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Honey bees

J

john in la

Well-known Member
Location
What part of in La do you not understand
What would happen if someone setup a bee hive; spent some time feeding them to get them started and into the first spring then let the hive fend for itself never to be touched again.
I know they will swarm but will the original hive survive unattended.

I am not looking to collect honey or even mess with the bees at all but was thinking about putting a hive in the pasture more as a housing location for wildlife.
 
very unlikely they would survive at least more than first year. With mites, mystery colony collapse, etc it is tuff enough keeping hives on amature level with less than 30% annually. Not hard to keep bees correctly and then on good years you have honey to keep as bonus. When bees swarm the original queen and older workers leave, younger bees then raise a new queen from one of the swarm cells in hive they prepared before queen left, when new queen emerges she kills any existing queens in other swarm cells. If you catch 1st swarm then you start a second hive, etc, HTH Mark
 
Pretty much what Mark said.

Bees need some sort of management these days. That doesn't mean tons of chemicals or what not but it does mean they need help surviving.

I'm a pretty low key bee keeper, what I do in monitor for mites and only treat once they're reached a certain threshold. A lot of folks seem to treat no mater what, which works but I of the "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" mid set.


K
 
Theoretically then, what is the life of a wild hive? How do they manage to survive without mite treatments and so forth?
 
Well, see here's the thing, Honey Bees are not native to the US, everything we have are European Honey Bees. So, that being said, there's no really "wild" honey bees in the states. The feral colonies that are out there where at one point kicked of by a managed colony (they swarmed).

Before mites became a real problem (pre '80s from what I read), feral colonies did pretty well. Since the mite invasion feral colonies, at least in my neck of the wood (Maine) pretty much vanished. The long winters really magnify the mite problems. Southern, warmer states I'm sure do better but once you get so far south you start to run into Americanized Honey Bees, which tend to be survivors but also pretty mean.

Let me put it this way, in the northeast you have to work to keep your manged colonies in shape, feral ones don't get that attention.

K
 
So there are European bees that we raise in hives.
There are the really mean bees; I believe they are from Africa.
Then there must be some bee that was here before 1492 are have we cross breed these with European bees so much that they really do not exist anymore.

While I do not know anything about bees the reason I want to do this is most likely mites. Seams the wild bees are having a tough time and here I thought it was habitat loss that was causing it. Hence wanting to installing a hive or wild/feral bee house.

What would it take to help a feral colony make it in a hive????
Once a year spraying??
In other words how hard would it be to control mites??
And if I did help keep down mite population could they then survive by themselves or is there other things I would have to help them with.

Thanks for the info
 
Maybe I'm missing your point, but if you want to have bees around to pollinate and buzz around without the hassles, why not ask a local beekeeper to place a couple of hives on your place. Pretty common over here, hives look kinda like plastic coolers. They set them up wherever needed/wanted. I always thought honey was honey, but I guess these folks can "create" whatever they want with hive placement.

Dave
 
tree huggers got ahold of a couple of acres with fruit trees that I was using for my horses a couple of years ago. Overseeded it with wildflowers, clover, and herbs and pay a guy to keep bees there. Looks pretty all year, but the horses sure miss it.
 
(quoted from post at 15:22:26 11/01/08) So there are European bees that we raise in hives.
There are the really mean bees; I believe they are from Africa.
Then there must be some bee that was here before 1492 are have we cross breed these with European bees so much that they really do not exist anymore.

While I do not know anything about bees the reason I want to do this is most likely mites. Seams the wild bees are having a tough time and here I thought it was habitat loss that was causing it. Hence wanting to installing a hive or wild/feral bee house.

What would it take to help a feral colony make it in a hive????
Once a year spraying??
In other words how hard would it be to control mites??
And if I did help keep down mite population could they then survive by themselves or is there other things I would have to help them with.

Thanks for the info
Click to expand...

There is no "American Honey Bee", before they where imported from Europe, there where no honey bees in America. Seems kind of hard to believe, but it's true. Honey Bee's are native to Europe and Asia. I guess a lot of imported honey is coming to China these days (what else it new), their bees (Apis cerana) are a lot small then our European's (Apis mellifera). The Asian honey bee's also have given us a new (to us) stain of nosema to deal with....

Dave2 proabably gave the best option. A lot of bee keepers are looking for different places to set colonies. Right now I'm at two different locations, both being my own property though. I will warn you, most folks don't like to set just 1 colony, they may have a minimum of 4 or something like that. It's a lot of work to run all over the place to take care of one hive at a time.

K
 
They don't. That's what the problem is. Mite and colony collapse are killing both domestic and wild honey bees. My dad, a hobby bee keeper, tried now for the last few years to keep his alive by buying new bees and treating them only to have them die off. A local commercial keeper lost 85% last year. Until they solve colony collapse we will see decreased harvests in fruit etc. I will keep my opinions as to the cause to myself at this stage.
 
Well, it is true that there are no American bees, but the first
recorded honey bees were brought over to the US in 1622, and
they spread (by swarming) quicker than the colonists did. So "wild"
bees have been around for awhile. The Indians called them the
white man's fly.
 
Hi john,

PBS had a show on this summer about the problem with honey bees. At the end of the program, I took the latest problem coming from Australia as that's where the USA was getting there replacement bees from as they were thought disease free. Come to find out they are the ones responsible for the mite problem??? Anyway one of the major bee disease problem the USA now has.

It would be well worth your time to find a copy and watch the program.

I've just now been getting back out too our local hills we have. Fish & Game installed a bunch of water cistern's for the wildlife. The two cistern's close by were full of honey bees getting a drink for the day. They covered the entire 3ftx4ft water troff opening. These would be considered our wild bees here.

T_Bone
 
This summer one of the ash trees that blew down in my dad's woods was hollow and had a nest of honey bees. This fall on a cool day I cut up the tree, the bees didn't bother me probably because of cool weather. I used the loader to load the log sections and hauled them up by the barn. For the next couple weeks the bees swarmed by their now-moved log. Then they vanished. Where would a colony move to in the fall?
 
Thanks for the ideas.
I will look into having a beekeeper install some hives on my property. More than 1 hive is not a problem. He can put as many hives as the landscape will support for all I care.


So tell me.........
If there is no such thing as a American honey bee; then what pollinated plants before bees were imported????
 
In reply to the question, "what pollenated plants
before honey bees were imported". The are over
100 kinds of NATIVE pollenating bees, most are
small, and don"t make honey, but store pollen
for the young to eat. They make, or use exsisting
cavities to deposit eggs and pollen, most overwinter as larva, and emerge in the spring to
start the cycle again. They are perfectly suited
to native plants, but not numerous enough for
commercial crops.
When out in nature when native plants are blooming
closely observe, and you will see many types of
small native bees.
 
Sorry for not responding but greygoat is right.

There's a bunch of other pollinators out there. Some of them are even better suited for certain plants then the EHB, like pumpkins, the Bumble Bee does a much better job.

The EHB is used because it's easy to build of a big work force and they're simply the easiest Bee to work with. That and honey production.

K
 
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