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Author Topic: Busy busy busy!  (Read 16631 times)

Offline fish_stix

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #20 on: March 10, 2011, 03:02:24 pm »
First of all nobody said the Ohio bees are diseased. They are not! The guys business is producing honey. He stocks his hives with fresh packages every year on drawn comb which is stored over the winter. He makes his honey crop and instead of nursing bees through the winter he sells the bees. No winter labor costs, no Varroa treatment costs, no winter feed costs. It's a good business model; it makes him a living for his family. It's nobody else's business what he does with his bees. If you want you can call and volunteer to buy them at a very attractive price and he'll help you shake them into your boxes for a small fee, otherwise you do all the work. If I lived up north I'd be inclined to do the same as him; and there are plenty of other northern beeks who use the same techniques. You folks don't have to believe me but there some of us who intend to make our living from bees, not just pontificate about "helping the poor bees."   :roll:   BTW, T Beek; while making my living from my bees I intend to maximize my profits. Any way feasible within my own business model.

Offline lenape13

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #21 on: March 10, 2011, 03:28:33 pm »
I'd love to get my hands on some of those bees.  I like a challenge, and nursing bees through the winter is nothing new to me.  I'd just have to buy a few more blocks of fondant!   :-D

Offline Scadsobees

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #22 on: March 10, 2011, 04:06:12 pm »
While dumping the bees in the fall makes me FEEL uncomfortable, honestly...we never let the steak grow back on a cow before we cut another off. :roll:
Rick

Offline rdy-b

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #23 on: March 11, 2011, 01:34:51 pm »
my source of information are from Ron posts-glad your easily amused -a little over defensive but amused none the
same-im glad you are able to shed light on this as to the method and prior method of the shaking of the bees-it was Ron who used the term clean up work of the brood boxes and told of the extra profit that was made by extracting they honey
and using the frame filling machine-for next years feed-I believe that this was done perhaps after the bees where shook
or perhaps you can tell me about frames of honey that where compiled after the shake and what became of the honey frames-at any rate -the condition of the bees is something eles you have mentioned-is this a mite issue or just a issue of
 no winter bees being reared and a time frame issue-also the price for the bees i know it is carved in stone in some post but do you have first hand no-ledge -also wondered if you your self have given any thought as to obtaining these bees-or
would the winter bee to much for any success-hope you dont mind all the questions but it is a very interesting subject to me-- :) RDY-B  
   09-11-2010, 05:05 PM
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 Re: 2010 honey production
Started shaking hive yesterday and pulling leftovers. Looks like maybe another 5 ton in leftovers.
Wow Rick 275 APH. I'm looking forward to that year. We might do 190-195 APH this year. I'll know by the end of the week when I'm done shaking.
Bees look very clean and lower mite count this year. Most are shaking out at 6-9 lbs. Glad I'm not having to feed them.
 

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 Re: How many supers do you keep on each colony?
I do a double pull with a clean up pull just before shaking the bees. I run in singles so I place 2 super above excluder at time of package shaking. Because I run in singles my avg. super per hive is 5-6 mediums. For this year was not enough, and hard to keep up in great crop years (great problem). Just need to extract faster, and get the boxes back on.


The Honey Householder 
    
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 Cleaning out the old brood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by honeyman46408 
What do you do with the brood left in the hives??
By the time I go to shaking the bees in the end of Sept. Most of the queens have alreadly slow down production, and lack of food the bees cut most brood out. I bring all my hive body in and clean them up in the winter time. If their is any brood left I blow it out with air, before filling my frame with HFC.

Each year I try and learn something new or a better way of beekeeping. If I didn't I wouldn't bee in business.

Last year was the first year I let a guy come in and shake my bees from my boxes to his. He truck a whole load to FL. where he wintered them. No feedback on how he did, and what his cost was.

I would love to work a deal with someone in the south that would want the bees in the fall. For new bees in the spring.

