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addy1

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Interesting, must be crushing, cutting the bottom of the cell, they are tilted upwards, then doing gravity drain.
 

addy1

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Not for sale yet, want to put you on a mailing list.
 

j.w

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I would just wait and see what comes of it. Eventually they will show it or someone will if it is a big thing. If you have a throw away don't care email address you could get the info there.
 

addy1

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So sweet to see this after a long cold winter. We hit 50, the bees are out doing orientation flights, cleansing flights, looking for food flights, (there is none). Looking for pollen, (none) drinking melting snow. Brooding up.

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We suit up completely they are not happy campers when there is no food around. We do put in sugar blocks for them, fondant that I make. Honey was covered with bees, I was putting in the food, he did the opening, so minimal time with the hive open. If you leave it open to long one hive will start robbing the other.
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addy1

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We installed a package of bees to replace the hive that died. While out working on them they covered both of us, (we were in our bee suits) The queen comes in a cage, they need to chew her out of it (sugar candy blocks her in) then accept her.
We take this screened box of 10000 bees (3lbs) and shake it into the hive box. Put the queen in her box in between a few frames for them chew her out.

While working on them I told honey, I have a bee under my face veil, I could feel its wings on my cheek. Last year I would probably have freaked, this year just started walking away. Honey said to open my face veil, but when I turned away my back was covered with bees............lol. He brushed them off, then I took off my face veil, and chased the bee out. Her wings tickled.
 
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Have you ever looked into Mason bees, addy?
My wife and I went to a seminar on Thursday night in Calgary on them and they sound like they are great pollinators that could use a little help from us humans as well.
 

addy1

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We have mason bees nesting sites here and there. I have seen them in the yard on the plants. They do a good job.

This is a neat looking mason house, I think I will try to make some more.

8085-mason.jpg
 
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I saw those for sale at a local garden centre here too. Apparently the sizes in those are not right so they don't get fully used by the bees.
The mason bees prefer a certain size plus those in your picture cannot be cleaned. (mites and fungus)
We'll be picking up some mason bees this week and some housing for them later this week.
Woodpeckers love to eat these bees and because we have a lot of woodpeckers eating from our bird feeders, we will need to protect the bee houses from them.
 

addy1

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Neat, let me know how they do.

We inspected our hives today, not sure I want to tell honey we are getting more bees.

Three of our hives we did fine with the inspections. We have one angry hive, all we did was take off the top cover, next thing I knew my hands (with gloves on) were covered with bees. Stinging my gloves. The first three hives we had no issues , the bees were calm, ignored us.

So for that one we are waiting until Thursday, it is supposed to be 68, they will be out flying, and we will use a lot of smoke.

This is a sweet brood pattern, we just installed a package of bees last weekend, A package is 3 lbs of workers/nurse bees in a wire box, with a queen in a cage. The bees chew her out, she either makes it or gets killed. This one made it. In 7 days she has filled two frames with brood.

We got the package to replace the one dead hive.
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j.w

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Looks full of bees! Funny you have one hive that has a bunch of angry bees in it. Any reason for this that you know of?
 

addy1

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Funny you have one hive that has a bunch of angry bees in it. Any reason for this that you know of?
It happens sometimes. The suggestion is to re-queen the hive. IE find the queen and kill her and replace her with a new one. But a angry hive is a strong hive. They survive and wipe out hive beetles, manage to be strong so we will see if we can just work with them, total cover up when out there.
 

j.w

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That makes sense. Hope they simmer down and you guys stay safe from stingers.
 

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