We are a channel about a family who dropped our lives in the city to start a new life in a rural area. Follow us through our life as we develop our land into a sustainable estate for our family. See our trials and errors as we post our experiences through it all. We hope that everyone will see that living an independent, sustainable life is something everyone can do.
There is an easy answer. Do not use a different box than you would use as a hive. Pretty simple solution. No transfer needed. Seen it done. Don't know why others don't.
Well, typically the recommendation for a swarm trap is that it is best to have them facing a field and around 10-15 feet up in the air. As most hive boxes are assembled in multiple pieces and become quite heavy once a swarm moves in, it would be very difficult to climb a tree or ladder as well as attempt to pull the 50-100 lb hive out of the tree. Furthermore, as swarm traps have to be moved at night (because that is when all your bees move into a hive), it is a little more difficult to do all this in the dark while also attempting to occlude the hive entrance in order to prevent the bees from coming out in transit. Granted, I am new to all of this to be sure, but these may be the reasons that the vast majority of the industry uses smaller boxes with fewer frames for trapping. Thank you for the recommendation!
As the greenhouse doesn’t seem to be too large I wonder if a couple simple yard sprinklers would work at evenly watering everything, but then again as this is based off a rain collection “drip” system I suppose it wouldn’t have enough water pressure to function and it would probably waste water
Yep, the idea of the experiment was to see if the entire system can run independent from power and from manual watering. Also, being that water only goes to the intended plants, we use less water (or making the collected rain water go further), and we also have to deal with fewer weeds as its harder for them to grow when water only goes to the intended plants.
I see your thought to not only collect the water but have the ability to target the plants with the emitters. That reduces a lot of water loss you get through hand watering. Do you plan on using a sun shade in your hottest months?
Hello! Thanks for the question! We do have a shade that we are intending to use (as we will actually likely need to use it soon). We are hoping it will further help in reducing unwanted evaporation. If you have any other recommendations of things we could implement or haven't thought of, please be sure to let us know. Again, this really is a learning experience for us at this point. It would be so much easier to fail now without the loss of large expenses than to fail later when we have made much larger investments into more permanent structures!
Use that miter gauge! You're asking for kickback on those long, thin cuts like those rabbets. Elizabeth and I (Michael (from STR)) enjoy watching and hope you are all doing well.
Yeah, I was worried about kickback with it for sure! Had to make sure I was standing way over to the side just in case it happened! Thank you all for watching. Hopefully it doesn't make you cringe too much!
I don't know what it is, but it seems like time is so short for us and the little time we do have seems to slip right through our fingers! Hopefully one day we will get to the point where we can just slow down and relax.
I'm starting this coming spring. I've always wanted to keep bees but never had the time until I retired. I'm spending the winter building the hives and things that go along with that. I'd really like to see how you trap swarms because that's gonna be something I'm trying this spring also
Thank you for watching! This is our third year taking care of bees. We are really quite new to this whole process, but one thing we were REALLY successful with was trapping. We go into a bit more depth in another video (link below): m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uNR9jnhXkJ0.html I will say, I have really enjoyed taking care of bees. We try to take a relatively hands off approach to them and are a little more interested in propagating strong strains of bees rather than maximizing production at the cost of everything else. This approach has made things quite enjoyable. Even if you just have two hives (which I recommend having no less than two), I really recommend you dip your toes into it.
Thanks for the tip! I'll have to give that a try. This is our 3rd year with honey bees so we are just learning. Any other tips that any of the experienced keepers have, I am open ears!
Yes! Please add me to the drawing for the trap and brood comb. I'm very interested in learning how to care for bees. All praise and honor and glory to Yahawah God in Jesus' Name amen.
How aggressive would you expect these bees to be? I see you're obviously wearing some protective gear. Also, how do you know when the swarm trap is fully ready to transfer to a hive? Great video. Very informative!
Some strains seem to be more aggressive than others. They can also be more aggressive depending on the season. It seems that they tend to be worse just coming out of winter as they are low on honey and are a little more desperate to protect it. In this video, they really weren't too bad. When I first see activity in front of a hive, it is usually scout bees coming in to investigate the space. If they find it suitable, they will go back to the hive to get the others. I usually wait until I can see them moving inside the hive at night (assuming I missed the big swarm event). Once I see them moving in the hive at night, I like to give them a couple of days to get established and that's when I transport them.
