Started out with 3 hives when I was 13, by the time I was out of high school I had 23, neighbors gave me 5 when there dad died - and I caught 4 big swarms in other location I was called to, used corn cobs in my smoker , and sold my honey in pints , with a piece of comb right in the middle, honey put me thru college (4 yrs) along with a work study job in the college science dept. had bees till I was in my late 40s- then gave them to a cousin and her husband , they still have hives- my first one were given to me by my grandfather in 1957- I’m now 74the cousin I gave them to is 72 and still has them
DaVid Longest. ... I'm thinking what does this story have to do with 30 year old hives,? ☺️ Loved your story anyway, especially the putting yourself through college. Unless you have a good gourmet honey run, I think you'd need to also sell Nucs now to make much income, with so much cheap foreign honey.
@@marissawatson9711 This hive has been alive for (allegedly) 30 years. That’s 30 years without chemical treatment. You’re lucky if you get 2 years out of a hive without treating for parasites. Honey bees aren’t native to North America, so they might as well have come from another planet.
I'm shocked you don't get stung more aren't honey bees aggressive. Although you seem like you are being gentle. You may want to keep an epicentre handy.
It would be interesting to see an update on his hives to see how they've progressed. I'm curious to see how the orginal hive reacted to the "new" box after a year.
These ladies seem surprisingly mello. They'll a bit miffed that their home is is being torn up, of course, but that's just natural. It's definitely too bad that the other colonies died out, but at least one survived.
Bridge and burr comb is such a hassle for the apiarist and for the bees who get bashed around a lot. I found the simplest way to deal with rogue hives like these was to place a box of new frames and foundation (drawn comb if you have it) on top of the old boxes and wait until queen is laying in the new box, then whack a queen excluder between that and the old box so that she cannot descend into the messy old comb. In a few weeks all the bees will have hatched and will move upwards into the new brood nest. Once this has happened reverse the boxes so that the new box of brood is sitting on the hive floor with a bottom entrance, super this box with a new one with clean frames and foundation or recently extracted comb over a queen excluder and put the old boxes right at the top. If there is anything worthwhile there the bees will harvest it. Then burn the old boxes and frames. That way all that is needed is some patience and there is minimum disruption of the colony and less sweat for the beekeeper.
Ever watch the video of how bees behave when they don't accept a new queen? They are all over his hands and he just shakes them off with no problem. I couldn't hold back my laughing. But bees are actually rather docile by nature. It's just when you get a step too close to their hive is when they get more aggressive.
We don't know the exact time frame that this hive has remained untouched. The current owner says 50 years maybe. This hive has been handed down through 3 generations of his family. The previous have since passed away therefore we don't know a whole lot.
I don't think your bees died, I think the metabolism slow down and they fell. I believe if you took them somewhere warm they could have been saved. www.quora.com/Why-do-most-flying-insects-flies-bees-etc-become-so-lethargic-and-slow-when-theyre-indoors-for-a-while
All the people worried about age, just enjoy the marvel of nature and its untouched awesomeness! And 30 years ago is 1987 and there was plastic and plastic frames. I wasn't born until 1990 and even I know that.. plus my grandpa used to keep bees. To the owner of this hive, great video and you two seem like very social, likeable guys! An update video would be awesome.
AmandaKathleen I can't believe I'm about to explain this to someone your age, but... It's just good, light-hearted ribbing. That's all people are doing when they're commenting about the age(s). That being said, "Every party has a pooper that's why we invited you, party pooper... party pooper..." I hope you were singing along, AmandaKathleen.
Those frames are called Langstroth jumbos. Also known as dadant depth. You can still find them in a few places but they've fallen out of favour because they make the brood box so damned heavy.
I'm working in an old house in England at the moment and they have a hive there from the 1950's that's inside the house walls. They never bother us in the slightest, no chasing, no stings or headbutts. There is a room that has a honey like substance seeping through the wall though. Last week we had to get scaffolding to repair a chimney and the guys going up on the roof had their asses kicked big time and refused to come back! Not sure if some of the bees were swarming or if it was a wild swarm, but they were smaller than regular honeybees.
Seeing the words "honey" and "seeping" made me wonder if there's a bee farm or unit designed to harvest honey by letting it leak out when it gets heavy enough. It would certainly make harvesting a lot less intrusive for the bees, and less of a hassle or time-comsuming for bee keepers.
Me from bright side's vid on how to escape bee swarm: Smaller bees (African something) tend to protect with their lives so they're more aggressive than normal bees
I never would have spent all the time and effort to recover those old deteriorating frames. It would have been much faster and less disturbing to the bees to treat it as a routine cutout. There would be the additional advantage of getting rid of the extra-deep frames by transferring the cutout combs to standard deep frames. I would also have destroyed ALL the old boxes/frames by burning.
