High priced bees!

big tee · Jan 18, 2019

Got a flyer in the mail today from Blains Farm Fleet-Not much in it for corn-bean farming but the bee keeper pages caught my eye. 3 lbs. of bees-10,000 count $170.00. One queen bee $45-$50 a piece. Queen-$50-Workers-1.7 cents-I guess the Me-too movement has worked! We went to Husker Harvest Days and West to Mount Rushmore and Sturgis a few years ago and came back East on I-90 and ran into bees all the way to Mitchell. If I would of brought my putty knife and they would of been queens I would have been a millionaire. Cars and campers were pulled over cleaning windshields'---Tee

jeffcat · Jan 18, 2019

Doesnt sound too bad. Better than trying to find a wild colony. I knew a beekeeper years ago and said the absolute best thing is find the beekeeper club or classes in your area. Study and read everything you can. Practice with a couple of keepers. THEN and only then, start a hive. You will lower the chance of failures to a very low number. There are a lot of videos on Utube that are very informative. When you read bee books from the 1800s you want to cry with what they did to beehives. In the fall when they went to harvest the honey....they would smoke the colony and totally kill every single bee. Next spring they would just go out and find another colony and move it.

David G · Jan 18, 2019

It has been real tough lately raising bees, so much disease.

rustred · Jan 18, 2019

well my friend has bees and he was telling me he bought some queen bees for around 40.00 each. I bought a case of honey from him with 1kg. containers for 7.00 ea. those bees gotta work pretty hard to get that honey in so I thought that was not a bad price.

gab · Jan 18, 2019

Wonder if there's any bee trees out in the woods anymore, back on the farm years ago there was one on the edge of a field for quite a few years and I've seen more of them when out hunting. For some reason when I was about 14 I had to take the Farmall M with a side mount mower and conditioner over to the neighbors and cut his hay. Some body had a house rented on the back of that field and stuck a couple of hives out in it. I came flying through there daydreaming and mowed down them hives, didn't see them or maybe the brome grass and hay were over them but them dam bees sure took offense, think I only got stung about 10 times though.

Royse · Jan 18, 2019

I had a colony build a hive in my house wall.
Right at the headboard of my bed. Noisy as all get out!
Couldn't get a single bee keeper to take them unless I paid them.
Then, even if I paid them, I had to dismantle the wall and put it
back together after they left. I guess they can buy their own.

Paul swpa · Jan 18, 2019

Royse, It is really pretty easy to get bees out of a situation like that, but it takes time. My brother did that a few times when he had bees back in the eighties. Took most of the summer to get it all done each time if I remember right. Also took a new queen to get it to work. He did it all with only minimal damage to the building. Never removed walls or anything.
Paul

PJH · Jan 19, 2019

When I was a kid we had a honeybee colony in the wall of our old two story house. Dad had a smoker and a head net, and he sawed the clapboard siding on each side of the stud cavity. He'd steal some honeycomb each summer and carefully tack the siding back in place. I enjoyed watching him - from a distance. My bed was against the wall that the bees occupied, and if you turned over at night and bumped the wall, they'd buzz back at you.

I vaguely remember a swarm of bees flying over and mom and dad banging on kitchen pots to get them to light somewhere. They clustered on a mulberry limb in the yard, but I don't know if they were the same bees that dad had in the wall. I was pretty small then.

Geo-TH,In · Jan 19, 2019

I let my neighbor keep her bees on the backside of my property. She is like a mother hen and looks in on them even in the winter.
One time she asked me not to mow for a week or so. She got a virgin queen and said she has to have a wedding. That was about the same Megan got married. The queen will fly very high in the air before settling down and staying in the colony.

So far they have never bothered anyone.

One time bees took over a hollow tree stump. They didn't make it over the winter.

I just Want to know who counted all 10,000 bees?

4520BW · Jan 19, 2019

Dang T, you must really be bored! Hey are you coming to Louisville next month?

teddy52food · Jan 19, 2019

Local bee keeper said when they wanted over $5.00 for a queen, he started raising his own. Now he has bees so tame he works them in a t shirt bare handed.

Mark-Ia · Jan 19, 2019

My brother has a few hives. He gets his Bees from a place in Perry Iowa. Much cheaper than what is listed here. Between the Honey harvest and Dec. 1st all the Bees in 1 hive left. no sign of dead. About 50,000.

in-too-deep · Jan 19, 2019

How the heck do you weigh bees?!?! "Ok, everyone, please stop flying and sit still so we can weigh you." : )

big tee · Jan 19, 2019

Ya talk about bees ya don't get in trouble! No to the Louisville show-GOT NO $$$ = my knees won't take all that walking anymore.-Are you going? If you see anything real good and real cheap-buy it for me-and if I like it I will pay ya.---Tee

4520BW · Jan 19, 2019

I'll probably not go even though I'm only an hour away. Is that pic a shirt? If so I'll take an XL!

JMS/.MN · Jan 19, 2019

Counting bees must be like herding cats...

big tee · Jan 19, 2019

That is the front of the shirts we had made when we pulled Super Farm 16-17 years ago. We had our demo derby combines on the back. send me your address if you want one. The 2nd pic is hanging over my desk---Tee

4520BW · Jan 19, 2019

That's funny. I have not seen a combine derby in 25 years. Do they still have them?

hd6gtom · Jan 19, 2019

I've been doing this for 20+ years. The price of their packages and queens is very high. We purchased 30 mite resistant queens from northern California last spring. They have been wonderful gals. I hope we can keep them alive this winter. If we can I will get 30-50 more in April. There are different breeds of bees just like there are different breeds of cows. Each has good and bad points. I usually get my packages of bees from the guys at Perry Iowa. 2 brothers each have 8-10 thousand hives of bees. They are actually some of the smaller professional beekeepers. Some we have meet have have 17-25000 hives of bees each. Ist easy to weigh bees. Wet them down a little, then they can't fly and funnell them into a "battery box".

hd6gtom · Jan 19, 2019

The question about ferral bees in bee trees. I haven't seen 1 in the timber in years. I have seen them in trees in people's yards. They are bees that have "swarmed" from someone's bee hive. Once in a tree or a wall they are very difficult to remove. Trees have to be cut and split, walls have to be torn apart. We probably recover close to a dozen swarms in the spring. If you get them after July 4th, it is tough to get them established and get them to produce enough honey to survive our winter's. Yes I've been stung, sometimes 20-50 times a day. Do you know only the female bees have stingers. The male bees have reproductive organs on their rear ends and cannot sting you. When the female honey bee stings you she dies. When the male bee mates with a virgin queen, he will die also. If you are thinking about keeping bees, find a class to take and an older beek to mentor you. I've never met 1 who would not help you.

High priced bees!

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