Winter - beekeeping activities
Winter is blasting Austin, Texas, with much needed rain as well (I am thrilled that the land I have have captured a good amount of it), and the bees in my four beehives behind our sunroom has become quiet.
They now just go out to 'do their thing' out side the hive (Bees are clean beings, they don't defaecate in their hives) and come back inside in this freezing cold, a few bees at a time. I am feeding them sugar water to keep their food reserves up and for them to use only less of their honey reserves, since I would like to have it, when the weather warms up next year. My current way of feeding them is not actually very good, to feed them using glass bottles filled with sugar water connected to the hive entrance - they have to venture out in the cold to get the sugar water. I am going to put some sugar patties inside the warm hive so that they can avoid doing that. But I do not want to open the hive in this cold weather and freeze the poor bees. Hoping there would be a day soon, where the weather would be warm on noon time so that I can come home from lunch from work and take care of that. Right now they are are curled up as a ball around their queen vibrating their wings, creating heat to keep everyone warm. The bees inside the ball would take turns to replace the peripheral bees to do the hard work of helping it the most.
How about if you could get your own honey in this summer from your own hive in your backyard? Don't that sound enticing? If you have an interest in beekeeping and think you are willing to venture into it, and not afraid of the bees (who isn't afraid of the bees, all the news which come out are negative, bee swarms attacking people etc, which are so isolated events,and can be avoided if knew early, like not making a lot of noise in front of their hives and annoying them etc..), this is the time to act. You can buy the whole beekeeping hive kit including gloves and veil hood and a few tools and you can wait till the weather warms up next March or so, to start putting together a hive. If here is genuine interest, and if it is closer to where I live, I am happy to help you out, even finding you a package of bees, and helping you establish a colony.
The place I like to buy hive items is Mann Lake Ltd. http://www.mannlakeltd.com/
They now just go out to 'do their thing' out side the hive (Bees are clean beings, they don't defaecate in their hives) and come back inside in this freezing cold, a few bees at a time. I am feeding them sugar water to keep their food reserves up and for them to use only less of their honey reserves, since I would like to have it, when the weather warms up next year. My current way of feeding them is not actually very good, to feed them using glass bottles filled with sugar water connected to the hive entrance - they have to venture out in the cold to get the sugar water. I am going to put some sugar patties inside the warm hive so that they can avoid doing that. But I do not want to open the hive in this cold weather and freeze the poor bees. Hoping there would be a day soon, where the weather would be warm on noon time so that I can come home from lunch from work and take care of that. Right now they are are curled up as a ball around their queen vibrating their wings, creating heat to keep everyone warm. The bees inside the ball would take turns to replace the peripheral bees to do the hard work of helping it the most.
How about if you could get your own honey in this summer from your own hive in your backyard? Don't that sound enticing? If you have an interest in beekeeping and think you are willing to venture into it, and not afraid of the bees (who isn't afraid of the bees, all the news which come out are negative, bee swarms attacking people etc, which are so isolated events,and can be avoided if knew early, like not making a lot of noise in front of their hives and annoying them etc..), this is the time to act. You can buy the whole beekeeping hive kit including gloves and veil hood and a few tools and you can wait till the weather warms up next March or so, to start putting together a hive. If here is genuine interest, and if it is closer to where I live, I am happy to help you out, even finding you a package of bees, and helping you establish a colony.
The place I like to buy hive items is Mann Lake Ltd. http://www.mannlakeltd.com/
Labels: Beekeeping
posted by Hem Ramachandran at 2:02 AM
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