Posted on 02/03/2011 3:36:22 AM PST by Daffynition
Beepods are handsome, made-in-Wisconsin wooden beehives designed for optimum bee comfort and user-friendliness. The cost? Under $500. Now show me the honey ...
Along with backyard chicken-keeping, urban beekeeping is another exercise in countrified self-sufficiency that’s really picked up steam over the past couple of years and been embraced by city dwellers … the latest “urban agricultural must-have,” as the New York Times put it back in 2009.
The whole bees-in-the-city movement reached an unofficial climax back in March when the ban on residential beekeeping was lifted in New York City (although NYC beekeepers had been practicing and celebrating it quite openly for some time) which showed aspiring apiarists that if you can do it legally on a rooftop in Manhattan, you can do it pretty much anywhere. Other cities that allow residents to keep bees include Denver, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Santa Monica. And for a list of cities and towns where beekeeping was still banned as of August 2010, check out The Daily Green’s map of No Buzz Cities.
For many beginning beekeepers, the numero uno concern, aside from the appropriate apparel, is where to house your new buddies. In this past, I’ve featured two cool, city- and suburban backyard-friendly options for seasonal bee boarders: Jason Neufield’s Bombus Shelter and Johannes Paul’s Beehaus. Today, I'm taking a look at Beepods, personal wooden hives that have gotten a fair amount of buzz (sorry, couldn't resist) around the green blogosphere over the past few days.
(Excerpt) Read more at mnn.com ...
Something of spring to make my early mid-winter morning.
Cool.
Are bees making a comeback? Did they ever get to the bottom of what caused the die-offs of 2-3 years ago?
Cool stuff from Wisconsin ping.
with backyard chicken-keeping.....but no roosters.
How long before Peta insist that roosters are allowed in cities too? (watch sales of BB guns go up)
Anyone got one of these? Any comments pro or con?
May be fodder for gardening list?
Are bees making a comeback? Did they ever get to the bottom of what caused the die-offs of 2-3 years ago?
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I don’t have a link but it was a pesticide that Bayer makes.
We've had the bee hive since the 1970's. Since I've been there (1989) last year was the only year we didn't have an active bee hive. (The queen left with the drones shortly after they were introduced to the hive.) Otherwise it has thrived.
The bees come in through a chute. The opening is on our outside wall of the nature center. It's amazing to see them work during the summer.
We assemble it in early May, and then take it down in September.
Mr. PanDowdy and I are hobbyist beekeepers. This, I can assure you, is NOT the way to keep bees.
The reason we all use the Langstroth hives (the traditional stacking boxes) is (contrary to this article) exactly what the bees prefer. Langstroth designed it to fit what he called “bee space” ... the exact measurement between the combs that bees in the wild will always build. Then he gave the bees convenient frames upon which to build their comb. He didn’t do this simply because it produced more honey (again contrary to the article), he did it also and more importantly because:
(1) it gives the bee keeper a way to efficiently slip out each frame to inspect for disease and pests which is today an essential to good beekeeping.
(2) and when we harvest the honey, we can put these frames into a spinner which uses centrifugal force to pull the honey out without messing up the comb. We can then put the comb back into the hives for the bees to reuse it. It is very important to have reusable comb at hand for several reasons which I won’t go into detail here about.... but rest assured that many times it saves the life of a struggling hive and also can provide the necessary incitement to attract a swarm into and save it’s life as well. The bees in this “top bar” contraption will loose all their comb each time the honey is harvested.
(3) In the Langstroth hives, we keep the bottom two boxes separated from the rest of the stack with a wire mesh that forces the queen to do all her egg laying in the bottom two boxes which we call brood chambers. Thus the eggs, larvae and pupae out of the honey we harvest. This also insures us that we know where the queen is at all times and can protect her and make sure she is not injured or disturbed during harvest. I can’t see any way this contraption accomplishes that.
(4) a Langstroth hive complete with a bees and a queen can be purchased for $160 or less. Why would you want to pay the hefty price tag of this thing?
I give it four thumbs down!
Last year I had Bees visiting my garden. In previous years I only had Bumblebees working the garden.
Two-three years ago is only when the media discovered bee colony collapse. I remember seeing posters about it on a display at the entomology department at UC Davis when I first started grad school there, in 1994. It has been an ongoing problem.
The answer to your question is, no. Right now, the hypothesis is that the bees are suffering from a combination of viral and fungal infections which, together, wipe the bees out. But no one has proved anything yet.
Pesticides cannot distinguish what kind of insect they kill. The key to reducing pesticide poisoning of bees is to avoid using them in ways that expose bees.
That is called a swarm. Our local beekeepers club is having our annual "Bee School" this month for beginner beekeepers and that is the topic of the class I am to teach, Swarm Prevention.
When the bees become overcrowded (typically in the spring), they raise another queen and when she hatches, the old queen takes half of the bees with her and goes to find a new home. By the way.... the other bees consist of mostly female workers with just a few male drones (the drones don't do anything except mate with the queen, it is the female workers that raise the young, tend the hive, forage for nectar and pollen, and even feed the male drones).
If all the bees left from your Nature center hive it was probably because something happened to the new queen they left behind and for some reason she was unable to do her queenly duties so she and her half of the original population died. One case may have been that she could not get fertilized. Being a newly hatched queen, she would have had to make her maiden flight and find a drone from another hive to mate with.... she will not mate successfully with her own hive's drones. If there was no other hive within her flying distance (about 4 miles) she can't mate thus her eggs will not be fertile.
We have an observation hive in our home.... and like the one in your nature center it vents through a Plexiglas tube to the outdoors. It is fascinating to watch (better than TV). We even have a web cam on it during the spring and summer months and broadcast that over our website.
That is one of the reasons.... but the research team at UGA speaks often at our meetings and says that the full cause has not yet been determined. They can find several causes that contribute.... but not one that is present in each and every case. They are still studying it.
“Did they ever get to the bottom of what caused the die-offs of 2-3 years ago?”
Evil man and his global warming. Remember those articles?
They look extremely small to me if honey production is desired.
Small makes surplus and continuity iffy
The surface area of the comb has been reduced by eliminating the corners.
Amen....... for those of you in doubt, read this post twice
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