More tips and advice on raising honey bees for the survival homestead by Warren W Many years ago after the depression of 1930-1940 my father (a city boy and the original prepper) bought a 135A farm in middle Georgia. It was worn out, red clay ditches from peaches and cotton, poor terraces, hints of being a pre-civil war plantation (1855 era) with the real log house and clapboards and is still standing but got the Hollywood treatment after we sold the farm. One distinction – the farm had 18 huge pear trees with one Sand Pear for pollination and an old time apple tree that made great apples. There was an opportunity of more pears if they were pollinated locally, more money and HONEY. Beekeeping can be a prepper’s dream. Honey equals money, a fantastic sweetner, won’t spoil, a jar of nature’s first antibiotics, medicine for the allergic person who sneezes, snorts and snots, cures scrapes, cuts and cracks in the skin, and for kids who were rationed sugar, the only natural sugar in the world besides stevia. Ever wonder why our country cousins who had ambition lived good? They prepped just about everything that they put in their mouths and lived to be 90-100. Not the miserable wrecks we see today standing in line at the pharmacy counter at the big box stores. Oh, I forgot, a big spoon of honey in a hot toddy is the original sleeping pill! During the honey season one may also get runs on tulip poplar honey, sour wood honey, white clover honey, and in the fall, wildflower honey. Each flavor is a delight to the taste buds. Honey will also turn to sugar in the jar. Just add a few drops of water to it, put it in a pot of warm water on the stove, turn-up the heat and voila – real honey again. Sealed honey stays in its original form. My city boy father who turned farmer worked in Atlanta which was about 85 miles from the farm, so his farm hand was me – a 10 year old boy with a brother and two sisters. My dad saw a profit in the pear trees when they bore fruit by selling pears to his friends in town off the back of a 1940 flat bed Ford Pickup with original stake sides. A truck load would sell out in a matter of hours. His next farming venture was to raise bees and sell the honey to the same crowd that he sold the pears to. He knew nothing about bee raising bought an A.I. Root book on Bee Raising. This began a new era for me and the family. Some of my experiences are related regarding bees and their fascinating history. Honey raising was as popular in the South as chickens are to a prepper today, even in the center of a metropolitan town. Today, large city dwellers living in high rises have a hive on the roof of the building or on a platform outside the back window. The hives were made of beautiful white birch or some non- pitch type white wood. A spool of high tensile wire, a set of 10 do it yourself frames from the same wood in two sizes, 2 boxes of wax forms, a black wooden handle tool with a handheld roller about 1” in diameter that looked like a wagon wheel without the tire and a wooden template form for constructing the frame, wiring it and laying a sheet of preformed wax under the wires – one would have a small pot of boiling water on a hot plate, put the serrated roller in the water and then carefully embed the wire into the wax frame on the template. The bees would build their cells outward, either the queen would lay and egg in each cell, the bees fed the new babies pollen and if you had the shallow honey super, the bees waxed the template, pulled out the wax, regurgitated the honey nectar where it fermented and turned into the “Gift of the Gods”. Another popular technique on bee hives is the box and sticks which some claim to be more natural and less stressful on the bees when they are robbed for honey. Honey preceded man in this world as we know it. During WW II you stood in line at the local grocery at 7:00 am when the store advertised that they had a shipment of sugar and each family could have 5 pounds. I stood there with our government issued food coupons and went in the store when it opened at 7:30, got my bag of sugar, gave the grocer the proper coupon and finished shopping for the rest of the groceries that I could carry back home 3 miles away. Now that sounds like fun, but it wasn’t to this child farmer. I personally helped create 18 hives, some with 3-10 frame shallow supers and each supers weighing about 15-40 pounds, honey and wood and wax. We pulled the small honey supers off when the bees had filled, capped and cured the honey. We used a 3 frame centrifuge frame spinner, slung the small frames around in the spinner after they had been de-capped with a hot de-capping knife, opened the spout on the spinner and bottled the honey up in clean washed quart jars. It also sold out instantly in Atlanta and locally. Sometimes, with a good summer and good rains, we would pull honey 3 times and placing the honey frames back quickly with only the honey removed, always leaving some for over wintering the bees – they have to eat when it is cold outside and have no flowers until spring. You just read about my life 65 years ago. The A.I. Root patented hive has not changed any. Bases for the hives are made of pine, Supers (the bottom box) sits on the base and the small honey supers sit on the bottom box, and inner covering lid and an outer lid of wood covered with tin or a plastic top completes the hive box arrangement. You buy supplies to go first class especially for the people that the bees hate, a screen wire face and head protector, a good hat, a long sleeve shirt with rubber bands on the cuffs, tight neck, long pants, rubber bands at the cuffs of the pants and you are ready to attack your bees with a smoker filled with pine straw or old rags – or if you are cool – you can bathe, wear some long pants, regular work shoes, muscle