Dear viewers, subscribers and visitors,

Our new raw comb honey video is all about that liquid gold, served in its most natural form. RAW COMB HONEY. It is untouched by human hands, unprocessed, unheated, unfiltered, without chemicals, sugar water additives or preservatives. Simply the healthiest natural raw food available for those interest in a healthy diet, all thanks to the hard work of Honey bees and the beekeeper taking care of his beehives and bee colonies. As colony disorder continues to cause much concern for beekeepers worldwide, few now dare to cut away the precious golden nectar with all that beeswax. It takes up to twenty kilos of honey to produce one kilo of beeswax. Keep that in mind when you purchase a true beeswax candle and appreciate all that hard work the bees put into it. Enjoy the smell, the beautiful honey aroma, and the long lasting burn.

Also, take the opportunity next time you visit your local fresh food market, and grab a sample pack of that beautifully fresh raw comb honey. You won;t regret it!

Hope you like our videos, and if you do, we invite you to subscribe to our MahakoBees or if you feel we deserve it, click the LIKE button below. We appreciate all comments and feedback so don’t be shy and let’s dive deep into the topic of bees, honey, beeswax and beekeeping as a hobby or in deed as a large and extremely important agricultural industry.

We appreciate all your support

MahakoBees

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/.

You can read more about what Raw Comb Honey is below. Information is from Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_honey

Comb honey is honey, intended for consumption, which still contains pieces of the hexagonal-shaped beeswax cells of the honeycomb.

Before the invention of the honey extractor almost all honey produced was in the form of comb honey.[citation needed] Today, most honey is produced for extraction but comb honey remains popular among consumers both for eating ‘as is’ and for combining with extracted honey to make Chunk Honey. Hobbyists and sideliners can best develop their beekeeping skills by producing comb honey, which they can easily sell for several times its value as extracted honey. Comb honey production is more suitable for areas with a prolonged honeyflow from dutch clover, alsike, and yellow clover. Wooded areas are not very suitable for comb honey production, as bees tend to collect much propolis, which makes the harvesting of comb honey much more difficult. This problem has been largely circumvented with the adoption of specialized frames which prevent accumulation of propolis on saleable units.

Hive management

Beehive with Ross Round style comb honey super and frames exposed

Populous honey bee colonies are usually reduced to single hive bodies at the beginning of the honeyflow when one or more comb honey supers are added. Comb honey can either be produced in wooden sections, shallow frames, or Ross Rounds. The successful production of comb honey requires that the hive remain somewhat crowded without overcrowding, which leads to swarming. Young prolific queens help rapid colony population expansion with less likelihood of swarming. Caucasian Apis mellifera bees are often preferred for their tendency to keep a constricted brood nest and for their production of white wax cappings, making more attractive honey combs.

A short video on how we sometimes resort to using a 600 degrees Celsius heat gun on old frames before we replace the foundation. This process not only wax coats the timber to protect it from rotting as easily and prolong its life in general, but it also kills Wax Moth and Hive Beetle eggs, and a host of other undesirable parasites. Its just one of many ways to do it, but this one is fast and relatively safe rather than using a blow torch or open fire on timber that is coated with wax, which is somewhat a fire hazard really. Hope you enjoy our videos, and if you do, please subscribe and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions about each video or the channel in general. All feedback is much appreciated. Thank you

MahakoBees

A great article and many more like it are online, but this is a nice summary on wax moth and beekeeping if you would like to learn more. It is published by http://www.beeworks.com/:

Wax Moth

Wax moths can be a terrible problem to bee hives if allowed to get out of hand and will destroy brood comb in a very short time if unchecked. There are some simple steps to prevent the damage, but first it might be simpler to discuss the life cycle to understand where the problem comes from.

A normal healthy hive will keep wax moth under control by ejecting the larvae, but weakened hives with small populations can be overcome by wax moth infestations destroying the brood comb, ultimately destroying the hive.

There are two varieties of moth which take delight in dining on wax the ‘Greater’ and also the ‘Lesser’ Wax Moth the greater wax moth is a mottled grey in colour approx 1 -1B= inches in length while the lesser is smaller and slimmer approx B= inch in length and white/silver. As all moths, they prefer night time to mate and lay eggs. (Photos are available in our picture gallery.)

