The Honey Factory

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WannaBeHillBilly said:
Well, that is embarrassing! - It seems i was ripped off two years ago when i bought my first bee-hives. Yesterday i started to sand down my hive boxes, finished two bases, one brood-box and two honey-supers when i noticed that next brood-box was covered in an unusual thick layer of paint, so thick that my 80 grade paper clogged up immediately and i had to switch to the coarsest paper i had, grade 25. Then the paint started to create little "worms":
View attachment 3773825
After a lot of peeling and sanding a big chunk of stuff came off the box and revealed this:
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The next brood-box had the same layer of thick paint applied and then one of its corners came off:
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So apparently both boxes have been damaged by termites and before selling them they were patched up with some "stuff" and covered in a thick layer of paint to hide the damage. Now i know how the water and the cold air came into the hive…

@R2elk - i assume those boxes are beyond repair and should only be used to store unused frames in my garage, right?
Dang, i'm down to two brood boxes now and will receive a nuc and a package of bees withing the next two weeks, guess i will startup both hives with one box only then…
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It's fine to use a single hive body for start up. At least one commercial apiary uses a super as a hive body.
 
WannaBeHillBilly said:
it is more stone then fruit-flesh. But tasty and loaded with vitamins.
Click to expand...
I might have these too. They have spread everywhere; I think birds spread the seeds. If the bees like them, I'll definitely leave them.

What do you do with the berries? The ones I've seen are a scant 1/4" in diameter.
WannaBeHillBilly said:
It seems i was ripped off two years ago when i bought my first bee-hives.
Click to expand...
Where did you order these from?
 
WannaBeHillBilly said:
Well, not sure to what plant you are referring now, but Sunchokes of Fartichokes are hardy. They can certainly grow in zone 3. The above ground part of the plant dies in fall but the rhizome survives and regrows in the next spring.
And Autumn Olives… once »contracted« its difficult to get rid of them! 🤣 They grow and spread fast. Even the vicious West Virginia Deer can't control them. Its not really an olive, i guess they have been nicknamed that way because the little berries resemble tiny olives and, similar to olives the fruit is more stone then fruit-flesh. But tasty and loaded with vitamins.
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oh i never looked up Russian olives or autumn olives just assumed we could not grow them here. but sun chokes we can grow here just hard to find for sale.
 
It is nice to see your bees on stuff you plant but to make any impact on colonies you need to plant acres of forage. Planting trees like black locust and basswood will make a difference. A hated plant that produces a lot of great honey is knotweed along with golden rod in the fall. My favorite honey is when knotweed and golden rod nectar are coming in, you can smell it, to me it has that sickening sweet smell like walking past a cotton candy machine. The honey is dark and has a very nice caramel vanilla flavor thats great for sweetening coffee and tea. Black berry/raspberry, milkweeds are easy to grow and bees love. I like easy because my soil isn't the best. The large patches of milkweed I grow have the added benefit of attracting monarchs. Bees sometimes get stuck on the milkweed flowers. Milkweed flowers make a weird sticky pollen sack (pollinia) that get stuck to the bees. I dont think they benefit from the pollen but they do from the nectar they produce. I like growing chives and bunching onions too, bees love the flowers.
 
Apis mellifera said:
It is nice to see your bees on stuff you plant but to make any impact on colonies you need to plant acres of forage. Planting trees like black locust and basswood will make a difference. A hated plant that produces a lot of great honey is knotweed along with golden rod in the fall. My favorite honey is when knotweed and golden rod nectar are coming in, you can smell it, to me it has that sickening sweet smell like walking past a cotton candy machine. The honey is dark and has a very nice caramel vanilla flavor thats great for sweetening coffee and tea. Black berry/raspberry, milkweeds are easy to grow and bees love. I like easy because my soil isn't the best. The large patches of milkweed I grow have the added benefit of attracting monarchs. Bees sometimes get stuck on the milkweed flowers. Milkweed flowers make a weird sticky pollen sack (pollinia) that get stuck to the bees. I dont think they benefit from the pollen but they do from the nectar they produce. I like growing chives and bunching onions too, bees love the flowers.
Click to expand...
The only problem I see with milkweed is that it is invasive. Once you get it started, you can't get rid of it. It spreads both by seeds and roots.

You must have a different kind of milkweed than I have. I have never seen my bees get stuck to milkweed.
 

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