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1

HONEYBEE REMOVAL / Re: Expensive Issue

« Last post by JurassicApiary on Today at 01:12:11 pm »

$20,000 outrageous ? Maybe, maybe not.

On a modern house, or a "just fix it" job ... yeah, almost certainly.
but
Article mentioned 100 year old house. It mentioned attic and damage to floorboards in the daughter's room ... that's kinda odd unless the bees were also in the walls ... and maybe the bee guy made a mess of things removing them ? who knows?

I look at a 100 year old house as middle-aged and have done work on places that are much older. If you're talking historical restoration work, that figure could very well be low, especially if it's a large room and you want the repair to be invisible.
There are many questions that come to mind immediately.. type of wood for the flooring?, wood lathe with horsehair reinforced plaster for the walls? or was there paneling and all the questions that arise there? are there government restrictions on the structure? What does the customer want? .. etc ... etc.

2 to 3 weeks work with a crew, including materials, in North Carolina for 20K doesn't set off alarm bells at all to me.

Indeed they said there's work to be done in the attic, walls and floorboards...which they allude is due to the bees, but I highly doubt all that damage was done by bees and that's the point.  I've done hundreds of removals big and small in new old (100+yrs) and even homes on the Historic Home Registry....and never have I seen a job where the removal and repairs would be anywhere near that.  I have no doubt a 100+ year old home could easily accumulate $20k worth of work in a single room in repairs, but caused by a single hive of bees...I call BS.  I believe the bees were the reason to open up the hidden spaces which revealed "other" issues that the homeowner was trying to tack on to convince their insurance to cover everything.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Pics of a Dec. dead out: discussion open??

« Last post by Bill Murray on Today at 11:28:02 am »

So, I think the honey pump had some good insight here on Nosema.  In my world I look for the telltale stains, but its amazing what the spore-count can be and still have no visual, dependent on the nosema strain.

Snapshot of 3 hives over a 2 month period

 Jan
Hive 1- 5 spores (~250,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 2- 21 spores (~1,050,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 3- 1 spores (~50,000 spores per honey bee)

Feb
Hive 1- 0 spores
Hive 2- 34 spores (~1,700,000 spores per honey bee)
Hive 3- 39 spores (~1,950,000 spores per honey bee)

And around 1,000,000 spores per honey bee is the thresh-hold. Granted we had a lot of rain this spring, and these should be dropping in the coming months unless its N. ceranae.

3

HONEYBEE REMOVAL / Re: Expensive Issue

« Last post by animal on Today at 09:18:53 am »

$20,000 outrageous ? Maybe, maybe not.

On a modern house, or a "just fix it" job ... yeah, almost certainly.
but
Article mentioned 100 year old house. It mentioned attic and damage to floorboards in the daughter's room ... that's kinda odd unless the bees were also in the walls ... and maybe the bee guy made a mess of things removing them ? who knows?

I look at a 100 year old house as middle-aged and have done work on places that are much older. If you're talking historical restoration work, that figure could very well be low, especially if it's a large room and you want the repair to be invisible.
There are many questions that come to mind immediately.. type of wood for the flooring?, wood lathe with horsehair reinforced plaster for the walls? or was there paneling and all the questions that arise there? are there government restrictions on the structure? What does the customer want? .. etc ... etc.

2 to 3 weeks work with a crew, including materials, in North Carolina for 20K doesn't set off alarm bells at all to me.

 

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Best swarm prevention

« Last post by Ben Framed on Today at 08:05:52 am »

Good information Jim. Iddee also recommends leaving two cells if I remember correctly..  I have found multiple queens in a swarm. I started a topic called dissecting a swarm Sometime back which described what I found.

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=54466.msg495006#msg495006

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Best swarm prevention

« Last post by BeeMaster2 on Today at 07:58:13 am »

Bob,
Sounds like what I call Super Swarming.  The bees are holding queens in their cells to bee able to make numerous swarms. If you put your ear next to the hive, if the bees are holding queens in their cells you will hear the queens piping. When you go into the hive to make a Nuc, check to see if there are any swarm cells. Remove all but two or three. Check every frame. If you use a lot of smoke while inspecting, you can sometimes disturb them enough to distract the bees and the queens will escape. Judy and I had to do this with our observation hive 2 weeks ago. Just putting a lot of smoke in the hive while it was closed up did not work. Last March I did an oxalic  treatment to a hive that had Super Swarmed and still had queens piping. The next day they were not piping. The Oxalic disturbed them enough for all the queens to get out.
Jim Altmiller

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HONEYBEE REMOVAL / Re: Expensive Issue

« Last post by Ben Framed on Today at 06:41:53 am »

But $20,000.00 worth of damages?

I read the article earlier and my wife laughed as she heard me call out "bull...."...she's hyping it up.

For Sure!   

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HONEYBEE REMOVAL / Re: Expensive Issue

« Last post by Ben Framed on Today at 06:40:53 am »

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Yep I got the same so I found the report without hassle on. NBC

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Best swarm prevention

« Last post by Ben Framed on Today at 06:30:19 am »

Jurassic and NigelP both made good points in my opinion. Mr Bush goes into detail about checker-boarding in his writings., https://bushfarms.com/beesexperiment.htm
When bees are determined to swarm as Nigel described; In my experience pulling the queen with the split usually does the job as bees do two major things, make honey and multiply. By taking the queen when making the split (when they are in a swarming mood, (larva in queen cups or capped queen cells are good indicators) is meant to satisfy the colony which is in a swarm mood situation, settling them down and onward with business as usual.  Perhaps Mr Bush and others will have more to add. 

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Best swarm prevention

« Last post by NigelP on Today at 04:02:31 am »

If they are genetically inclined to swarm, all the space in the world won't stop them. The local bees in my area are frequent swarmers, so I don't keep them.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

« Last post by The15thMember on Today at 12:18:08 am »

One other thing I forgot to ask about...one of the syrup jars had some black mold in it. Not much, but there was some just the same. How big of an issue is that for them?

I wouldn't be too worried about it personally.  I might change out the syrup, just so it doesn't get out of hand, but mold is really not that big of a deal for bees.  They can even clean it up without any trouble, since their respiratory systems are so different from ours.  I will store 1:1 syrup in the fridge to help it to last longer.  2:1 will be fine at room temp.