Most wax moths are seen in early summer in our area, and we see them under the overhang of hive roofs, out of the daylight, when the hive is disturbed they take off quickly and disappear into the trees.

Preferring to work in the dark the moths enter the hive through top entrances left unscreened and unguarded by the bees, perhaps a sudden cold snap making the bees cluster, and lay eggs in cracks unavailable to the bees. These hatch in due course and the grey larvae begin feeding on wax and hive debris, tunneling just under the cell caps and feeding on the discarded cocoons left by the bees, leaving behind an extremely sticky white web, similar to spiders web but almost impossible to pull apart. So perhaps they are misnamed and should be called Cocoon moths?

With a little care wax moth can be outwitted and the damage they do can be prevented.

First, the practice of top entrances should be examined, provided they have screening then there will be no problem. Leaving a big hole in the inner cover, then a badly fitting roof, is just asking for trouble. Or even worse those holes drilled in the top of boxes allowing the bees a second entrance are a real problem. Apart from pollen in the honey, a cold evening and the bees pull down and form a cluster leaving that entrance unguarded, easy pickings for the wax moth, as they will fly in cooler conditions than bees.

They do say that prevention is better than cure. I have already given one way, using screening to prevent wax moth entering the hive top. The second point could be to use a trap to draw the moths away from the hive area. There are, to my knowledge, no commercial wax moth traps, but we use a country cure which works extremely well and I would recommend to all.

Take a 2 litre plastic pop bottle and drill a 1 inch hole just below the slope on the neck, then add 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, 1 half cup vinegar and finally 1 banana peel. Wait a few days till it starts to ferment, then tie it into a tree close to the hives. This trap will draw the wax moth, they enter the hole can’t get out and drown in the liquid, this will even draw in and kill the bald faced hornet.

Assuming you have followed the above instructions, then you should be able to prevent damage, but what to do if you have already a problem of wax moth?

Extensive damage, evidenced by the white webs, might be simpler to burn and start again. In cases of minor infestations pull out any larvae you can see and clean out all webs. Freezing is a very good way of killing larvae and eggs, so storage in an outside unheated shed during the winter can be useful. Boxes should have a screen top and bottom to prevent mouse damage and allow light to filter down as wax moth prefer the dark.

There are also preventative treatments to treat boxes of drawn brood comb if the above suggestions cannot be incorporated into your management regimes, there is no need to treat honey supers as they don’t normally hold brood cocoons. One is a product called Certan, mixed with water and sprayed on the comb with a garden pressure sprayer. This is the only biological larvaecide available for wax moth control, it has no effect on you, your honey, bees or wax. Used just before storage or before the comb is placed on the hive it is ingested by the larvae and kills from the inside out.

The second treatment is placed onto the stacked pile of boxes during storage and consists of ParadiChlorBenzene crystals. These are used over newspaper in the stack, needs airing out before use.

Contrary to public opinion wax moth can be controlled, but I stress that prevention is better than cure, and the simplest way is to prevent wax moth getting into the hive through gaps and spaces.

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Welcome fellow beekeepers and honey bee enthusiasts,

This video is pretty simple, but you may find it fascinating none the less. Bees are such amazing creatures (insects), that go through metamorphosis, take on many roles in the relatively short life span, and manage to create so many useful natural and fully organic beekeeping products like bees wax, propolis, and raw honey. This video shows the many different types and colours of beeswax you can remove from your beehives. The colours range form perfectly clean and very fresh snow white to dark and almost black brood comb. The older it is, the darker it usually gets. Take a look. I am sure you will find the contract very interesting. 

It is worth noting, that beeswax has many uses, and we will elaborate on these in our future videos, but one of its main applications is off course in aroma therapy and candle making, as well as cosmetics. It is an essential ingredient that is organic, natural, and if collected and processed by a mindful beekeeper, many have indicated that it may also possess healing properties. The perfectly clean and white piece of burr comb, or wax cappings are the most valuable type of beeswax and it is used primarily by the cosmetics industry. We may elaborate on the ranging market value of bees wax in a future video as well. SO please, we invite you to support our growing channel that is aimed at the beekeeping industry as a whole but mostly targets the new, small, hobbyist or homestead style beekeepers that have only a few hives they manage.

Please hit the like or subscribe button, and comment or share the links if you find our content useful.

