Honey rather than sugar

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
We get dragged away by Dishmop's obsessive and extremely repetitive and tedious attacks on Finman at every opportunity.
posssibly because some of us aint too pleased about being called stupid one hive owners who know nothing and live in holes, and must be odd because we dont seem to be obsessed with squeezing every last drop of honey from the bees we keep.

Obsessive only inasmuch that it would be nice for once for Finman to actually consider that not everything is black or white and that there is even the slightest possibity of grey, or that just because he read it somewhere that the writer is the choosen one and we should kiss his ring.

We are wrong if we do, or want to try, or think about doing anything that he either doesnt agree with. Stupid UK beekeepers.

He doesnt count mites but he knows that are there because he has read about it and so they must be there.

A report from UK says that there are varroa free areas... Nope... Finman says it a lie. Everybody has mites. The answer to this has in the past been that he didnt say that everybody had mites, but that he said that the bees have mites!!!

Honey is not better for bees than honey... He says so, and because its so good his bees live on it for 9 months of the year.

Obsessive? no not really.
but I do realise thats its really all a waste of time when after time after time when he has been asked "why" about something, only be given a video to watch.
 
.
I feeded old honey to my hives and I lost half of my hives.
It was nosema which was in the honey.

many professionals say that give not a bit honey as winter food.
Except hives own honey. It is a way to deliver diseases.

So, the honey that is on Northernsoul's hive will not have the same problem you had, unless the colony already has a disease.

I hope you are better soon Finman and you too Northernsoul. A good laugh does keep the spirits up. I tune into radio 4 every evening to get my daily dose of laughter then I top up with the Smilies on here.:smilielol5:
 
It has become transparently clear that honeybees must be really, really stupid - they've had millions of years to perfect the skills needed to manufacture pure crystalline white sugar - and the best they've managed to come up with is ... honey ... with all it's nasty enzymes - to say nothing of included pollen. All those impurities, after millions of years trying to come up with something really suitable for their winter stores.

A pretty pi$$-poor effort, in my view.

LJ
 
It has become transparently clear that honeybees must be really, really stupid - they've had millions of years to perfect the skills needed to manufacture pure crystalline white sugar - and the best they've managed to come up with is ... honey ... with all it's nasty enzymes - to say nothing of included pollen. All those impurities, after millions of years trying to come up with something really suitable for their winter stores.

A pretty pi$$-poor effort, in my view.

LJ

when you add the above into the equation, I suppose the 40 odd years that scientists have been studying varroa pales into insignificance.
 
On the basis that the bees put it there, and have been doing so for ???????years.

...l

But they are not in a natural environment.

Hives are, with a very few exceptions , are considerably colder than tree nests. Longer time in cluster in a hive can give less opportunity to excrete the non sugar contents of honey(hypothesis). ITLD has related that bees on sugar do better than on honey.
 
I think Finsky has not understood the OP and has gone off at a tangent (nothing unusual in that).

RAB

Nothing at all unusual in that. He got kicked out of the US forums for his frequent tangents... Kept popping back up with new, similar usernames and continued to get kicked out... He gave up a few years ago now.

He should have fit in just fine... he has the same know it all attitude of the best American Beekeepers just with poorer English.
 
Last edited:
Its me. I hate one-hive owners.

So what do you think of 0-hive owners? I figured out how to make a sizable sum of money keeping bees for other people... All profit no risk.
 
posssibly because some of us aint too pleased about being called stupid one hive owners who know nothing and live in holes, and must be odd because we dont seem to be obsessed with squeezing every last drop of honey from the bees we keep.

Obsessive only inasmuch that it would be nice for once for Finman to actually consider that not everything is black or white and that there is even the slightest possibity of grey, or that just because he read it somewhere that the writer is the choosen one and we should kiss his ring.

We are wrong if we do, or want to try, or think about doing anything that he either doesnt agree with. Stupid UK beekeepers.

He doesnt count mites but he knows that are there because he has read about it and so they must be there.

A report from UK says that there are varroa free areas... Nope... Finman says it a lie. Everybody has mites. The answer to this has in the past been that he didnt say that everybody had mites, but that he said that the bees have mites!!!

Honey is not better for bees than honey... He says so, and because its so good his bees live on it for 9 months of the year.