Any takers,

Ron


  yes most interesting topic indeed  8-) 5 tons from the BROOD BOXS --RDY-B

Offline Acebird

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #24 on: March 11, 2011, 09:43:23 pm »
Like it or not, as in most endeavors, there are always some whose only motivation is maximum profit, little else matters.  Wall-Street is an extreme example (most of them care little beyond the days action or who was affected by their action) but beekeeping unfortunately, is not exempted from those same extremes some find neccessary to maximize profit.  We should not be surprized by human treatment of bees (or any other lifeform we deem inferior while in the pursuit of profit) :(

thomas

The goal for any business man is to make money for himself.  The greed factor increases as the business size increases.  Small businesses value their employees and in most cases their customers.  Large businesses only value money and could care less about their employees and customers.  They have PR departments to handle that.

But when you think about the bees in the northern regions all the bees in the fall are going to die through the winter so you are really only talking about the queen as a casualty.  Looking at the financial aspect of this shaking technique this beek has to build up a colony from package bees before he can harvest honey if I understand this correctly.  It would also seem that he will loose the spring flow.  This is profitable?
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Offline Countryboy

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #25 on: March 11, 2011, 11:46:02 pm »
it was Ron who used the term clean up work of the brood boxes and told of the extra profit that was made by extracting they honey

Ron doesn't do a very good job of explaining things online, and he doesn't bother to correct folks when they try to start rumors. 

A good deal of the problem is that people do not understand how the bees configure a hive when they are ran in a single deep.  Almost all of the honey is stored above the excluder.  When Ron talks of taking of taking all the honey, he is talking about taking all of the supers above the excluder.  This is taking all the honey because there is no honey left in the broodnest. (or no significant amount)

The cleanup work of broodboxes is wintertime work at the shop; blowing dead bees out of brood combs, filling frames with syrup, etc.

or perhaps you can tell me about frames of honey that where compiled after the shake and what became of the honey frames-

What honey frames?  There aren't any.  If a frame has a little bit in the corners, they just leave it alone and fill the rest of the frame with syrup.

at any rate -the condition of the bees is something eles you have mentioned-is this a mite issue or just a issue of
 no winter bees being reared and a time frame issue


I don't know.  Mites did not appear to be a very big issue.  You might see a few when you broke open drone brood, but there didn't appear to be a heavy infestation, and you didn't see baby bees with chewed up wings.
I tried overwintering some of the same stock, with horrible success. (11 of 15 dead so far)  It appears these bees are good honey producers, but just can't hack our winters.
I had wondered if part of Ron's overwintering problems were due to chemically contaminated brood combs, from years past when they dumped chemicals into hives.  Given my poor overwintering with clean combs, I don't know how much of a factor it is.

also the price for the bees i know it is carved in stone in some post but do you have first hand no-ledge

It was X dollars for 800 many hives, but if less hives were shook they would pro-rate the hives that didn't get shook.  The bees sold for about the price of a bulk queen.

also wondered if you your self have given any thought as to obtaining these bees-or

After seeing the winter quality of these bees, I wouldn't want any more.
I wouldn't consider buying shake bees unless I could take them to someplace warmer to feed them out for the winter.

The old method was to take all the honey above the excluder, and the bees would starve within a couple days.  In the winter, clean up the boxes and blow the dead bees out of combs with an air compressor, and then fill the frames with syrup.

If they were my bees, I'd let them starve before I would shake them into someone else's equipment.  It's too much work, for too little pay.

yes most interesting topic indeed  cool 5 tons from the BROOD BOXS --RDY-B

Ron did NOT say he got 5 tons from the brood boxes.  Don't think that what you call a leftover pull and what he calls leftovers are the same thing.

He said he thought he'd get about 5 tons from the leftovers.  The 'leftovers' are not the brood boxes.  Leftovers are supers above excluders.  When you do the second pull, you leave the bees a super to store goldenrod or whatever in.  When you come back to shake, anything in that super is a leftover.  When you do the second pull, if you can't fit all the supers on the truck, you leave supers of honey on a couple hives.  Those supers are leftovers.  If you had a queen get above the excluder, you get her back down, but you leave the supers she got into.  When you come back to shake, the bees in the supers have hatched out, and those supers are leftovers.