Must add: Feral colonies have existed in rock cavities, building and tree cavities for 100's of years. I recall an old employer 1950 telling me that old comb would be torn down and rebuilt otherwise the colony would have died out. I've introduced new drawn comb into brood nests only to find on the next visit that renovations had been carried out to increase the ammount of Drone Brood cells. How's that for Innovative mangement without human intervention??
Yeah, been around a bit longer than humans. Fossils are great. "This oldest bee fossil to date was found in an amber specimen from northern Myanmar. The discovery of the oldest bee fossil supports the theory that bees evolved from wasps, scientists reported today. The 100 million-year-old fossil was found in a mine in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar (Burma) and preserved in amber."
If the bees decide there are not enough drone cells in the brood chamber, they will build more. It does not matter if the frames contain new foundation, newly drawn comb or older comb.
Yes, I remember being a kid playing with my friends in San Diego and running into a GIANT BEE hive in 88 in Old Town San Diego. The rangers told us that we were idiots and it had been there over 60 years. Just massive.
It’s amazing how honey never parishes, and has so many beneficial qualities both as a topical treatment, and also eaten. I’m big on drinking hot tea and I always add raw honey instead of processed sugar.
I put honey on a cut because i herd it had natural antibiotics and that suger speeds healing it dulled the pain pretty fast wasnt even expecting it to help with the pain but for some reason it did
@@get6149 it’s been proven to work. I believe it was first discovered by western doctors when working in South America. They use it now for cancer patients because the chemo does something to the way the body responds to antibiotics and such. I can’t remember the details. I can tell you that it will seemingly grow back muscle and such. That’s how they discovered it in south america. The people there used honey to assist in healing a surgery that went down into the hip. The buttock and hip muscles healed. I had to have a huge chunk of my bug toe removed. I used honey for 9 days. The dr was amazed at the healing rate. I told him I was using honey and he didn’t believe me. It’s so good for injuries.
I went from Ricegum To Markiplier To Kpop To A korean guy eating random foods To Beehives ?? I really cant understand . I have legit loads of other stuff i can do.
I came from searching “no excuses Pedlek last time there was a dead squirrel floating in it” from Warframe, then to a video called “dead squirrel floating in pool” then to “the day I saved a ground squirrel from drowning” and now here.
This came up as a random suggestion and I found it really interesting. I learned a lot from your talk (not that I'm going to take care of bees). Very fascinating and I watched the whole thing. Hope to see updates!
It's like computers. Everything is on cards. You have the brood in the middle, that's like the CPU. The pollen is right next it it like RAM and the honey is on the outside like mass storage. The bees are the electricity. If you touch one you get a shock.
If this hive was being robbed by another hive they would Not be gentle, and they will rob each other. This was clearly a strong hive and might have survived by robbing the the weaker hives. A robbed hive will start hitting you 10 or 20 feet away.
Also, if you have goats - bees wont bother goats. They can look in the entrance and dance on top, and the bees blame YOU not the goat. Put a good fence around your hives.
but this would only be interesting, if there are no other beekeepers in the area. swarms prefer "old" hives, that hold wax and show signs of earlier breeding. so if the colony has died 20 times in 30 years, it could be just swarms from the neighbour beekeeper and has nothing to do with "treatment" free, just recolonisation time after time. in europe signtists have proven that in nature there are no treatment free bees. the colonies dies after 2-3 years and the hive will be resettlet by a swarm. but if there are no other beekeepers this should be really interessting :)
Ladybug Sarah no, but unlike blogs, you can study and objectively analyze their work instead of just rejecting their findings. Science takes notes. If you're skeptical the first step is to read them. That's why Science made cell phones and tradition made apple pie. Science builds on itself, tradition is reset for every stubborn kid born.
@@hanswurst6470 who says that colonies die after 2-3 years? Did you talk to actual bee keepers? Or just scientists who don't know shit other than what is in their labs?
Learning quite a bit from these bee videos that I never knew before. Not into bee keeping myself but I find it very interesting, especially that you can do that without a bee keeper's suit.
Why are people complaining about the time. They are not the ones doing the work. You could watch the video twice as fast if you change the speed under settings. It is the flower pic under the video. Next to where you change the size of the video.
I just want to appreciate the effort. I am a first time bee keeper. ( Not even began just yet) very soon. And this is my VERY FIRST post on RU-vid since 5 years of RU-vid ing...Kudos !
When inspecting any brood nest its always best to split the boxes first to break the propolis bonds and release the frames for easier inspection and removal.
All the other bee videos everyone is dressed like they are going to war, this guy has holes in his pants. If the bees get worked up and go into those holes, he will have a very hard time giving them bees those pants.
