my urban back yard. They were living in the ground near my compost bins, and it was fascinating to watch them come and go. They really seemed to enjoy the flowers on the raspberry canes. I sure hope they had a good winter and will be back to work as the weather warms!
- if possible, have the original owner or an experienced beekeeper there with you the first time to show you how to do things. It's sooooo much easier learning from a teacher that's present. Failing that...
- have your smoker lit and ready in case you need it. Sometimes early in the season the bees simply ignore you and you can do without any smoke. Too much can irritate them. If you find you need some smoke, blow a gentle puff or two in the entrance of the hive before you lift the lid. Then once you have the outer & inner covers off blow another puff or two over the tops of the frames.
- for the first part of the season (until late May or early June here in Zone 6) we check them every 2 weeks or so to make sure the queen is laying eggs. To do this you'll need to get into the brood chamber (usually the bottom super, but sometimes the bottom 2 supers). Pull out the frames one at a time and look in the cells for eggs. It's easiest to do on a sunny day with the sun behind you, shining over your shoulder into the cells. Eggs look like teensy weensy grains of rice and should be right smack at the bottom of the cell (on the side and part way down means it's a worker laying and they won't hatch since she's not fertile). Also look for larve in the various stages (curled up little white wormy-maggoty looking things in the bottom of the cells). If you can't see eggs but there's lots of tiny larva you're probably okay, but check the hive again in a week to make sure (eggs take 3 days to hatch). If the frame is thick with bees and you can't see in the cells, blow gently on them and they'll scatter to let you see the cells beneath.
- if you don't see any eggs at all, try to find the queen. She usually moves quick and will often be covered by worker bees. She's a bit bigger than the workers with a much longer abdomen. At first I confused the drones with the queen. Drones (the males) have huge eyes that pretty much touch at the to of their head. The workers and the queen don't.
- if you can't find either eggs or a queen, check the hive again in a week. If still no eggs or queen you'll likely need to "re-queen". An experienced beekeeper would be better to explain this since I'm not sure about it.
- the other thing we'll start checking for in late-May/early June is queen cells. This is often an early indicator that the hive is going to swarm. You've got around 2 weeks from the time the queen cell is sealed before the new queen hatches and the hive swarms, so once you start seeing queen cells, check the hives every week.
- The queen cells hang vertically off the face of the frame, often off to the side or off the bottom (where the existing queen won't find them). When you see them scrape them off. Try to discover why the hive wants to swarm. Ours were trying because we weren't giving them extra honey supers fast enough and they were running out of room. There's a "season" for swarming too. Usually about a month (June here) and then they give up.
Hope that helps a bit. We haven't cracked in to start checking for these things yet, it's still a bit to early here. Good luck!
"... one is nearer God's heart in a garden than any place else on earth."
Posts: 33 | Location: Zone 5, Southern Ontario | Registered: March 13, 2002
I am fascinated by bees and beekeeping, but I tend to have severe local reactions to insect bites, so I guess beekeeping is probably out for me too. (I react with huge swelling, redness, fever, and sometimes severe skin infections to the bites of ants, bees, mosquitoes, gnats, yellow-head flies, hornets & wasps, and non-venomous spiders.)
~ True grits, more grits, fish grits and collards. Life is good, where grits are swollar'd.
Posts: 355 | Location: zone 8b, MS | Registered: December 22, 2003
Guess I just gotta keep buying my honey at the store. Though I do have a healthy population of bumble bees with the occasional honey bee thrown in from time to time. Next year I think I'll buy one of those tubes of mason bees as well.
