I have a buddy I have been helping get started. He has been doing well and happened to at the botanical society get in a bee conversation with a very nice older lady. She just happened to have a brother who needed to get out of the bee game. He is apparently allergic, and thus wears an old style heavy full suit (was very impressed by my full vented suit). This lead to a heat faint earlier in the summer, and when his wife got out of the truck to help she got stung. Result...they want out. Two hive that I would call just tripping along. Not monsters and not weak. One is a true beast. It is big and is producing honey like crazy. The last is a swarm he caught this spring and like the swarm I caught the same time this year it appears to be exploding, with a likely beastly future. He also has a lot of boxes, frames and such. Nice 6 frame spinner, electric knife. Few other doo dads. My friend and I are splitting the hives, and the equipment. We pulled the excluders yesterday, today we will pull the supers and harvest the honey, likely will return 2 empty supers to the big hives just for space. Then the next evening after dark we will block entrances, ratchet strap each together, and then move them the 30 miles to the new locations. I will be taking a few quarts of honey back down to the old guy. I could tell he is really going to miss the bees. He seemed very releaved to be sending them to guys who already had bees, but sad that they had to go. Well, and no one likes getting older...being 50 myself, I can definitely feel where he is!
Right place, right time, right conversation with the right person...all unplanned :cool:
Nice Bahbeees. Congrats. I would love to run across that kind of find. Are you sure the equipment isn't bringing any disease with it? (And welcome to the forum.)
Excellent!
Great story, happy ending. Can the old fella tell you anything about the history of his bees. Where did the queen come from, how old, and most importantly did he treat?
Blessings
Well, and no one likes getting older...
Getting older is a privilege, I don?t mind. Retirement is a blast if ya plan for it.
Blessings
That is great. Had same type of thing, got the bees and did a frame swap with him he wanted to get back into it later. Getting ready to split that hive up 3 ways.
little info.
-Hive inspection showed no issues beyond a wad of beetles up in a super that had a small void just perfect for them to hide in.
-He started it a swarm, and added a few Italians over the years...but as few queen changes as he did I would say largely feral. one does have a tad bit of a cranky attitude, but as we are getting into dearth...they can all be cranky.
-He had a friend who would Oxalic acid them in winter during low/no brood time. This is generally my approach.
-I did look pretty hard at the brood frames as he a few years ago had a hive burnt...but, the State guy who did it was a known arsonist so to speak and was known to burn a lot of hives that were simply weak hives (thankfully he finally did it to the wrong person and got removed). I didn't see any sign of the dreaded foulbrood.
-Got 6-7 gal (caps still draining) of honey out of the supers. I was amazed at the color. My spring honey is very very light colored. This was quite dark. Still had a nice light flavor...tad stronger, but good.
Thanks for the welcome! When I figure out how to get my FB page in my tag line I will, I just started it last week. FB @ BahBees Boards-Bees
Is for both my side businesses. The Apiary of course, but I also build very nice hardwood cutting boards.