#backwards beekeepers

[hogtownhoney]

HOW TO CATCH A SWARM, with Kirk Anderson 

[oneonlydavey]

pump up your pulse: hold almost 10,000 boxed up honeybees in your hands! start beekeeping today.

[antler]

feral honey

  We put this website together about the honey we make...and by "we" I mean our bees. The bees make the honey, we make the website. FeralHoney.com

[iheartbees]

Backwards Beekeeper Roberta filmed some cute bees drinking some honey on one of her latest rescues

[iheartbees]

LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes: "I went over to Barrett's place before the recent Backwards Beekeeping meeting to work on some projects we've set up. The first project that Barrett, his neighbor Dave, and I worked on were some bees in the base of the sycamore tree. The bees had been in the tree for about 2 years. After a month of trapping them out, it seemed like all the bees were out and now we wanted to see what was left in the hive...." [continue reading on BackwardsBeekeepers.com]

[iheartbees]

Backwards Beekeepers: Grabbing a swarm in Glassell Park "We got a call to the Bee Rescue Hotline about a swarm in a bougainvillea bush. Amy and I headed up there and met Margot, her husband Ben, and their son Casey. They were psyched to learn about why bees swarm and how a hive works.

We gave the swarm a couple of quick sprays with sugar water, then nudged them into a nuc box. They were as calm as could be.

This swarm is now in our yard and so far, seems inclined to stick around. Foragers are bringing in food, which always seems like a good sign."

- Backwards Beekeepers

[gardendog]

Solar Beeswax Melter

I have a bunch of beeswax from cut-outs...so what to do? I came up with this design based on a few I'd seen online and was able to pull together most of the material from around the house. The concept is pretty simple - sun heats up metal, melting wax into a trough. 

Seemed to be working well, though I think it needs a full day of sun to fully melt the wax. It got warm enough today to melt the wax into piles, though not warm enough to make it run into the trough. We'll see tomorrow after it gets full sun all day. 

[gardendog]

Tangerine Trees, Marmalade Hives

The other night fellow Backwards Beekeeper Roberta and I responded to a call in Culver City from a guy claiming to have a hive the size of two basketballs in his tangerine tree. Sure enough, we showed up to discover one of the largest tree hives any of us had seen. Despite being nearly sunset, we couldn't resist and decided to try to take the whole thing while all the bees were in for the night. 

We were going to need back-up for this one, so Roberta called in Yvonne for some extra support. The three of us tediously trimmed away branches overhead, freeing the hive of the thousands of buttressing branches needed to keep this massive hive in place. Eventually we got it to a place where we could cut off one branch and bring the whole thing down. I held on to the limb as Roberta and Yvonne hacked away with a pole trimmer. After what felt like forever, we sawed our way through and were able to bring it down. 

We trimmed the branches some more to allow us to stick the whole thing in a box. Surprisingly the bees were very cooperative throughout, all things considered. 

It was a major team effort and a lot of fun. Thanks Roberta and Yvonne, you guys are amazing!

Stay tuned for a video of this hive being cut-out and tied into their new home in a Langstroth hive.