Honeybee | Honey Bee CSI Blog

August 13, 2010

Kirk Webster Queen Bees Doing Good

I went to the home yard today to check on the Two Story Nukes we are going to offer for sale later this month. The Queens are from Kirk Webster’s stock. They are all looking good. Looks like we will have about 20 two story colonies of Russian Northern Bees for sale in the next two weeks. We have more bees than we want to overwinter. They have their winter stores on board.

Not all of them are spoken for, so were are taking reservations at newenglandfarms@aol.com.

Have a great evening.

Filed under: New England Farms — Tags: Honeybee, Kirk Webster, Mike Palmer, New England Farms, Russian Northern Honeybees, two story nukes, Vermont Beekeepers Association — admin @ 6:45 pm

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January 10, 2010

Spikenard Top Bar Hive Seminar

Greetings, Beekeepers, Friends and Bees,

We had a great day at the First Spikenard Top Bar Hive Seminar. The Artic Blast cut attendance to four brave Artic Beekeepers, two from Vermont and two from New York.

Graduates

Because the snow chopped the attendance list we had a very informal and informative session. Lots of time for questions and lots of good food. These four wiped out a crock pot of chili and three dozen doughnuts.

We not only covered the benifits of the Spikenard Top Bar Hive, but the use of top bar hives in general. There are as many styles of top bar hives are there are top bar hive beekeepers.

Here is a photo of the Spikenard Top Bar Hve we manufacture at New England Farms.

Spikenard Top Bar Hive and Stand

Here a few of the topices we covered thru out the day.

Advantages of using a top bar hive:

Only one crtical demension 3/8″ beespace
No extractor needed
No foundation needed
No frames needed
Can be built with local inexpensive materials
No super storage
Less heavy lifting
Higher quality wax production
Great comb honey production

Disadvantages of using a top bar hive:

Lower honey production
Difficult to swap bars
Combs very fragile
Transportation of combs difficult
Not many top bar beekeeping mentors around
Need natural swarm or package bees to get started

Keep an eye at www.newenglandfarms.com for the dates of the next top bar hive seminar.

Until then, happy beekeeping.

Filed under: New England Farms — Tags: Alternative Beekeeping, Beekeepers, Honeybee, New England Farms, New York Raw Honey, Raw Honey, Spikenard Top Bar Hive, Top Bar, Top Bar Beekeeping, Top Bar Hive — admin @ 3:54 pm

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November 9, 2009

An Afternoon with Kirk Webster

Kirk in his Honey House

It was a nice warm day in Vermont on October 21st. I called my good freind Kirk Webster, up towards Middlebury, and told him the glass honey jars he ordered had come in. He was extracting the last of his honey crop and was not able to pick up the order for a few days.

A good excuse to get out of the warehouse, I loaded the truck with Kirk’s order and headed North to deliver it for him. I got there around 10:30 am to find Kirk hard at it in the honey house.

Kirk's Honey House is on a trailer and portable

Kirk has his honey house set up for a one person efficient operation. He bult his honey house on a trailer. The entire house is portable.

I was impressed with how he fit so much in there and still have room to get around. Kirk uses an automatic Walter Kelley super lift, a Walter Kelley uncapper. His uncapping tank was custom made by Kelley also.

Kirk's Honey House is set up for single person operation.

He runs twin Maxant extractors both piped in to a series of 4 custom made Kelley settling tanks.

All of this in a Honey House 8 feet wide by 24 feet long.

After he finished the mornings work, we unloaded the glass honey jars. Then Kirk said something that was music to my ears, “Lets have lunch” Oh boy, this old Italian is always ready for lunch.

We drove about a mile to Kirk’s house where we had a great lunch with tea and honey.

Kirk operates twin Maxant extractors

The best part of the day was that I got to sit and talk Beekeeping with Kirk for over two hours. You can not buy that kind of networking. A plus Kirk agreed to present a beekeeping program in the New England Farms Luncheon Seminar Series.

I hope that he is not able to pick up his next order for a great repeat day.

Filed under: New England Farms — Tags: Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Extractors, Honey, Honey Tanks, Honeybee, HoneybeeCSI, Kirk Webster, Maxant, New England Farms, Pat Imbimbo, Walter Kelley — admin @ 9:16 pm

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July 13, 2009

Hostile Takeover of A Honeybee Colony

The winter stayed long in the Adirondacks and Green Mountains this year. At the end of March beginning of April I started to make my rounds to our apiaries. We loaded the truck and trailer with the tools and equipment needed for the day. The first two apiaries looked pretty good. It was a nice sunny day still cool, 48-50 degrees. Bees were flying a little.

We removed the hive reducers, wire and the wire off the 3/4″ top entrances and pulled off the winter wraps. Some were just tar paper others were insulated hive wraps.

Most of the colonies had signs of life at the front door, others I listened to with my stethoscope for the buzz. They all had signs of winter cleansing flights at the front door and at the top 3/4 inch entrance.

Died On Top of the Frame

One colony died off because they did not move over two frames to the winter stores. (more…)

Filed under: Honeybee Investigations — Tags: Beekeepers, Beekeeping, Bees, Dead Bees, Hive Invasion, Honey, Honeybee, HoneybeeCSI, Mice in Honeybee Hive — admin @ 7:21 pm

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