shirt, ball cap, and sunglasses and enjoy working with your bees. Slow, easy, a little smoke, a good hive tool, no snatching, – just easy movements and you can enjoy working with your bees. What kind of bees do you want? The African Bee was brought over on a hurricane to South America. They are now in the states. They will kill you unless you kill them at night in their nest. The main honey bee in the States is the three-banded Italian. The latest class of bees is called Russian. Sometimes bees die or disappear in all places in the world instantly. Is it microwaves, cell phone transmissions, virus attacks, wax moths, or whatever – there is a catastrophe happening as we speak with bees, their survival and OUR survival. Why? They pollinate every flower that turns into a fruit or a vegetable that we put in our mouths! In their search for honey nectar, they bump into the pollen stalks, pollinate as they suck up nectar, taking it and the pollen ball they also made to feed the babies with and put the honey on the sides of the brood comb or in the honey super. You can make your own hive bottoms, boxes, and frames. You still need to put the wax template in to save the bees time and pull more honey. The old timers used a hollow log with sticks laid randomly inside and put a heavy cover over the 3-4’ tall log. To get honey, they took the top off, withdrew the stick where the bees had waxed and filled, cut the honey comb off with a knife placing it in the dishpan, and replaced the stick. After you are set up you have several ways to get the bees and take them to your new clean hive sitting 3’ up in the air, facing south, preferably near the south side of a fence or an outhouse, wrapped with a layer of insulation in the winter, painted, no grass underneath, no spiders, etc. Here are some ways: Advertise in the local paper that you will remove swarm of bees that someone observes. Meet with a local farmer of bees and see if he will call you and let you have a swarm that he cannot use. It may cost a few dollars, but, beekeepers are usually very nice people and will talk you to death about their bees. Friends forever. Listen around and find a swarm that has taken up in a house or church. I did, pulled the bottom lapboard of, put pure 2-3 ounces of sulphur in a cake tin, set it on a brick, set the sulphur on fire, in about an hour the bees were dead, we removed more siding and cut out about 30# of honey, repaired the side of building and went home happy. Don’t burn the building down either. Find a bee tree in the woods and try to remove the bees to a hive. Find the queen, pick her up, put her in a small box with air holes or in a tiny box made of aluminum screen wire, place the queen in the hive and leave top off, set the box next to the tree in your prepared hive, bees will go to her, next morning, release her and go from there after you recover the honey. If you get clean trash in the honey you can always strain the comb by hand crushing it, then render the wax. See later comments on this. During the summer, catch some bees in a large jar, lay the jar in the shade on its side and place some honey, syrup or concentrated water (1 tablespoon) on the inside of the jar. Let the bees eat the sweet stuff and then remove one bee at a time taking the jar outside with you. Several people can help – turn 1 bee loose at a time – watch its flight path back to the hive or tree - follow as far as you can go – repeat the flight path right to the doorstep of HONEY. Don’t get in a legal battle on someone’s property. Usually the bee tree will be dead and the owner will let you cut it down and 50/50 the honey. You will normally end up killing the bees to get the honey, but survival is what it is all about. A chain saw, a sledge hammer, several wedges, and a # 3 washtub could get you enough honey for a year in the fall if you luck up on a bee tree. During the summer, sit down quietly in the woods prepared to keep chiggers and bugs off, lay back quietly with the sun to your back and look up about 20-30 feet and spot a bee traffic highway. Follow the basics of above and you have located a bee tree. Ask the kids in the neighborhood after you have educated them that you are looking for bee tree to do some “research” and give them a reward for spotting a bee tree. Go to the internet and look for “Honey Bee Sales”. A pound of bees with a queen ships in a small 1-2# wooden container with screen wire around the container and the queen is in a small compartment that is removed from the outside of the box and placed in the hive that is 50% full of frames. The door on the box of bees is opened and you thump the box of bees through the opening into the hive on top of the queen and quietly close and seal the hive with the outer top. The queen has a sugar plug which she eats, comes out and puts everyone to work. You also must purchase a bee sugar/water feeder, fill a pint jar with proper sugar water concentrate, invert the jar into the feeder. Continue feeding until there are flowers in the spring. Keep everything very clean and keep the bees well fed. An uptown set-up will cost about $250-300.00 but you can improvise. Some local bee raisers will sell you a Nuc or starter set with bottom, super, lid and top to get started. Watch the paper for beekeepers meetings, go to your county agent, visit a bee farm, search the internet. It is a fine hobby, make some of your money back, the family isn’t as sickly as could be and you have the enjoyment that you did it yourself. Other survival tactics is the proper handling of the wax if you cut out the wax when you pull the honey supers and re-wax the frames with a wax template. Bees wax is used in candies, medicines, and many other products that you use at one time or another. Let’s look at its attributes. Wax warmed carefully on a