Offline rdy-b

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #26 on: March 12, 2011, 01:35:15 am »
I wondered about that -but at 800 colonies -in order to get the five ton from the brood boxes
 it would take about two full deep frames of honey from each one-but in a condition of near starvation
I can see that is not possible -dosent really matter the point of it is he takes all the honey -and five ton on the clean up is nothing to sneeze at-like i said information was in the mans own post as you have read-and i suppose if he cared how we interpret it he would have you make the posts-i enjoy Ron posts and think he dose a fine job of them-I have wondered about the comb as-well-I understand what you are saying and thats a whole nother can of worms I would not want to give the wrong impression about that -but i will take your word on the subject - There are ways to bring those bees through winter -some one could do it -but there is a cost to the methods-and a time frame to make it work-thank you for the explanations- :)  RDY-B

Offline Acebird

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #27 on: March 12, 2011, 10:14:59 am »
Corporate mindset ...

Workers are expendable, take the money and repeat the same program year after year.  Justification - it's business.

Corporations do it with humans so why not insects.

Here is the problem.  The guy that buys 15 hives worth of bees and looses 11 of them through the winter smartens up and decides it wasn't a good idea to buy those bees.  So he doesn't buy any next year.  So now the corporation has a harder sell to get rid of the shaken hives.  The profits now decrease and sooner or later he is blaming it on welfare and taxes.
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Offline Keith13

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #28 on: March 12, 2011, 10:23:38 am »
Corporate mindset ...

Workers are expendable, take the money and repeat the same program year after year.  Justification - it's business.

Corporations do it with humans so why not insects.

Here is the problem.  The guy that buys 15 hives worth of bees and looses 11 of them through the winter smartens up and decides it wasn't a good idea to buy those bees.  So he doesn't buy any next year.  So now the corporation has a harder sell to get rid of the shaken hives.  The profits now decrease and sooner or later he is blaming it on welfare and taxes.

or you could say the guy that buys 15 hives and profits 11 hives..sorry couldn't resist :evil:

Keith

Offline fish_stix

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #29 on: March 12, 2011, 12:54:53 pm »
Never ceases to amaze me how folks who don't own a business have all the answers for the business owners. Being a successful beekeeper and continuing for many years to make a living for his family, I sincerely doubt that Ron Householder is ever going to blame welfare and taxes for any shortcomings in his business. Like most of us who have owned our own business(es), he probably would look to himself for answers to problems. If my business fails it's more than likely due to something I didn't do or something I did wrong. Ron has a business that works and works well. And like me he probably doesn't give 2 hoots for what all you Naysayers and socialist mongers think! I run my business to make a profit so that I can continue to run my business. I don't hire people to make them wealthy, I hire them to work, so that someday I can realize my dreams to become financially independent. The workers can do the same thing I'm doing, all it it takes is some guts to step up and take a chance. Bees are bugs; you'll never succeed in humanizing them or making a pet out of them. They do what they do regardless of you; and then they die. Get over it.

Offline Acebird

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #30 on: March 12, 2011, 01:15:30 pm »
Quote
I sincerely doubt that Ron Householder is ever going to blame welfare and taxes for any shortcomings in his business.

Is he a large corporation?
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Offline asprince

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #31 on: March 12, 2011, 08:15:59 pm »
Back on topic........

Installed my 20 packages today. The queens were Kona. Anyone have any experience with them?


Steve
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Offline iddee

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #32 on: March 12, 2011, 09:08:52 pm »
Bought 85 nucs with kona queens last year. Got nothing but complaints from them.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

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Offline asprince

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #33 on: March 12, 2011, 09:10:58 pm »
From who? Customers?
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resembalance to the first. - Ronald Reagan

Offline iddee

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #34 on: March 12, 2011, 09:14:35 pm »
YES
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Offline Countryboy

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #35 on: March 12, 2011, 11:32:58 pm »
like i said information was in the mans own post as you have read-and i suppose if he cared how we interpret it he would have you make the posts

Let me tell you a little secret.  When folks write ridiculous lies about things in his operation, Ron shakes his head and makes the comment that people don't have a clue about commercial beekeeping.  When I have asked Ron why he doesn't try to correct them, he says, "Why bother?  They're not going to understand."

i enjoy Ron posts and think he dose a fine job of them

That's why you thought he got 5 tons from extracting brood combs - and why he doesn't bother trying to correct you.

