Hi, I was born and raised in Austin, TX which is now too big of a city to live in to me. We moved out to Dripping Springs which is about 30 miles due west of Austin to get closer to nature in OCT of 15.
I have land that is ag exempt (agricultural exemption on property taxes) with bees (TX law is between 5 - 20 acres) that we are now selling. Hence I have moved all the hives recently to my property in DS.
I have been a bee wrangler for about 8 years. I have a very hands off policy and really only open my hives (qty 10) when I want to harvest. There is a bee here that has been bred since the 80's to be immune to mites which I use exclusively and I have never had a problem, never a collapse, never a swarm, never a weak colony, which to me, means I have simply been lucky as is with most things in life.
I hope to learn a lot from the kind people here and thank you for letting me join the tribe.
A. mellifera
Howdy and welcome. I wish I could find some land 30 minutes from Houston! I'd need to discover a gold mine first...
Welcome to the forum! Great people here. Glad to hear there are lucky beekeepers out there. I look forward to hearing more about it.
Thanks for the welcome.
Yes, it is becoming extremely expensive in this area.
Can't wait for the honey flow to start soon.
Welcome to Beemaster.
Jim
Riddle me this......if you only go in to harvest.....sounds to me like you are practicing no swarm management....and yet you state you have never had a swarm.....how does that work or am I misunderstanding something?
I think we have an issue of nomenclature. I used swarm above as a verb, as I tend to, in the context of my bees swarming away from my hive to another location. After reading above I realize I could have worded that better. Thank you, sir.
It appears you are in Florida. We have more weather in common probably than most here in the forum. I love the heat - easier to build, easier to garden, never have to shovel snow, blah, blah.
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Yes we have quite a few commonalities...Mother is in San Marcos....and sister was in Wimberly and is now in Austin...and I have been through Dripping Springs quite a few times and had a few beers at Twisted X ;-)