Heidi Herrmann's responses to your countryfile discussions -

[victor meldrew]

CCD due to keeping bees in the way they do not want to be kept !

I wasn't aware that bees wanted to be kept regardless of the method
VM

 

[For want of a better word]

CCD due to keeping bees in the way they do not want to be kept !

VM... THAT is the reason I AM BEING told as to why bees are disparaging!......
spellchecker decided that!

 

[tonybloke]

VM... THAT is the reason I AM BEING told as to why bees are disparaging!......
spellchecker decided that!

WHO IS TELLING YOU that? (or are you generalising)

 

[For want of a better word]

I know a number of beekeepers who do not keep bees in the unnatural ( their words) way using boxes with fixed sized removable frames.
Their opinion seems to revolve around the fact that the wax foundation used is set to an unnatural size and pattern and contains all kinds of chemicals and nasties the bees do not like... so they fly away, dwine away, die away and dwindle....... anything to leave you !

My word that mead is strong !!!!

 

[sunhivebee]

There is no doubt that some keepers "kill their bees" by taking too much or at the wrong time of year so it's always worth giving non bee keepers a full and balanced answer.


If it is true that most of the colony losses after winter are due to starvation, which I have been told by a Fera man two years ago, one might safely assume that harvesting practices may be a causal factor.

No need to assure me that it has never happened to anyone on this forum.

By the way, Chris, what is the right time of the year under normal circumstances in your experience? This, of course, would be better discussed on a new thread as it must be of great interest to new beekeepers to learn how to get this vital aspect of one's husbandry right.


HH

 

[For want of a better word]

There is no doubt that some keepers "kill their bees" by taking too much or at the wrong time of year so it's always worth giving non bee keepers a full and balanced answer.


If it is true that most of the colony losses after winter are due to starvation, which I have been told by a Fera man two years ago, one might safely assume that harvesting practices may be a causal factor.

No need to assure me that it has never happened to anyone on this forum.

By the way, Chris, what is the right time of the year under normal circumstances in your experience? This, of course, would be better discussed on a new thread as it must be of great interest to new beekeepers to learn how to get this vital aspect of one's husbandry right.


HH

Cost of sugar to feed ... lot less than honey many keep bees for!

We keep chickens for fresh eggs so that we know where the eggs come from we are not so stupid as to stop feeding them when they are off lay!

Cost of chicken feed... more than I can buy eggs at Tesco for

I can buy honey at Tesco too....... definitely cheaper than it costs us to produce !

I presume you can not heft a skep/ lunar/sunhive..... or feed it with a rapid feeder!

Some work to keep bees
Others keep bees as their work

IMOVLE There are many other pollinator bees you could keep without the need to feed... steal their honey .. or risk a sting in the eye !

 

[victor meldrew]

I harvest my honey crop once annually, usually August /September . I use clearer boards , I first inspect and check stores , place on boards and later, remove cleared honey supers . Balsam has become the major source of income for my bees as it grows in profusion around these parts I re-check stores end of September and usually find I can remove the odd couple of frames of stores, from store blocked hives and give to any requiring same
Too much feed force fed to bees ,creates a situation where valuable space is taken up by stores whereas the requirement is for room to produce Winter bees !
VM
Ps I also return extracted supers for cleansing as I store dry supers after treating with acetic acid .
I stack supers 3 high in strong black plastic bags ,place a saucer of acid on top of top frames, then seal bag .
Even when the weather is cold , any sunshine results in the acid vaporising and the vapour tumbling down through the supers below .
It's surprising how much heat is retained by the bags as black absorbs heat readily !
Two weeks is all that's required ,they are then ventilated and stored in a dry bee proof shed

 

[sunhivebee]

Icanhopit "I presume you can not heft a skep/ lunar/sunhive..... or feed it with a rapid feeder!"

