10 of 30 - VI - Beekeeping

[aggienaut]

   People often ask me what exactly beekeepers do. Similarly, I often find myself doing things and thinking "I bet people don't think of beekeepers doing THIS"

   Yesterday was such a day, as Dave and I spent the day clearing underbrush in a meadow to prepare to put beehives there. So I was spending my time raking the bajeezes out of the area.
   In so doing we upset a nest of these giant ants, which proceeded to try to eat us. So we got the any poison and carpet bombed that corner. Ants are more than just a nuisance -- they sneak into hives and steal the honey. We've had numerous hives fail due to ant robbery.
   Hobbyists usually put their hives on stilts with ant poison around the base of the stilts (or the stilts actually sitting in cups of oil), but on a large scale putting hives on stilts isn't practical. So we are constantly battling ants.

   The other day I ordered some 150 hive boxes, which should arrive tomorrow or the next day. They are assembled, but not painted, so this means that I'll probably spend at least a day painting hives.

   And then there's the miscelleneous things such as ordering equipment, assembling equipment, cleaning equipment. I think I spend as much time not working directly with bees as I do working with them.
   The hives are all pretty full of honey though right now, so I'm optimistic we'll be doing a honey harvest before too long. That will entail numerous steps which I will no doubt document at the time.

   But in the mean time, we recently established two new bee yards up in the forested hills at around 2,500 ft, and the one I was clearing yesterday will make a third. The area is so beautiful I would love to go camping right there were the bees are. It's going to be a great place to work (and is so lush, it's going to be a great place for the BEES to work).

   Here is a picture of one of the yards up there:



(I took this as soon as we arrived at this yard -- we don't know why that one in the foreground was off kilter, but I'm blaming chupacabra)

Comments

Chemical Warfare

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

Illegal Chinese magic chalk is death to ants.

Ask for it at the Chinese grocery, they keep it behind the counter.

Draw a line, ant touches the line, ant dies. Drawing a line halfway up the base of the hive should work very well.

I don't see any reference to it being illegal. Maybe it is not illegal anymore? Anyway. It works very well.


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Re: Chemical Warfare

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hmmm any idea what effect it would have on bees though? One major problem with fighting ants is that ants are closely related to bees, and a lot of things that are harmful to ants are also harmful to bees

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

I would think tht it probably is toxic to bees, but the bee would have to land right on the line, whereas the ant would have to crawl across the line to get at the bees. Maybe I haven't thought this through. I suppose that they land and crawl about the base a lot? I suppose that you'd have to experiment a bit, because good luck getting any information about this from the manufacturer....

Oh well, just trying to be helpful.




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[doodlemaier.livejournal.com]

My hive rests on a layer of boards over a couple of cinder blocks. I think this stuff would work for my purpses. I could draw a line on the underside lip created by the boards, I don't think the bees ever land on that area but the ants certainly have to cross that space to get into the hives. I was planning on doing this with a thick layer of vegetable shortening.

Your Hives

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

You should take a picture of your hive, I'd be interested in seeing what you got going on.

How's it coming along? How many frames are they active on? Have you added another super?

Re: Your Hives

[doodlemaier.livejournal.com]

Everything seems to be going pretty well. They're happy and growing in numbers and have lots of pollen packed away. Although I probably could've waited another couple weeks I added another deep on my last inspection (7/10).

I've got a few pictures of it already that I haven't had purpose until now to post, showing the placement in the yard and the support structure, also a short movie the Mrs. filmed while I was hiving them. I'm hoping I can find someone brave enough to wear the gloves and my spare veil to handle the camera for me on my next inspection, which is scheduled for the weekend of the 20th. So, look at doodlemaier sometime after that.

Magic Chalk

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

See also my comment after a little research on the stuff.