Have a wonderful day

MahakoBees

Please subscribe and or like the MahakoBees videos. We appreciate your help.

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Our BOILING hot honey bees are experiencing a heatwave in Australia. Over 56 degrees Celsius in the sun, 40 degrees in the shade. No surprise, our MahakoBees are boiling, and are doing what they do best to cool down. They hang outside the hive and display a behavior that often surprises many beekeepers and that is “bearding“. This is often confused with a swarming or the preparation for a swarm by novice beekeepers. We continually clear our hive ventilation holes, but the bees immediately propilize them right back immediately. So, we leave them as is and simply provide plenty of water for them to cool the hive with. Thank you for watching, please subscribe and like the video, and if you have a spare moment, leave a comment. We love to hear your feedback. Thank you. MahakoBees.

PS: apologies for the poor quality of the video. We had to use an old camera on the day.

Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák

You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

A big thank you also goes to Kevin MacLeod for his Roalty free provided music: “At the shore”

Dear viewers,

Thank you for visiting. We did a little honey production/extraction experiment in this video and wanted to share it with you. It is suitable mostly for new hobby farm or city backyard beekeepers, but it may also be useful to the experienced and well seasoned beekeeping networks. 

Its all about yield when dealing with honey production, and selecting the most suitable frames and hive setup is very important. Many factors need to be considered: Your hive yard apiary location, your type of bees, your health and ability to carry the heavy honey supers, your capacity to extract and process large or small quantities of fresh honey and residual wax cappings, your extraction equipment, what product you are aiming to produce, and the list goes on. So, there is no “right” or “wrong” way do be a beekeeper and everyone has different views, needs and experience. The best you can hope for, is to implement the most optimal setup and environment for your circumstance and hope that remains constant for you as long as possible. But even then things will ultimately change as time goes by, as your hive numbers fluctuate, weather patterns change, and your circumstances change as a whole. So please, take all of our videos with a grain of salt, as nothing is set in stone. If you see a better way or have experience with similar situations, we encourage you to drop us a line in the comments below and share with the beekeeping community at large. This is fantastic hobby, and the bees need our assistance more than ever, so let’s aim to get as many people involved as possible and assist them along the way. 

So, back to the video:

We took two raw honey frame types, 

1) the “ideal” which is a two thirds in size when compared to a full deep honey frames, and

2) the full deep frames of raw honey that most professional and or commercial beekeepers use. 

We had one extracted and not extracted of each, and weighed them on our very accurate postage digital scales. Interesting outcomes. Plenty to discuss and debate in the comments below, so we invite anyone to add their experience, feedback or elaborate on this topic. It would be interesting to see what other beekeepers think and what their experience is with both frame styles and their honey harvests from each. 

If you are enjoying our beekeeping videos, we invite you to support us by subscribing and sharing with others. It helps us greatly to grow this channel.

Have a fantastic day

Mahakobees

http://www.mahakobees.com

Hi,
This is a very nice cloud based beehive tracking system. We have been using the free version for a while, and would recommend it to anyone. It is fantastic. Easy, fast, convenient, and constantly evolving.
See if you like it, and also take a look at our channel MahakoBees. We have lots of videos for you.

https://www.youtube.com/user/mahakobees

http://www.mahakobees.com

Have a great day
MahakoBees

This video describes and shows one of the many ways you can light a bee smoker quickly and easily in only minutes, that will smolder for hours. Describes full instructions, items needed, and the step by step guide to a successfully smoldering bee smoker.

MahakoBees

Decapping fresh honey frame wax cappings with hot knife closeup

This is a short clip of a fresh honey bee full timber frame being decapped with an electric hot knife. Rather a slow process, especially where the wax and comb have not been built up by the honey bees over and above the timber top and bottom bars. Those areas we decap with a decapping fork. We find the electric hot knife sufficient, but perhaps a steam hot knife would be better. Also a larger version would be nice. This one is cooled too quickly and does not reheat fast enough, so its slow and your hands get rather sore after a while. Before running the hot knife just under the wax cappings, we use a blunt knife to clean the frames and have them ready for use in the hives. This frame is a very light coloured but absolutely delicious tasting raw honey. 

I may do a video later showing the entire process and the setup we have. Beekeeping is a great hobby, and we are only just learning so any feedback or suggestions are very welcome.

Have a buzzing day

MahakoBees