This is our first year raising honeybees in our new beehives, and I wanted to make how to raise bees beekeeping videos to show you all that you too can raise bees. We are not the experts here, but one learns by doing. So we do things, and we make beekeeping videos.
The sugar syrup we feed the bees in the fall is a 2:1 mixture. 10 lbs of sugar to 5 pounds of water. 1 pint of water weighs about 1 lb, so we heat up 5 pints of water and mix in 10 pounds of white table sugar. Do not add sugar to boiling water, boil the water and then take the pot off the stove, put it on a heat proof platter and use a immersion blender to mix in the sugar.
The first gallon of the fall sugar feeding has Fumagilin added to help the bees thru the winter.
We are using powdered sugar for our varroa mite treatment. watch the video to see how we do this.
Shirley Canada
Will you be making a video on how to use the beeswax????
Shirley - Ontario Canada
Found a helpful hint on controlling mites at video by O J BLOUNT
check it out seems to make a lot of sense to set it up that way!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/ArtfullyYours#p/a/u/0/niQQfPoiEmw
Eric Gunnar Rochow
Thanks for the link to OJ.
what O J is doing is using a screened bottom board for varroa mite control . There are many screened bottom board designs, his is interesting. ( he is also very interesting, quite a character )
But, using a screened bottom board is just one part of a multi prong program for reducing varroa populations in your hives. Along with the screened bottom boards, I use powdered sugar on my bees, I requeen with Varroa Resistant queens from Jennifer Berry, each hive has a frame of Drone comb that we remove regularly, and use a formic acid treatment.
screened bottom boards are great but are just one part of the battle, not a cure-all for varroa mites.
Tonia Moxley
Hey Eric, You've inspired me to start keeping bees in my backyard. But after checking into the price of starting up, I'm going with Kenyan Top Bar Hives with almost no intervention. I'll let you know how it goes. Another fun part, I get to build the hives!
Lyn Hillman
Thank you for the website and videos. I live in North Pole Ak. and I'm thinking of starting a beehive in the near future. I've been told that hives can't be wintered over up here. So the bees are killed off every fall, and new are bought in spring. It sounds expensive. One reason is that, if bees are wintered over, they get the trachial mites. How does the grease patty help with this' and will it work up here? Also, I've heard tha bees from Italy are the best, calm bees and lots of honey. Thank you again.
John
You can make that job alot easier with a simple flour sifter you will cover them with out the clumps.