honeyhoneybeebee-blog

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

Hi there. Sorry for taking so long to reply. Not all older sources are out dated, and theres realitively good reliable information. People like to say theres no right or wrong way to keep bees as long as they are safe, healthy and productive. A lot of it comes down to personal preference of keeping style, thus the reason i think its important for the consumer to ask questions about the honey. However, my go to resource is the American Bee Journal. It can be found by going to dadant.com and navigating to the American Bee Journal link at the top of the home screen. It is typically a paid subscription but they do publish most of their articles online. Its a publication of many articles by an extremely varied pool of authors. They have everything from anecdotal stories to scientific articles thst come from recent developments from labs specizing in bees. Science has become very important to the beekeeping community since the 2006 colony collapse disorder disaster that we are still trying to overcome. For instance, we know now that bees can remember and recognize human faces, how cool is that?! Which to me helps people place bees into a more pet like category and could help them have compassion for them. The American Bee Journal is updated monthly with tons of new stuff to read.

As for my process for harvesting honey, i generally begin pulling honey towards the end of August. Where i live, i can remove supers at this time and there will still be nectar flow for at least the next month or so that the bees can use to help restock on. I have two boxes that are called the hive body. This is where the hive mainly congregates and where the queen lays her eggs. I leave any honey that is in the hive body for the bees. This year, all of my hives filled their entire top box full. One of these boxes weighs in the area of 70 pounds when filled with honey as i use "double deeps" for my hive body.

Anyway, the process when i actually begin pulling honey is as such: firstly, i gently "smoke" the hive by puffing two or three bellows full of smoke, usually smoldering hay, into the hive entrance. This allows me to remove the lid without desturbing them. It mimics a natural forest fire for a very short period of time, fhat causes the bees to gorge on honey to prepare to leave the hive in case of an emergency. This is done any time that one would like to inspect the hive as well, and believe me, its far less disruptive to the hive than not using it and having them behave as thiugh they are under attack by a bear.

Once ive made entry into ths hive, i use whats called a fume board (simply cloth stapled to a normal lid) and something called Bee Quick or Bee Go depending on the brand. It is an all natural and safe spray that is applied to the fume board and left on top of the hive for a few minutes. This causes the bees to leave the upper level boxes for the lower ones because simply, they just dont like the way it smells even though it actually smells good to humans. Go figure right?

After a few minutes have passed, i separate the upper most box, now mostly devoid of bees from the next box down. If theres anyone left in this box, they are gently brushed off with a large soft brush to return to the hive.

Once all the excess supers are removed, the hive is closed back up.

As for swarming, generally a hive swarms for one reason: because they have run out of space. Essentially, half of the bees will leave the old hive with their queen and find a new home (thus wing clipping, she cant leave if she cant fly). The other half of the bees will stay in the hive with the brood and will produce themselves a new queen. This is similar but not quite ths same as absconding where the entire hive leaves because they no longer find their home suitable. There are two humane methods for swam prevention. In the spring and early summer, splits can be made. This is done by moving half of the brood and bees into a new hive body. One hive keeps the old queen and the other hive can either be given a new queen or can be allowed to make their own. It should be noted that splits mimic the act of swarming which is perfectly natural and normal to bees. Its actually a form of asexual reproduction.

The other swarm management technique, is to simply add an extra box for them so they have plenty of room to grow.

I use sugar syrup basically as needed. It mostly depends on the size of you feeder and the size of your hive. Last year, i fed probably every three weeks or so since i had two new hives that needed some help even though i left all their honey stores. This year, i havent had to feed any because of a good nectar flow and good overwintering behavior from my hives. Its also been a realitively warm winter ao they arent using as much energy to warm the hive.

Yes, artificial insemination is actually on the rise. Its not an extremely highly practiced thing and is mostly only being used by labs and certain breeders so they can create strains with as many desirable traits as possible, like now disease resistance is the big one, with no variation or surprises. However there is a very selective class that will teach artificial insemination. It is a very delicate process that needs lots of experience so it's really not common place. And most breeders still would rather the queens mate the natural as the risks of this are far fewer and genetics can be controlled by having a specific apiary used for breeding that only allows drones from hives sith the qualities they are selecting for.

Sorry for the book but i jope it helps answer your questions!

Honey

The big honey question. Is it vegan?