Glad to assure you that you presume wrongly: please see pictures in my album, there should be one of those great innovative skeps, fully inspectable due to moveable frames, with a box on top - the box takes a good size feeder.
If you have a little patience, a detailed article about the sun hive has been commissioned by the editor of a broadsheet paper, environment section. I will let you know as soon as it is published, as you seem so interested.

As for hefting skeps, mine are so heavy that it's fairly impossible to heft them.
But actually, you may be interested to learn that I keep bees because I love them, wish to conserve them, am quite good at it and don't care a hoot about the price differential of sugar and honey.

Do tell me more about "lunar" hives, sounds like something I might get interested in. I trust you have one?

HH

 

[For want of a better word]

I harvest my honey crop once annually, usually August /September . I use clearer boards , I first inspect and check stores , place on boards and later, remove cleared honey supers . Balsam has become the major source of income for my bees as it grows in profusion around these parts I re-check stores end of September and usually find I can remove the odd couple of frames of stores, from store blocked hives and give to any requiring same
Too much feed force fed to bees ,creates a situation where valuable space is taken up by stores whereas the requirement is for room to produce Winter bees !
VM
Ps I also return extracted supers for cleansing as I store dry supers after treating with acetic acid .
I stack supers 3 high in strong black plastic bags ,place a saucer of acid on top of top frames, then seal bag .
Even when the weather is cold , any sunshine results in the acid vaporising and the vapour tumbling down through the supers below .
It's surprising how much heat is retained by the bags as black absorbs heat readily !
Two weeks is all that's required ,they are then ventilated and stored in a dry bee proof shed

I have not as yet had a store blocked hive.... perhaps it it not in the make up of the type of bees I keep..... however I have move 2 colonies in Poines Nucs to polly Nationals today as they had filled all 6 of the frames with stores and brood ( hit 16 degrees today in the full sun and no wind!)

 

[For want of a better word]

Do tell me more about "lunar" hives, sounds like something I might get interested in...

Some years back went to a talk on permiculture... chap gave a talk on moon gardening and he kept bees in a similar way using the LUNAR cycles to dictate his beekeeping activities... he described a Lunar hive and from recollection this was similar to a Top Bar or Long hive.... he only harvested honeycomb in the spring and said he never had to feed them.
This was in Storrington Sussex around 1980?

I have not as yet owned a TBH... most think my WBCs are wacky enough!!!

BTW wonder why you do not use polly instead of straw and cow poo... much warmer and easier to manufacture... bees seem to love it !

 

[beekim]

What have i got into? i thought beekeeping was a nice peaceful hobby, perhaps not, maybe i should have took up espionage, fraud, blackmail,or murder!! as a newbee the only opinion i am willing to give is julia should have worn a vail. I was stung on the top lip with a vail on and my face looked dreadful, her eye and face must have looked a mess and photos should have been put on with the "sun hives"

 

[For want of a better word]

What have i got into? i thought beekeeping was a nice peaceful hobby, perhaps not, maybe i should have took up espionage, fraud, blackmail,or murder!! as a newbee the only opinion i am willing to give is julia should have worn a vail. I was stung on the top lip with a vail on and my face looked dreadful, her eye and face must have looked a mess and photos should have been put on with the "sun hives"

Pics were posted by hereself on Facebook !!

 

[Chris Luck]

Way too much here to begin to respond to, however..

My production hives, (10 and 12 frame Dadants), are too heavy for one person to lift and place supers under at the end of the season even if I wanted to - which I don't. I prefer to store them wet and as with everything else untreated. This leaves plenty of residual honey in them for when they go back on in the spring - good for the bees.

When and how much honey to remove to my mind is different all the time, it requires an understanding of what forage there is, has been and is to come with the corresponding weather patterns. This will be so different from one place to another, one year to another and require a judgement based on experience, although some people seem more able than others to make this judgement "instinctively". I have to remove OSR honey from supers in all but the worst years even if it is only to feed back later.

