The Practical Beekeeper Volume II Intermediate Beekeeping Naturally

by Michael Bush

Overview

This book is about how to keep bees in a natural and practical system where they do not require treatments for pests and diseases and only minimal interventions. It is also about simple practical beekeeping. It is about reducing your work. It is not a main-stream beekeeping book. Many of the concepts are contrary to "conventional" beekeeping. The techniques presented here are streamlined through decades of experimentation, adjustments and simplification. The content was written and then refined from responding to questions on bee forums over the years so it is tailored to the questions that beekeepers, new and experienced, have. It is divided into three volumes and this edition contains only Volume II: Intermediate Beekeeping Naturally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781614760627
Publisher:	X-STAR PUBLISHING COMPANY
Publication date:	07/27/2011
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Michael Bush has had an eclectic set of careers from printing and graphic arts, to construction to computer programming and a few more in between. Currently he is working in computers. He has been keeping bees since the mid 70's, usually from two to seven hives up until the year 2000. Varroa forced more experimentation which required more hives and the number has grown steadily over the years from then. By 2008 it was about 200 hives. He is active on many of the Beekeeping forums with last count at over 50,000 posts between all of them. "His writing is like his talks, with more content, detail, and depth than one would think possible with such few words...his website and PowerPoint presentations are the gold standard for diverse and common sense beekeeping practices."--Dean Stiglitz

Table of Contents

Volume II Intermediate 259
A System of Beekeeping 261
Decisions, Decisions... 265
Personal Beekeeping Philosophy 266
Locality 269
Lazy Beekeeping 271
Top Entrances 272
Uniform frame size. 274
Lighter boxes 276
Horizontal hives 280
Top Bar Hive 281
Foundationless frames 282
Making foundationless frames 282
No chemicals/no artificial feed 284
Leave honey for winter food 285
Natural cell size 286
Carts 287
Leave the burr comb between boxes 287
Stop cutting out swarm cells 289
Stop fighting your bees 290
Stop wrapping your hive. 290
Stop scraping all the propolis off of everything 291
Stop painting your equipment. 292
Stop switching hive bodies. 293
Don't look for the queen. 294
Don't wait. 295
Feed dry sugar. 296
Split by the box. 296
Stop Requeening. 297
Feeding Bees 298
First, when do you feed? 298
Stimulative feeding. 300
My experiences with stimulative feeding. 302
Down sides to success: 303
Variable outcomes: 304
Dry Sugar: 304
Type of feeder: 305
Second, what do you feed? 305
Pollen 306
Third, how much do you feed? 306
Fourth, how do you feed? 306
Issues when considering the type of feeder: 307
Basic types of feeders 308
Frame feeders 308
Boardman feeder 309
Jar feeder 309
Miller feeder 311
Bottom board feeder 313
Jay Smith Bottom Board Feeder 313
My version 315
Baggie feeder 320
Open feeder 321
Candy board 321
Fondant 321
Dry Sugar 321
What kind of sugar? 325
Pollen 326
Measuring ratios for syrup 326
Weight or Volume? 326
How to measure 327
How to make syrup 327
Moldy syrup 328
Top Entrances 329
Reasons for top entrances 329
How to make top entrances 331
Top Entrance Frequently Asked Questions: 334
Carts 337
Swarm Control 341
Splits 348
Natural Cell Size 356
And its implications to beekeeping and Varroa mites 356
Rationalizations on Small Cell Success 380
Foundationless 385
Narrow Frames 400
FAQs 408
Yearly Cycles 410
Winter 410
Bees 410
Stores 411
Setup for winter 411
Spring 411
Summer 412
Fall 412
Wintering Bees 414
Mouse Guards 414
Queen Excluders 415
Screened bottom boards (SBB) 415
Wrapping 416
Clustering hives together 416
Feeding Bees 416
Insulation 418
Top Entrances 419
Where the cluster is 419
How strong? 419
Entrance reducers 420
Pollen 420
Windbreak 421
Eight frame boxes 421
Medium boxes 421
Narrow frames 422
Wintering Nucs 422
Banking queens 423
Indoor wintering 424
Wintering observation hives 424
Spring Management 425
Tied to climate 425
Feeding Bees 425
Swarm Control 426
Splits 427
Supering 428
Laying Workers 429
Cause 429
Symptoms 429
Solutions 430
Simplest, least trips to the beeyard 430
Shakeout and forget 430
Most successful but more trips to the beeyard 430
Give them open brood 430
Other less successful or more tedious methods 431
More info on laying workers 432
Brood pheromones 432
More than Bees 434
Macro and Microfauna 434
Microflora 434
Pathogens? 435
Upsetting the Balance 435
For More Reading 435
Bee Math 437
Races of Bees 438
Italian 438
Starline 438
Cordovan 438
Caucasian 439
Carniolan 439
Midnite 439
Russian 440
Buckfast 440
German or English native bees 440
LUS 441
Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) 441
Moving Bees 442
Moving hives two feet 442
Moving hives two miles 442
More than 2 feet and less than 2 miles 444
Moving hives 100 yards or less by yourself. 444
Concepts 444
Materials: 446
Method 447
Treatments for Varroa not working 450
A Few Good Queens 452
Simple Queen Rearing for a Hobbyist 452
Labor and Resources 452
Quality of Emergency Queens 452
The experts on emergency queens: 453
Jay Smith: 453
C.C. Miller: 454
Equipment 455
Method: 455
Make sure they are well fed 455
Make them Queenless 455
Make up Mating Nucs 455
Transfer Queen Cells 456
Check for Eggs 456