Warning!.. Never put a mouthful of chew in your mouth before going out to work your bees. You'd be surprised at the mess you make when you absent mindedly spit into your veil....several times..
Warning!.. Never put a mouthful of chew in your mouth before going out to work your bees. You'd be surprised at the mess you make when you absent mindedly spit into your veil....several times..
Yikes! Will only wears his veil when they're cranky too. Actually in the summer, he works them in shorts and sandals. Crazy beekeepers I tells ya! I'm not in the bees very much, but can do without a veil when we're just visiting checking them out. But I have waist length hair piled on top of my head. Bees seem to love to burrow in that. Which I can't stand. So I wear a veil if we're going to be in them for any length of time.I had to wear a veil. I had a colony with 8 medium supers tip over and tumble down a hill. Not sure when it happened, sometime earlier in the day. By the time I found them they were let's say... a little pissed off
Fussy little buggers ain't they?A bear was not my problem. Bad luck was. Last year I had moved two colonies a little deeper into the woods line. They were going on a hill so I made a 2x10 frame out of pressure treated wood for them to set on. Before placing the frame down I layed down a generous amount of crusher run stone then put down a concrete block on each corner. It was nice and level. Unfortunately with all the excessive rain the hill washed out a bit and my colonies started to tilt forward a little bit. I had 3 medium brood chambers and 5 honey supers on. I decided that on the 4th of July I would take all the boxes off and re-plumb the frame. Unfortunately they tipped over on the 2nd. Bees kind of don't like it when you take their house, tip it over and throw it down a hill.
Bees kind of don't like it when you take their house, tip it over and throw it down a hill.
Fussy little buggers ain't they?
Try this for a bear fence. We put our hives 25 miles up logging roads right in the heart of bearville. We use flexy nets but any fence will do if you can get multiple lines around it (6 or more). we lay down chicken wire around the parameter of the fence and attach the ground to that while keeping all the other lines on the fence itself hot. A good fencer is good too, something that can hit the 10,000 volt range is nice. I use a 6 volt solar charged par mak and it can kick out around 9,000-10,000 volts. we've used ghalliger (probably didn't spell that right)back in the 90's, they ran on 12 volt car batteries.
In the 23 years we've been doing the mountians, we've never lost a hive to a bear with this set up.
A bear was not my problem. Bad luck was. Last year I had moved two colonies a little deeper into the woods line. They were going on a hill so I made a 2x10 frame out of pressure treated wood for them to set on. Before placing the frame down I layed down a generous amount of crusher run stone then put down a concrete block on each corner. It was nice and level. Unfortunately with all the excessive rain the hill washed out a bit and my colonies started to tilt forward a little bit. I had 3 medium brood chambers and 5 honey supers on. I decided that on the 4th of July I would take all the boxes off and re-plumb the frame. Unfortunately they tipped over on the 2nd. Bees kind of don't like it when you take their house, tip it over and throw it down a hill.