I’m not sure. I know the definition of veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. Meat is cruelty, dairy is most certainly exploitation, but honey? What actually goes down with honey?

Ideally, you can get local honey from small scale beekeepers in your area who feed, house, and protect their bees, and take honey out when the hive starts to get full so they won’t swarm and mess up the colony balance. People eat it because the bees already have more than they need and it’s delicious, nutritious, and they don’t want to waste it. I fail to see how this scenario is exploitation or cruelty imo, as it’s a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and bees. Like taking care of pets because they kill bugs.

Now, I know this isn’t the case for wide scale honey producers, and I know that not every beekeeper is benevolent or responsible with their bees as well. So I’m not saying that honey is always vegan, but I do believe you can responsibly buy honey. I could be totally wrong about this though! I’d love to hear input from vegans on either side AND beekeepers. I feel like I could be more informed on this topic, it’d be great to discuss with a wide variety of people.

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

Hello, beekeeper here. I cant speak towards whether or not honey is vegan, however i would say that as a general rule small scale beekeepers see their hives as family (at least in my case) and do everything they can to take care of them. A hive generally needs to weigh 60 to 70 pounds at the end of the honey flow for winter. Surplus honey is produced very often depending on the colony. Hundreds of pounds can be produced by a single hive in a season. Honey harvest does not harm the hive if done properly. It may slightly disturb them for an hour or less at which point everything will go back to business as usual.

Feeding in the winter is done with sugar syrup generally made with white sugar and water and can be combined with supplements that are found in their natural honey and pollen substitutes. This generally occurs if the hive continued strongly through the winter and burned through their surplus or if the nectar flow was week that year.

As for harvest being detrimental to the environment, i havent seen any evidence of that. All we are doing is taking frames out of a hive. Bees are gently brushed off the honey to return to the hive. The only thing we use that could harm the environment is the electricity used to remove the honey, which we all use in our daily lives anyway.

Things like clipping the queens wings to prevent swarming have generally gone out of practice as it is veiwed as unethical and unnecessary. Science has proven that bees can feel pain in this situation and we really dont want to cause them any pain or harm, and swarming can be prevented by much more humain ways.

A lot of the information that is out there on bees is becoming out dated. Much more research has gone into the the workings and biology of the hive and bees and has helped the common keeper become more aware and many of us have abandoned practices that would harm our bees.

If you would like to buy honey and are concerned about how ethically it was produced, ask you local beekeeper how the honey was produced. How do you harvest the honey? What do you do in the winter to make sure they have enough food? Ect. I promise most of us would be happy to go into detail on our process. But, do not buy your honey of the store shelf. Sometimes, its not even actually honey.

As an aside, if you are worried that the beekeeper is exploiting the bees for profit off of honey sales, i can tell you honey rarely brings excess profit and the money gained goes directly back to bees in the form of medication, new homes, and anything else they may need.

Honey

The big honey question. Is it vegan?

I’m not sure. I know the definition of veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. Meat is cruelty, dairy is most certainly exploitation, but honey? What actually goes down with honey?

Ideally, you can get local honey from small scale beekeepers in your area who feed, house, and protect their bees, and take honey out when the hive starts to get full so they won’t swarm and mess up the colony balance. People eat it because the bees already have more than they need and it’s delicious, nutritious, and they don’t want to waste it. I fail to see how this scenario is exploitation or cruelty imo, as it’s a mutually beneficial relationship between humans and bees. Like taking care of pets because they kill bugs.

Now, I know this isn’t the case for wide scale honey producers, and I know that not every beekeeper is benevolent or responsible with their bees as well. So I’m not saying that honey is always vegan, but I do believe you can responsibly buy honey. I could be totally wrong about this though! I’d love to hear input from vegans on either side AND beekeepers. I feel like I could be more informed on this topic, it’d be great to discuss with a wide variety of people.

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

Bees!

@catsfeminismandatla

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

My fancy new clip together frames to complete my new plastic hive. Should be super awesome! Just waiting on spring now.

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

Extracting this fall with my little handcrank extrator!

[honeyhoneybeebee-blog]

Hello, I'm your friendly neighborhood beekeeper here. Ive just started using this platform. Im hoping to cronical my adventures in beekeeping in rural Nevada! As its the slow season right now (winter), i dont have much to post, but I welcome questions of all sorts!