Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: asprince on July 11, 2012, 10:06:57 pm
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200 plus acres. The bees are packing in the nectar so fast. Not only are they filling the supers but they are back filling the brood nest faster than the queen can lay. Why are they filling the brood nest when they have plenty of room above?
Steve
(http://s8.postimage.org/6k17y3g5t/0711121731.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/6k17y3g5t/)
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Maybe your bees are just lazy and are too tired to climb up to the honey supers? That field looks good. How many hives you got on that field?
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Right now about 100. I plan to move a few more this weekend from another sunflower field that is finished.
Steve
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Sweet. We got nothing up here now. I may move a couple hives across the state line to catch some cotton this weekend.
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You are welcome to bring them here.
Steve
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Beautiful photo as well.
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Beautiful photo as well.
[ /quote]
Thanks. Taken with my cell phone.
Steve
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Very nice, How many hives do you place at each site?
Here in N FL when the gall berry is flowing the commercial beeks put about 54 hives per site, about 2-3 miles apart.
Jim
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I planted 2, one hundred ft. rows of sunflower and all I see on them are mason bees, bumble bees and some other things I'm not sure of. But I have not seen one of my honey bees on the sunflowers. Must be something better somewhere else.
Danny
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I have had bees on sunflowers several times. Most of the fields were 10 - 20 acres planted to shoot doves on in the fall. The bees worked them but not a major producer of honey. This field is about 300 acres and planted for the oil. They appear to be smaller flowers. Anyway the bees are working them hard. It could be that there is nothing else for them to work so they are forced on them or this is a better variety of sunflower. They are really packing in the honey.
Steve
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I understand that the oil producing varieties yield much better than the ones grown for seed.
Scott
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I plant about a acre of them. al I got was nubs. the deer had a field day with them. I have had so many deer in the yard this year and covered in rabbits. can't grow anything with them around. but my wife won;t eat deer and rabbit so no use in shooting them. I'v tryed repelants. no good.
just out of luck. only thing I can get is the wild backberry. I got about 250 lbs from my 3 good hives. the rest are to new and am building them up for splits.
john
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Remind me in the fall to load up bring the cooler and head to Gray for some meat. :-D
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Remind me in the fall to load up bring the cooler and head to Gray for some meat. :-D
They will go in the stealth mode then.
Steve
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Remind me in the fall to load up bring the cooler and head to Gray for some meat. :-D
They will go in the stealth mode then.
Steve
tell you how bad it is. in the fall when I get up to go to work I can count as many as 40-50 in the front yard and they don't care how close I get. I can walk upto any of them as close as a foot before they move out of the way. _____ rabbits!
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tell you how bad it is. in the fall when I get up to go to work I can count as many as 40-50 in the front yard and they don't care how close I get. I can walk upto any of them as close as a foot before they move out of the way. _____ rabbits!>
Hea but if yo bring out your shot gun, you won't see a single one.
Jim
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Cabbage Palm is coming in right now and all the equipment is stacked on the hives. I'm using the flow to draw out all my extra deeps for next year and am sitting on a lot of work with my old Kelly two frame reversable hand cranked extractor. Been working on getting a round to it but haven't found the time for it yet.
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for all you rabbit lovers, Ill give you a rabbit catchin secret.. take a 8-10" pipe 14' or longer. lay it on the ground.. approach from the side, then tilt the pipe straight in the air with one end on the ground. the rabbit will fall to the bottom. then your buddy catches the rabbit as you tilt the pipe. you then dispatch the rabbit, move to the next pipe... I call this the rabbit in the pipe trick..
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here in s.c. i have a weak hive. been feeding 1/1 sugar water for about a month...noticed they slacked up on the intake....did some investigating and found a cotton bloom is now taking place....huge 100 acre field..went over and took a look and saw the bees working and doing what they do...excitedly i went in for a look and found my bees building the comb up on several of the 10 deep frames i had been anxiously awaiting this event....thanks heavens for the new flow
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My bees are working cabbage palm right now. If the palm in my back yard is any indication, it will be heavy.
Jim
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... sitting on a lot of work with my old Kelly two frame reversable hand cranked extractor. Been working on getting a round to it but haven't found the time for it yet.
I had that same extractor. Worked great, until I got a heavy flow with around 10 production hives. 22 10-frame supers to extract. Needless to say I sold it for what I bought it for and upgraded to a old 20 frame Dadant electric that I completely refurbed. A small flow going on here from I'm assuming soybeans. As dry as it is I can't believe anything is producing nectar but I found fresh nectar in some of the supers I harvested from July 4th weekend.
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22 10 frame supers off 10 production hives is a lot of work with an old Kelly, I'm looking at 4-5 9 frame deeps along with 10 shallows full of honey off of my six hives. I'm going to use up a weekend with this extraction. The Cabbage Palm is in a major bloom right now around my area, has anybody tried honey marinated rabbit? Maybe something with honey, vinegar, garlic powder, red and black pepper and salt would work. We have two or three in the back yard but they are more like pets not pests.
Ed
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I still use a old 4 frame hand crank. I do good to work 2 or 3 boxes in an afternoon after work. I use to have the best little spinner, but she got her hair caught in the gears one a couple years back and that was the end of my "power" extractor. She will bottle, but never crank again. :'( She handles marketing. I get to be the VP of production.
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Hey Allen and Prince. I'll let you know when? when is Wabbit season? The wife says fine just use pellet guns because of the nieghbors. I say heck they use shotguns for the doves! but the wife always seems to get hear way. :? :-X. Just remind me and well get together. My dog was a great rabbit getter. But He passed away tonight of a major heart attack. he was 16 1/2 years old. Lab and retreiver mix. Great dog. I'll miss him.
john
(http://s12.postimage.org/5fmqfw1p5/100_3820.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/5fmqfw1p5/)
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Sorry to hear about your dog. He looks pretty happy under his blanket. At 16 1/2 he appears to have lived as complete a life as possible. As I told my kids when our dog died, can you think of a better life than getting to do what he did with us all his life?
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I'm in town and I swear that every other house has planted a clump of Russian sage. It looks like a Country Buffet for bees every time I walk by a patch. And I think that blooms right into September.
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This has been a banter year for sunflowers. Besides all the 10 to 20 acre plots plated for dove shoots, We have a farmer that has a big contract for the seeds. He has 100 to 300 acre fields planted in stages. We will have our bees on sunflowers until frost. This is so much different than this time last year.
Steve