There are ways to bring those bees through winter -some one could do it -but there is a cost to the methods-and a time frame to make it work-thank you for the explanations


I look forward to you putting your money where your mouth is, and showing folks how it is done.

So now the corporation has a harder sell to get rid of the shaken hives.  The profits now decrease and sooner or later he is blaming it on welfare and taxes.

And in the real world, demand for package bees keeps increasing every year to replace those deadouts.  (The guy buying 15 hives is small potatoes.)  Beekeepers find those bees are really good honey producers, and they can make more money by taking all the honey.  The value of the honey they would normally leave for feed more than pays for a new package of bees next year.  Demand for packages increases, and profits continue to climb for the beekeeper and the package producer both.

I sincerely doubt that Ron Householder is ever going to blame welfare and taxes for any shortcomings in his business.


Ask him about the government getting involved in honey, and seeing the price drop to 38 cents a pound.


Online Kathyp

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #36 on: March 12, 2011, 11:49:04 pm »
acebird, i am going to say this one time and i'm going to say it here.

i am sick to death of your corporation crap.  you don't have a clue.  we don't care.  speaking only for myself, i have had enough of it.  now...i might get slapped down for putting this here, but i have never met anyone as willing to constantly share their lack of knowledge at every opportunity.

i think you will be a good beekeeper, but put the other crap in the coffee house where we can continue to ignore it, or attempt to educate you when we have the patience for it.

 :imsorry:
Someone really ought to tell them that the world of Ayn Rand?s novel was not meant to be aspirational.

Offline rdy-b

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #37 on: March 13, 2011, 12:46:32 am »
like i said information was in the mans own post as you have read-and i suppose if he cared how we interpret it he would have you make the posts

Let me tell you a little secret.  When folks write ridiculous lies about things in his operation, Ron shakes his head and makes the comment that people don't have a clue about commercial beekeeping.  When I have asked Ron why he doesn't try to correct them, he says, "Why bother?  They're not going to understand."

i enjoy Ron posts and think he dose a fine job of them

That's why you thought he got 5 tons from extracting brood combs - and why he doesn't bother trying to correct you.

There are ways to bring those bees through winter -some one could do it -but there is a cost to the methods-and a time frame to make it work-thank you for the explanations


I look forward to you putting your money where your mouth is, and showing folks how it is done.

So now the corporation has a harder sell to get rid of the shaken hives.  The profits now decrease and sooner or later he is blaming it on welfare and taxes.

And in the real world, demand for package bees keeps increasing every year to replace those deadouts.  (The guy buying 15 hives is small potatoes.)  Beekeepers find those bees are really good honey producers, and they can make more money by taking all the honey.  The value of the honey they would normally leave for feed more than pays for a new package of bees next year.  Demand for packages increases, and profits continue to climb for the beekeeper and the package producer both.

I sincerely doubt that Ron Householder is ever going to blame welfare and taxes for any shortcomings in his business.


Ask him about the government getting involved in honey, and seeing the price drop to 38 cents a pound.


  country-boy if i took all your beekeeping experience and stuck it up a nats ass it would be like a BB in a box car-RDY-B

Offline Acebird

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #38 on: March 13, 2011, 11:51:09 am »
Quote
The value of the honey they would normally leave for feed more than pays for a new package of bees next year.  Demand for packages increases, and profits continue to climb for the beekeeper and the package producer both.

Yes, I agree!  :shock:
But what happens when the customer gets these bees?  This business person hands down has indicated that his interest is in profits not the bees.  So they will get worked to death.  Chances are they will not survive overwintering.

Would you buy a truck that you know the contractor has beaten the crap out of it even if it was only a year old?

Feel better now Kathy?  Yoga would do you good.  Hummmmmmmmmmm
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Offline asprince

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Re: Busy busy busy!
« Reply #39 on: March 13, 2011, 08:49:44 pm »
Checked my newly hived packages today. I now have 10 4lb packages and 10 extra queens rather than 20 2 lb packages with queens. Why did they drift and abandon the queen?


Steve
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resembalance to the first. - Ronald Reagan