Honey... ah sugar sugar, you are my candy girl...

[Zombie Axe]

Sorry folks... I don't have an excessive supply to sell my honey this time of year. Maybe in August/September I will have some for sale... If you can make it to the NC get together I will bring a jar to sample :)

I know the baby and honey comment was joke... but just for the record do not let infants under 1 year eat ANY HONEY as it can make them sick :( It can contain botulism spores that children and adults can safely consume but a non no for little ones...

As for making money off of bee hives, yes you can. I was offered $60 per month per hive to make sure that the new cash crop of the region, blackberries, get pollinated.

This was 4 hives per acre X 4 acres and I got to keep all the honey!!!

However, since beekeeping season is in the late spring, summer and early fall, I couldn't do it :( That time of year is when I work most of my REQUIRED OT so I coudn't keep up with that task...

I can manage about 4 hives a year and have my own honey extractor that makes extracting, filtering and bottling a breeze!

When the sticky mess is left after I take the honey from the frames and a thin coating is left on the extractor, I just leave it outside and the bee's clean up the mess :)

That way nothing is wasted and the bees get a fraction of thier honey back...

[Loshali]

Organic Honey

I was reading the other day about organic honey, and depending on whether or not the gardens/farms within a two-mile radius of your hives are using pesticides, etc, would determine if the honey is organic or not. I'm totally new to bee keeping, although my grandfather had a few hiveswhen I was very little so I remember almost nothing about it, except some fantastic honey.

I want to start a hive as soon as possible.

[cudalyon]

I want to start one too. There is a problem...... I am scared to death of bees, I hate em. If a bee weighed about 15 lbs and were about 2 ft long, those mean bas***ds would rule the world. I hate em....did I mention that I am also allergic to them and swell up like the stay puft marshmallow man when stung?

[CJD]

I don't know about everyone else, but I want to start keeping bees as an excuse to wear one of those cool hats. Chick magnet for sure.

[TheUnboundOne]

Zombie Axe,

You wrote:

Sorry folks... I don't have an excessive supply to sell my honey this time of year. Maybe in August/September I will have some for sale... If you can make it to the NC get together I will bring a jar to sample

MMMMMMM!--Honey!

:D

I know the baby and honey comment was joke... but just for the record do not let infants under 1 year eat ANY HONEY as it can make them sick It can contain botulism spores that children and adults can safely consume but a non no for little ones...

That bees what I's tryin' to tell 'em.

:D

By the way, do you sell your honey with the honeycomb? I love eating the honeycomb. It's like eating honey-flavored wax candy lips! Yuuuum-Yum!

:)

[Zombie Axe]

I never really considered bee keeping before. Could you explain a bit more the steps you use in recovering the honey or what you think works best? I have a few fruit trees I have planted. They should love those. I may start on the project right after a make a few Rusty beer bottle glasses.

Pretty easy...

I use a bee escape to seperate the supers (the parts of the hive that hold the excess honey). Basically the bees eventually go down to the lower parts and cannot figure out how to get back up... but they figure out within 48 hours how to get back up so you got a window... this is not the only method but the one I prefer...

Once I remove the supers I wrap them up an transport them back to the house.

I then take out the frames (I use frame spacers and use 9 frame spacing so the bee's draw out the comb to make it easy to scrape off the cappings) and scrape/cut off the cappings so the honey can drip out.

I put these on a wire mesh screen below the extractor and let them drip into the collection container for a few days. I then insert the frames in the extractor and sling out the remaining honey left in the uncapped comb. After that I also sling out the cappings to extract the honey there as well...

The extractor cost me around $500 but is a vast improvement of just letting it drip and hoping I got it all.

The extractor has a screen that filters out any wax or other stuff and gives you some nice clean honey. The collection tank at the bottom has a honey gate that allows you bottle the honey without any mess :)

Then after all is bottled I let the bees clean up the thin coating of honey. They love it and then I store the equipment for next year :)

[Zombie Axe]

I was reading the other day about organic honey, and depending on whether or not the gardens/farms within a two-mile radius of your hives are using pesticides, etc, would determine if the honey is organic or not. I'm totally new to bee keeping, although my grandfather had a few hiveswhen I was very little so I remember almost nothing about it, except some fantastic honey.

I want to start a hive as soon as possible.

Dunno if that is true or not, but what I refer to organic is that I do not use pesticides...

Beekeeping is awesome :)

[Zombie Axe]

I don't know about everyone else, but I want to start keeping bees as an excuse to wear one of those cool hats. Chick magnet for sure.

ROTFLMAO :D:D:D

[Zombie Axe]

BTW for those of you wishing to start beekeeping I suggest you start with 2 hives. That way if you lose a hive for whatever reason, you are not out 100% just down 50% :)

Just a simple way to hedge your bets... and make sure you get some honey :)

[Loshali]

Honey Mead

I'd like to make some mead with it. Every had any? Oh man, the best 'wine' you'll ever drink. Warmed in the wintertime, slightly mulled. Takes a LOT of honey though, and then some cider..... Uh oh, I think we'll be getting snockered at the Carolina gathering....

[Zombie Axe]

I'd like to make some mead with it. Every had any? Oh man, the best 'wine' you'll ever drink. Warmed in the wintertime, slightly mulled. Takes a LOT of honey though, and then some cider..... Uh oh, I think we'll be getting snockered at the Carolina gathering....

LOL... I'd like to try making Mead one day :)