Tag Archives: Bee Keeping

13 Nov

SUPER productive bees in our Nuc box BEEHIVE – beekeeping equipment. NEW VIDEO – Custom Made Nuc box BEEHIVE decorated by bees themselves. http://www.mahakobees.com/store.html looks briefly at our custom made beekeeping nuc hive which our hyperactive and super productive honey bees filled to the brim with burr comb and golden honey. We also show you a close up of our handmade wooden hive entrance reducer which assists new bee colony splits in protecting their hive entrance until they grow in numbers.

So when would a budding beekeeper use such a small beehive, or a nucleus beehive? These hives are typically used for splitting your colonies or to relocate a small swarm of bees if you are lucky enough to find one. The hive itself can come in many forms, shapes and sizes. Standard width is 4 or 5 Langstroth style full depth frames and the hive body itself is usually made out of wood, much like a normal full size brood chamber would be with an entrance and a top cover. There are also polystyrene and cardboard versions available in various local beekeeping supplies outlets, but these are used for transportation generally. The nucs can also be user to raise queens if you have lots of beehives and want to save money on re-queening. Once you order one (or better yet, make one), it is usually flat packed like other timber beehives and needs to be assembled. It functions exactly the same way as a normal full size hive would, but the space is smaller and most importantly, the hive entrance is much smaller in width, which enables the new guard honey bees to protect the colony from being robbed, attacked or invaded by pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetles. We add an additional adjustable hive entrance reducer which further restricts the opening because the bees in their first few days after migration only have a few guard bees available for hive protection, so the reducer helps by reducing the opening further minimizing their exposure to external threat. Once the colony fills up all the frames and you have a healthy fertilized and laying queen, you can either migrate them to a full hive or add a second level to the nuc. You will need to make that decision depending on where you live and how strong your bee colony is as well as other factors such as the season you are in, availability of food and flowering plants, and availability of your beekeeping equipment.

If you are interested in splitting your hives and making your own bees or would like to try rearing your own queens, or you just like the look of these hives, come and visit our simple online beekeeping supplies eStore at: http://www.mahakobees.com/store.html and have one shipped to your door today.

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Music composed, performed and provided by Groovey – Adam Kubát a Pavel Křivák. You can visit their website on: http://www.groovey.cz/

Also, a big thank you goes to Kevin McLeod for providing his royalty free music “Sidewalk Shade”. We appreciate your kind contribution – (incompetech.com).

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
05 Nov

08 Oct

Beekeeping – how to SAVE your wired timber beehive frames


HOW TO Save your wired timber beehive frames.

All beekeepers know, that building and maintaining your beekeeping equipment such as beehive, timber frames, beeswax foundations, queen excluders and all the beehive related tools of the beekeeping trade is time consuming and costly. Here is a quick tip on how you, as a new beekeeper, can save yourself many hours of your time by saving the frames before each peak honey flow season.

 

Beekeeping Equipment - frames with foundation

Beekeeping Equipment – extracted honey frames from the beehive


It is recommended, that as part of your beekeeping frame rotation schedule within your beehive apiary, all your old drawn beeswax honey comb foundations extracted and removed at least once every 1 to 2 years to keep your hives and bee colonies within them healthy and disease free. The removal of the old comb reduces the potential for spreading diseases and keeps the wax nice and clean for each new beekeeping season. You can melt the beeswax comb, process it, render it, purify it, and reuse it for new foundation sheets, or to make candles, creams or other cosmetic products. We show you this process in a small home based backyard beekeepers way in this series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfE6cWwwWKog1Mx0wdsnkPbeIDvo-qPng.

So nothing goes to waste. The Honey Bees simply need to draw the new honey comb in the beehive body on top of the new beeswax foundation sheets, and use it either as honey stores or as the new brood frames in your lower hive boxes.

Solid Beekeeping Timber Frame

Click to view HOW TO make this Solid Beekeeping Timber Frame for your beehive

So, what are we suggesting? Simple. Firstly, watch our earlier video series on how to build a solid timber honey frame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRWxK2zc4qQ. Once you have a solid full depth honey frame assembled, add foundation and put the frame into rotation in your hives. A year later, once you extract the honey and the beeswax inside the honey frames becomes darker, use a sharp knife to cut along the inner edge of the timber frame, and then carefully cut the wax along the wires. Remove the strips of beeswax, melt, render and filter as required. The beekeeping frame should now be relatively clean of all beeswax. Then, use a heat gun or a blow torch to melt the remaining wax, and to kill any remaining parasites, wax moth eggs, and to coat the frames with the beeswax for protection. (See this video on HOW TO clean frames and kill wax moth eggs using a heat gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwRAW7_xLw0). 

This will save you lots of time and effort by reducing the time spent on rewiring your frames and you get some wax for new foundation sheets as well. Not to mention, it will go a long way in saving you money by reducing requirements for treating diseases and controlling unwelcome parasites in your bee colonies in the apiary even if you sometimes mix and match the frames from one beehive to the next. So all in all, a worthwhile investment we think. 

Old retired Beeswax honey comb

Old retired Beeswax comb removal. It is not ideal to keep old comb in the beehive.

We invite you to share this video, click the thumbs up and to SUBSCRIBE if you enjoy our content. It goes a long way in helping our pollinators in crises as we continue to combat the phenomenon of bee colony disorder where our bees simply disappear in massive quantities. Thank you for visiting. MahakoBees.