Ants

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hmm yeah it's worth experimenting with ... presumably somewhere where if it's catastrophic for bees it will only effect one hive. (:

We can make barriers that are out a few feet from the hives, that's what we do with the granular ant poison we've been using, but if this stuff is as toxic as it sounds, I'd be concerned about the wind blowing some onto hives or such. As I said, ants and bees are very similar -- they're both in the same suborder of Hymenoptera, and what kills ants probably kills bees just as well.

But yeah thanks for the advice. If I get a chance I'll look into it, because we can really, really use a more effective ant deterrant. They wiped out a healthy hive the other day.

Re: Ants

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

Some other beekeeper made a comment that he thought it would work on his hives, his method sounded like it was doable.



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[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

doodlemaier. That's him.


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Lines

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

The lines stay put. No noticeable dust that I ever saw.

And it keeps away ghosts, too (cf some Tim Powers novel or another)!




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Re: Lines

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Oh, in only barely related news -- you had mentioned a bit ago thinking about getting a hive. I think you should do it. Yes "colony collapse disorder" is still going on, but it only occurs in winter and isn't as bad as the media makes it out to be ... appx 32% of hives have been lost to it every winter, which is bad, but that still means you're more likely than not not to be effected. And if you have two hives there's a 90% chance at least one will survive (:

Re: Lines

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

You don't think the swelling and inflexibility of the hand from one sting (that I mentioned in another comment on your blog somewhere) is something to be concerned about, then? I am confident of my ability to deal with any amount of beesting level pain, less confident of my ability to deal with anaphylactic shock.

Should I just go get deliberately stung a few times to build up an immunity or what?


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Re: Lines

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that. Well, the good news is you don't appear to be one of the 2% of americans who goes into life threatening anaphylactic shock after one sting -- but you might be allergic to them on a lower level.

BUT it sounds like you won't die from a sting so, yes, actually, I would recommend getting a few more one at a time and seeing what happens. The way it was explained to me is that every time you get fewer stings than a certain allergic typing tipping point you build up tolerance, but every time you get MORE stings than that point your tolerance goes down (your body decides to overreact more). I believe that typing tipping point is where you have a really bad reaction, which hopefully your body isn't counting the swollen hand as. As such, if you were to get a stings a few more times hopefully your reaction will go down. If your reaction seems to be getting worse though it would probably be best to call it quits on the little experiment.

I Think This Might Work

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

Get or make a cardboard thingie like a box lid (actually you just need the outer rim of a box lid) slightly larger than the base of a beehive. So it sticks out like a quarter of an inch on the side and right angles down over the base, and does not touch the ground so the ant has to crawl up under it to get (as he thinks) to the top. I am not sure if you would have to make a passageway through, but in any case, under the cardboard lid, where the bees can't easily get at it, you have one or more lines of magic chalk.

And it does not add a lot of time to assembling the hive, as opposed to constructing stilts or digging little moats or whatever.

Anyway, you'll figure it out. The trick is to make a pathway that the ants must go through that the bees can't or won't go through and have the chalk inside it.



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Re: I Think This Might Work

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Okay I did some research on this stuff. It seems the active ingredients are deltamethrin and cypermethrin.

Found this article which makes it sound scary and describes deltamethrin as "one of the most dangerous pesticides." Wikipedia however describes it as "this material is a member of one of the safest classes of pesticides" Lolz.

Apparently it is a pyrethroid though, which is what we use in our bee control business, so I'm going to wildly assume it's similar to what we already use for that.

The cypermethrin sounds even more non-dangerous.

My conclusion is that it sounds safe to use BUT I wouldn't handle the stuff without gloves, would avoid inhaling it, etc. The fact that it was formerly legal but is now illegal (according to the sfgate article) is particularly reassuring (I feel like that sentence sounds sarcastic, but it's not).

It comes in a chalk form? Is it easy to crumble up to lines? Not prohibitively expensive to get enough to surround several dozen hive boxes?

[vakratunda.livejournal.com]

You don't need to crumble just draw a couple three parallel lines in the ants path. Really, a little goes a long way.


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