I rarely have to feed sugar. In my experience a normal functioning colony will self regulate, it will never "run out" of brood space and become blocked even when the bees occupy a space that is half the volume of a National. I also find that my bees are well on their way to filling the brood boxes with stores before I remove supers at the end of August.

It also brings into question the issue of what weight of stores are required to "over winter". Again there are no rules as it will depend on the genetic make up of the bees and the local climate as will the colony size.

In fairness a colony can often starve simply because the bees are in the wrong part of the hive when it suddenly turns severely cold - perhaps more so in frame hives.

Of course reading this forum it becomes increasingly clear that treatments that are applied at the end of the season cause changes in the behaviour of the colony and that these are often dramatic.

Chris

 

[enrico]

Wise reply Chris and a pleasure to read........I agree

 

[For want of a better word]

Wise reply Chris and a pleasure to read........I agree

Thanks.... when the moon is waning again we can get away from the lunatic fringe!

 

[Bungalow]

You may have read that Roger P*****son uses divining rods to find ley lines and position his hives.

He seems to know a bit about beekeeping.

Just saying ....

 

[tonybloke]

You may have read that Roger P*****son uses divining rods to find ley lines and position his hives.

He seems to know a bit about beekeeping.

Just saying ....

yes, he 'seems' to, you are right there,

your point being?

 

[sunhivebee]

yes, he 'seems' to, you are right there,

your point being?

Could the point be to draw attention to the fact that using dowsing rods is possibly not the preserve of the "lunatic fringe" ? As one belonging to it in the eyes of some here I must admit that I have not used them myself, mainly because my preferred method of housing at least some colonies at the location where the swarm cluster was found has shown some very promising results.

Thank you, Chris for all your answers and comments on your own beekeeping; very intrigued by your observation re. pre-winter treatments affecting ordinary colony life. Accords with my experience that there is always a price to pay for disrupting colony life; there are valid reasons to do so, but a higher awareness of what are valid reasons would be an interesting discussion.

HH

 

[jp19sqn]

Heidi,

I do not consider your approach to be a lunatic fringe or anything like it. I am a conventional beekeeper but accept that I do not have a monopoly on common sense or knowledge. You have great success with your method and I have limited success with mine. The element I find uncomfortable is the lack of grace and good manners displayed to you and I find myself apologising on behalf of the gentlemen here present. We were only given access to about 6 mins of screen time to what must have taken all day to film and edit. We can only imagine how you must have felt having that lot descend on you with perhaps their own skewed viewpoint to get over. If your efforts get one more beekeeper to enter the craft, orthodox or alternative then the bees have triumphed. Most viewpoints on here you will find are hand me downs or have been acquired through reading. The beekeepers who innovate would not dream of treating you or your opinions with dis-respect.

Keep up your method as you see fit.

Jon

 

[victor meldrew]

Heidi,

I do not consider your approach to be a lunatic fringe or anything like it. I am a conventional beekeeper but accept that I do not have a monopoly on common sense or knowledge. You have great success with your method and I have limited success with mine. The element I find uncomfortable is the lack of grace and good manners displayed to you and I find myself apologising on behalf of the gentlemen here present. We were only given access to about 6 mins of screen time to what must have taken all day to film and edit. We can only imagine how you must have felt having that lot descend on you with perhaps their own skewed viewpoint to get over. If your efforts get one more beekeeper to enter the craft, orthodox or alternative then the bees have triumphed. Most viewpoints on here you will find are hand me downs or have been acquired through reading. The beekeepers who innovate would not dream of treating you or your opinions with dis-respect.

Keep up your method as you see fit.

Jon

Please do not apologise on my behalf !f I have disagreed with Heidi or even used a little gentle humour to get my point across , then her response was worded in an expected similar manner
To apologise on other peoples behalf could be construed as being more insulting to the person involved and maybe suggestive of your opinion that they are incapable of handling all and sundry with good spirit and maybe alacrity even .
VM