Helping a farmer out...

My brother took me shooting (pest control) on a farm he has permission on last year. As I was dong the rounds I noticed some "over grown" bee hives.
I later offered to help with them as I have recently become a beekeeper.

A year later I'm invited over to have a look..
It turns out the hives belong to the Farm owner who has not looked at the since June.......







....1996!!!!!!!!!!

This is what greeted us..

yup there is a 5ft high stack of national supers, brood boxes and bases. To the bottom left is a whole hive..


this is going under the trees to the right of the first photo.
4 hives are in there..


You can make out the roof of one and some collapsed boxes.



Once we had cut our way in...
an over turned hive and lid and two more hive in the background.


The final hive, 2 brood boxes,2 supers plus an "empty of frames" super... full of feral comb!


After a while, 2 hours, or so we had gained access to all the hives.



this was open to the elements - it is actually the top section.. upside down. we righted it and put it on a base.

The woodwork was shot to bits.
These was no "spares" and nearly all the hives were full.

We did manage to remove 4 supers of honey, leaving two more as the bees needed the space.
The comb is old, dark and hard as nails but the homey is excellent!

Just trying to extract it now...
I've some other pics on the other camera of what we removed.

Of 7 "hives" there were 5 colonies.

An excellent experience.


I'm having difficulty extracting the honey from the feral comb - never extracted any honey before so any guidance or tips will be greatly received!!

Danro

What a total mess. It does go to show how hardy a hive is though, untouched but still going stron after 15 years. I bet the local beeks love this farmer for all the free swarms

To ec=xtract from feral comb you could crush it and filter. I suppose alot depends on how set the honey is.

Cracking job btw

What have you done with the bees?
Are you going to spruce up their homes?
Great find, by the way.

Erichalfbee said:

What have you done with the bees?
Are you going to spruce up their homes?
Great find, by the way.

Click to expand...

My younger brother was with me and helped. He has expressed an interest in taking them on, as has the Farm Manager. The farm is 40mins from me, but my bro drive past it every day so it would be best for him to step up.

I'll mentor as best I can and get them booked on a local course.

I've provided a "plan" of what needs doing short term. A few of the hives were so soft I could not do an inspection.
We need replacement wood work for nearly all of it, plus new frames and foundation.

However, they are serious about getting the hives back to business as it is an organic farm, they will want to sell their home grown honey.

Danro

danro said:

My younger brother was with me and helped. He has expressed an interest in taking them on, as has the Farm Manager. The farm is 40mins from me, but my bro drive past it every day so it would be best for him to step up.

I'll mentor as best I can and get them booked on a local course.

I've provided a "plan" of what needs doing short term. A few of the hives were so soft I could not do an inspection.
We need replacement wood work for nearly all of it, plus new frames and foundation.

However, they are serious about getting the hives back to business as it is an organic farm, they will want to sell their home grown honey.

Danro

Click to expand...

I doubt the farmer will have the time to look after them. That's why they are normally happy for us Beeks to sit hives on their land. We get all the heart ache and they get all the benefit

Nice find!

I hope you now have an out apairy

Yet another example of bee colonies thriving without our 'help',

Accidental double post -so I'll add or our medication!

But we don't know whether they've been occupied by the same colony or successive swarms over the intervening years. I had a friend who 'abandoned' three hives in his garden when he rented out his house a decade ago ... every time he goes back there are bees in residence, but not in every hive every year. He's sure they are repeatedly occupied by swarms which then disappear due to disease, starvation ?

I did encourage him to hand them on to a local beek.

A puzzling story simply because the "lost" hives would not have been immune to the ravages of varroa - or are they? Well worth finding out a lot more?