Beekeeping and Bees

Harvested the super I use for honeycomb. 12 containers and an extra gallon of honey

3 gallons from one hive. My second hive swarmed, so not enough honey to harvest yet. The third hive I'm harvesting this week for honeycomb.

Near Sihanoukville Cambodia. There were many on these fallen tree flowers after a rain.

I don't 'keep' these or harvest their honey, I just like having them around. I do provide habitat for them. They love cracks in stone walls and bamboo tubes if they are protected. I drill holes in bamboo and hang them between 1.5-2 metres high, and build small sections of wall with voids.

I'm wondering how people are handling splits with this early warm weather. It's so variable that I'm not comfortable trying a split yet, not to mention that I've only got capped drone brood and no mature drones in my own hives.

Our willow trees are starting to bud out, so forage is becoming more available. I've got one hive that's really strong coming out of winter and I'm worried I'm going to be surprised by a swarm too early in the season.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12906408

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12855486

These are quite odd in the world of Bees. They forage diurnally and nocturnally, and they migrate by season. The distance is usually only a few hundred metres.

Generally quite aggressive if disturbed. This one was looking for water in my sink in dry season. I fished her out before she drowned.

Sorry for the photo, these girls are tiny, and my phone does not really do that.

These are stingless, cavity nesting bees that often land on you either by accident, or because they want some salt.

I have at least thousands of them around. When I need to relax I will slowly walk into a swarm of them. Very calming.

They loves holes in walls, and I also prepare large bamboo tubes for them. As long as they are sheltered, they are happy.

Solitary Bees and Predatory Wasps frequent these. I have never seen them interact though. Possibly they are not interested, or active at different times.

Notice that some spaces are sealed with plant resin, and others with cellulose, in at least 3 different ways.

This is in Cambodia

Very wet, doing fine now

I found this article interesting because it discusses the science of how female and male bees are determined (beyond the male haploid and the female diploid).

Basically, there's a protein and if a diploid bee has two different versions, it's a girl because the two proteins can bind to each other to activate a sex-determining switch. And a male haploid bee will have one version, which is unable to activate the "female" switch so he stays male.

However, it suggests (if I understand the article right, and I may not) that it's possible to have a diploid bee with two of the SAME versions of the sex-determining protein...which means it would be male because they can't bind together to activate the "female" switch...but the bees do not allow such eggs to mature. So any potential "diploid male" egg basically is destroyed.

I do wonder if it's actually cleared out by the bees themselves, or if it self-terminates due to some abnormality in growth?

I'd be really curious what would happen if you could successfully raise a diploid male bee to maturity. Could he mate with a queen successfully? Would the offspring be ok?

Here's an older article about the same topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07052

Edit: Here's the science paper the parent link is based on: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg4239

a moment of watching bee friends

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/2213195

I remember how big this was for a while - only for this bit of news to be buried with a short article. Surely the scale of infestation (resulting in the change in approach) is going to have significant impacts to pollinator-dependent agriculture?

Beeswax candle from the wax I rendered! Fun side project.

I bought a cheap crockpot and finally melted down all my callings from the last few years. It was very satisfying.

Collected about 2 gallons of honey this year.

"The bees and beehives are managed on the Parliament’s behalf by a family run, local business. The Smith hive, a hive suitable for Scottish weather conditions is used at the Scottish Parliament.

The beeswax (which is a by-product of beekeeping) is used to fill the Great Seal of Scotland and seal acts of the Scottish Parliament."

Some bees have established a home in a not so good place on my Southern California property. How do I get them moved to a better place? A local commercial beekeeper offered to to it for $250. Would it be realistic to hope for another (amateur?) beekeeper to be interested in taking the colony for free? If so, any suggestions on how to find such a person?

First honey of the season. The second established hive will probably give about 10 times as much.

This hive died, the queen didn't make it and they were not able to rear a new one quickly enough. When I checked it today, it was totally dead, so I harvested the honey in the super and closed up the brood chamber with some apivar.

In the fall I will get this one going again. My other hive is doing amazing.

Mite counts were low on both hives, and I do preventative treatments.