closed flame outdoors and stirred with mineral spirits will you get a super waterproofing chemical. Place in a jar with a tight lid. Set up a Boy Scout rope making machine using binder twine, place the wax in a tub, heat the wax to liquid, place the finished rope in the wax, let it soak for a short time, lift the rope slightly out and let the excess hot wax drip out, take the rope and stretch it out quickly, it will last for years. Waterproof outsides of canvas, boots, wood, guns, etc. with melted wax. Look on the internet for candle making – the most expensive item is the wax. You have that now. Your next most expensive item is good candle string. It can be made by soaking a soft cotton twine in 20 Mule Team Borax solution and let the string hang straight down to dry. Use thinned wax with mineral spirits to polish bullets, gun metal and stocks with. Steel will not rust with a good wax coating. Take a double sheet of newspaper, fold it over by dividing until it is 6-8” wide. Go to the end and roll it up all the way. Tie off the roll with two pieces of string, boil prepared paper roll slowly for a few minutes in beeswax, lift out, drain and dry. It makes a fire that won’t go out and a pile of wood will ignite in just a few minutes. Coat a sheet of brown paper with thinned beeswax and make a translucent window. Bullet making for short range survival and meat if you are out of lead – wintertime only – melt your clean wax, add baby powder to thicken, chill your bullet mold, pour beeswax bullets, chill and remove and trim the wax, place powder in your prepared shell, place a small piece of toilet paper over the powder, load the wax bullet, hunt and clean weapon thoroughly after the kill. Shoe got a hole? Cut an inside sole pattern out of heavy paper and fit to old shoe. Melt the wax, use a paint brush to paint the bottom of the shoe insole pattern, have shoe clean inside, warm the waxed pattern over an open flame, insert warm waxed paper into the shoe, place the foot inside and you have a waterproofed shoe. You can paint the outside part of the hole in the sole with hot wax and extend the longevity of your shoes. Cough – Hot cup of brewed tea, 1 tablespoon of honey, 2 tablespoons of booze. Sleep well. All cooking that calls for refined sugar (a real threat to our children and us): use honey. No only is honey full of local antibodies for allergies, it is full of minerals and vitamins. Mix honey, cottage cheese and raisins for a treat. Use honey for pecan and pineapple upside down cake. Honey on biscuits, toast, coffee, tea – let refined sugar stay at the grocery store. Sell or trade clean, bleached beeswax – you will need a wax rendering box. Instructions: Cut two 5 ½ inch boards or ½ inch plywood 6” x 28” long. Cut 1 piece 6” x 10”. Find a piece of tin or HVAC galvanized metal 6”X 29” long. Nail the 6” piece to one end of the two boards. On the smoother side of your trough, nail the HVAC metal or sales sign metal to the boards very tightly. You now have your “Rendering Trough”. Paint the insides of your trough with flat black paint where no wood or metal shows. Cut a piece of plastic screen wire (out of an old storm door or window screen) to completely cover the top and the open end of the rendering trough, leaving the 2” black extension of metal. Arrange the screen where you can raise it to place more wax into the trough. The best action of converting yellow beeswax to white rendered wax for candles or for sale is done in the hot summer but the idea is to take the trough, get in the wide open and keep the inside of the trough pointed at the sun and at a 30 degree angle for the sun-melted and bleach wax to drip off the end of the 29” metal into your catch pan. The trick is eyes on, moving the trough to get the sun’s heat and invisible radiation, proper tilt and keeping the catch pan clean. It has worked for centuries and makes a beautiful wax product. If it happens to get trash in it, when you warm the wax to put it up in a lined box frame, use cheese cloth to strain it, chill it for several days, thump it out of the mold and cut it into blocks with a hot butcher knife. Wrap in newspaper and keep in a cool place. There are buyers of rendered wax and it does bring a premium price. How do you get the wax from the bees to the point of rendering it? If you use a centrifuge, you can cut off ½ of the bottom of the filled wax template on the frame. The bees will make it back. Set the comb outdoors in a real shady place and the bees will suck any honey out of the comb. Do not crush it because it will render faster. If you do not have a centrifuge, cut the honey and comb out of the frame. Put some comb with honey in your pint or quart jars, fill with honey, seal with a lid. Let the kids use the honeycomb for chewing gum, Yes, chewing gum! Place the filled honeycomb in a large pot and slowly heat up the honey and the comb until the comb melts. Do not over heat. Set aside until thoroughly chilled, the comb will float to the top, after it chills and hardens, cut around the edges, lift out carefully, save the honey, wash the wax, cut it into chunks and put it in the renderer for white beeswax for sale or use. You can use the big piece of pot melted wax without sun rendering it. Just wash it good and wrap it up lightly in some paper. I found one interesting article on the internet about raising bees that has a prepper background. “Swarm Traps and Bait Hives”, by McCartney Taylor editor, learningbeekeeping/landing/catch-free-bees-swarms/?goo=x&gclid=CPXw19fqirkCFcJj7AodXkMApw Purchase or download to your Kindle for half price. Looks good to me but we bought most of our bees or captured the swarms in the pear trees. Good prepping.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 02:17:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015