Obsessive? no not really.
but I do realise thats its really all a waste of time when after time after time when he has been asked "why" about something, only be given a video to watch.

If you realise it's a waste of time why not give us all some peace? It takes two to argue.
 
why put super under,surly the bees put it above for some reason,(mabe to keep the crap out of it),get some help to remove the super from hives, and leave any unfinished frames on top for the bees to finish off,get well soon.

As I don't think anyone has answered you on this.

The theory is that the bees will move any stores from a super placed under the brood box up into the brood box and as the cluster tends to be near the top of the hive the queen will not lay in the super frames early in the season. Therefore the super can be removed on one of the first inspections without worrying about it containing brood.

At least this is the theory, I have never tried it myself as I never had any supers full of stores spare until this year.
 
That's the theory and in practice it works pretty much the way you describe. Whenever I've left a super above, the stores are still there in the Spring, untouched.
 
If you realise it's a waste of time why not give us all some peace? It takes two to argue.

So you'd rather have peace and quiet that someone challenging a point-of-view they vehemently disagree with ?

That's a very dangerous path to go down ...

It was by not wanting (or not being able) to present an alternative viewpoint that the German people allowed Hitler to rise to power in the 30's - and look what happened ...
(somebody has to get Hitler and the Nazis into a thread from time to time - might as well be me on this occasion :icon_204-2: )

Some things just need arguing about - even if the argument does go on and on.

You know - if the content of a thread offends anyone - they don't have to read it. It isn't compulsory to subscribe to, or even read every thread on here. :)

LJ
 
Last edited:
There are management systems where the stores are left above the nest mimicing the bees natural placement of stores for overwintering; even in one brood box the stores will be above. Why is that? Roger Delon talks about his 'stable-climate hive', with hives with a dome of honey over the nest, he calls it a 'thermal shield above the cluster of bees'. I appreciate all the arguments for reducing the space the bees will have for winter, can a packed super full of honey/stores be thought as 'space'? As winter progresses the bees will move up eating the stores no doubt, heat rises keeping the honey warm and useable, not crystallised, does the honey also act like a store for heat retaining the warmth that rises from the cluster? A well insulated crownboard is essential. Sorry if that sounds rambling, under-supering just seems contrary to what the bees would naturally want to do. As a method of getting the bees to move stores around the hive, OK, but to overwinter?
 
Another fairly standard thread. Several completely different ways of doing things and a few people who like to turn it into something a little more important than it actually is.

Under/over/no super? All have their adherents so you just have to pick. Or try all 3 and see which is best. But you need a big sample size for it to be significant. Which brings us to how many hives over how many years....some have experience which is significant (statistically) and some don't.

Keep yer bees cosy, well fed & disease free, with a young queen and chances are most will get through winter :)
 
Nice to see Finman back in the fray :) - with batteries fully charged I trust - even though I don't always agree with all of his views ... (I do with some of them)

LJ
 
So you'd rather have peace and quiet that someone challenging a point-of-view they vehemently disagree with ?

That's a very dangerous path to go down ...

It was by not wanting (or not being able) to present an alternative viewpoint that the German people allowed Hitler to rise to power in the 30's - and look what happened ...
(somebody has to get Hitler and the Nazis into a thread from time to time - might as well be me on this occasion :icon_204-2: )

Some things just need arguing about - even if the argument does go on and on.

You know - if the content of a thread offends anyone - they don't have to read it. It isn't compulsory to subscribe to, or even read every thread on here. :)

LJ

It's one thing to challenge a point of view but something entirely different to go on and on and on and on with personal and mostly pointless personal criticism. If they don't agree say so and move on.
 
As I don't think anyone has answered you on this.

The theory is that the bees will move any stores from a super placed under the brood box up into the brood box and as the cluster tends to be near the top of the hive the queen will not lay in the super frames early in the season. Therefore the super can be removed on one of the first inspections without worrying about it containing brood..

If you do so that capped stores are in lower box and brood are in upper box, bees start wintering in the site, where the last brood are.

Then the cluster moves up according their instinct. If there food enough in upper box, bees will starve out. They do know that they have food down stairs.

But the idea that you put your extra honey into the hive over winter makes no sense.

I move allways brood in lower box when I start to feed hives. in same inspect I move pollen frames to better places that they do not take mold. Pollen stores are normally in sidemost frames and that is the place where they are ruined during winter.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top