A few years ago I was given a few hives neglected 6 years. It was difficult to separate the frames. Just a waxxed up, glued together mess. A few wax moths could be helpful to clean up the black comb.
Me: need something to watch RU-vid: What's this?! Boredom?! A large amount of BEES oughta put a stop to that!! My recommendations: *flooded with bee videos*
I visit beekeepers daily, and I know several that would treat this like the lost ark. All the different types off "stuff" (I'm not a beekeeper ) properly separated are a goldmine after this long without us people fucking it up.
Reading a bunch of the comments it makes me happy we still have so many bee experts out there. I was a bee keeper in the late 70's - about 1988. Small time 4 hives. Until a bear found them and came back several nights in a row and tore them up! I didn't restart them and when I moved I left the wood behind. I was in town and they were on a friends land. I live in Buffalo now in the city and have been thinking of setting up an urban apiary. I actually have a couple hives that are unassembled that have tagged along with me... vintage wood hives! Who knows... I know a local Russian bee keeper that raised queens and sells nucs.
Hello i live close to buffalo and I'm super curious about whether or not you picked up the hobby again! I've been getting obsessed with learning about bees and protecting those near my home. I'm in no position to take on beekeeping but i have so much respect for all who do, or have done their part to make their lives easier and happier ☺
I’ve really enjoyed watching your work this past week. I’ve already subscribed, too. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and skill acquisition. We’ve had bees, very hungry bees coming to our house. I repaired a shed roof and made a lean-to chicken house. Even though it’s winter in SW NM, we still have bees out and about. I almost drank one when I was up on the shed roof. It was in my can of soda. They began to gather and ‘hit’ me. I tossed the can away from me onto the finished end of the roof. In an hour or so there must have been over a hundred. This made me think of helping them, so we began to place heavily saturated sugar water further and further away from where we usually hang out. I realized there’s hives to the west of us less than a quarter mile away. I moved the sugar water to another location on the west side so they’d not need to fly through our property. My concern is whether or not it’s helping or hurting the bees. Is there a natural source I can place outside for them? We do try to keep flowers for them and the hummingbirds as they migrate during the warm weather days. Any suggestions any of you reading this may have I’d appreciate it. I’m busy with building projects right now or I’d do some researching. Thank you for your kind info. Regards...
I'm surprised no one has replied to your question in the year it's been posted... placing sugar water generally helps the bees, as well as wasps, ants, roaches, etc... The bees will try to store as much of it as they can and expand their hive to store more, sometimes at the cost of brood. So to answer your question, if your goal is only to help bees, the best time to place it is early spring, like first melt or late February depending where you are and to stop placing it about May/June. You might over-feed a feral hive and make it dependent on your hand outs. In the winter, they aren't even leaving their hive. In the winter sugar would help them, but it would have to be in a solid form like a sugar cube and it would literally have to be placed inside the hive space. I don't yet take care of bees, but I have been doing a lot of research lately because I want to start after a few life things get sorted out. I hope I answered your question. FYI, if you can plant trees over flowers, those are much better for the bees. Specifically trees that stagger their pollination cycles throughout the spring, summer and fall months for your area. In colder climates, generally the Pussy Willow or Red Maple are great trees and the American Basswood is a super-pollinator, but does so every other year. Here's a few trees from my notes that pollenate for certain months: Before May: Elm trees (but they don't produce much) May: Autumn Olive (also good for birds) June: Little Leaf Linden August: Japanese Pagoda September: Seven Son's There's also the Black Locust tree, but caution is to be had with this one. It will aggressively spread and is probably an invasive species anywhere so it must be planted in a "concrete coffin" such as a grassy island in a parking lot if that gives an image of how to handle it. Otherwise, it's really good for bees. If you're having an issue with Japanese beetles, plant Silver Lindens. A few trees to avoid are: Bamboo family Pine Spruce American Dogwood Kousa Dogwood Juneberry Crepe myrtle
one of the things i have seen on these videos is a bee keeper having a hive that gets an aggressive queen, and the hive will go feral. If left unchecked it can be a problem that spreads to other hives.
I just loove bees...so precious!!!..you need new hives ..clean...and bigger...you did a very good thing to call in a specialist... ...if you don’t feel like messing with them i would give them away to a specialist ....
I remember my and my good friend got stun big mistake those bees 🐝 chase us through out the whole factory 🏭. Omg it was the best memories I have of him when I finally found him because he didn’t want them to hear him he was hidden in the bathroom hahaha. R.I.P Choco
Smoking them before you start digging into a hive is helpful. Except with a small nuc, I always wear at least a veil and most of the time, a jacket. Getting stung in the face is not fun. Cool video though, thanks for sharing!
Whether I bother with a veil depends on the weather, time of day and the nectar/pollen flow conditions. I have never worn a bee suit/jacket. It the hive is that pissy, I will return at some other time.
