Search results

Yes, after a good night's sleep, all this occurred to me, but the window for editing my post was closed (-: so thanks for the peer review (saves me from having to respond to my own post to correct the errors).

If you believe this math is wrong, tell us what is the correct math? Nectar = 84% water (at the flower), honey = 20% water, therefore to turn 1000 g of nectar into honey (i.e. 200 g), the bees have to remove 800 g of water from it. The math seems simple enough. [P.S. this information is from...

I find old beekeeping books fascinating to read, but whenever the book is older than a couple of decades, we must ask ourselves what didn't the author know that we now know. The author assumes that his own knowledge is current, and he isn't likely to give us many clues about what aspects of...

[deleted dupe]

Yes. Have you never had it? Lucky you. Some of my hives' walls were wet on the inside this summer, and last summer as well. Hives from which I got honey, by the way.

Where do you read that? I don't read that on those pages (i.e. that allowing condensation only on the walls will somehow reduce the water content of nectar faster than otherwise). But okay, you don't want to discuss this, right? Yes, I think the only way this design can work is if there are...

Sure, but we don't always harvest the honey. Sometimes we feed the bees because we want them to survive.

Yup, forgot about that one. And I don't have any of that Chinese HMF absorbing resin lying about...

I did not mean that it's not "fit" for human consumption, but rather that it is not intended for human consumption. I'm going to feed it to the bees. It has quite a strong slumgum smell, so I don't know if anyone would want to eat it, except maybe people looking for a "wild" flavour. (-...

Thanks. Google tells me about "kilner" jars and "mason" jars, but on Wikipedia both these jars have metal lids. I see the ones shown in the linked URL are are called commonly called "wire bail jars" -- are you familiar with this term? Mason/kilner jars are not widely known locally...

Hello everyone For some of the honey I got this year, I used the crush-and-strain method. (I put the cut out comb in a bucket and crush it with a wide putty knife, then transfer it to a flour sieve over a bucket to let the honey drain. 12-18 hours later about 80% of the honey is drained out...

G'day everyone Local hobby beekeepers sell their honey mostly in bottles with a screw-on lid, but I was wondering if it is a good or a bad idea to sell honey in bottles with a rubber-ring type press-on lid. Do you have any experience about this? These bottles have a higher charm factor...

Thanks. The technical data sheet for this product makes me suspect that this is specifically bearing grease that may not be suitable for greasing gears (see attachment).

Thanks everyone for your inputs so far. See the attachment for a picture of the extractor. Inside that housing is a worm gear. The hand crank's shaft drives a helical spur which in turn drives the worm, which engages the rotating axle when you turn the handle faster than very slow. (At the...

G'day everyone The cast-off club extractor seized up when it was my turn to use it, and we (me and a friend) "repaired" it by cleaning it out and lubricating it with sewing machine oil. The mechanism was filled to the brim with bearing grease, and sand and dirt got into the grease. I do...

Mark a couple of drones (red this year, I believe), and ask the kids how many of these coloured bees they can count. Optionally explain that what you've marked are drones, not queens, and that beekeepers often mark queens, not drones.

Beekeepers have been feeding bees flour since at least the 1850s. Dzierzon discovered that bees visit flour mills early in the spring when pollen is not yet abundant, and return with flour to the hive. Most early books refer to wheat or rye flour, but high protein flour such as soy flour has...

G'day everyone I took the plunge this year and fed the bees soy flour mixed into the fondant. They seem to be taking it up (or perhaps they're just carrying it around and I'll find it all again when I clean the hive). The only place where I could get soy flour was at a health shop. The...

Thanks, Hivemaker. The Collins dictionary confirms it: in the UK, "fondant" is gooey (boiled at 105 °C), and in the USA, "fondant" is firm (boiled at 112+ °C). Baker's fondant or Apifonda is the gooey one.

Temperature. By the time you're trying to feed the bees, the ambient temperature is so low that 3:1 syrup starts crystallizing rapidly. It clogs your feeder and those crystals are not easy to remove. The saturation temperature of 3:1 sugar is 65 °C. For 2:1, it's about 17 °C. This means that...