A friend owns around 5000 hives here in Kansas and has commented he loves canola. His honey crystallizes as does mine with many flowers such as dandelion etc. dandelion makes a yellow non see through sugary honey. it could be worse aster honey tastes awful in the fall. The main honey crop for me is clover which is water white and does not crystallize quickly. I think canola is darker like soybean and sunflower. Blackberry flower honey is excellent tasting and an orange color. Wild flower is darker and crystallizes.
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Some of the best honey I have eaten was old dark honey from hives in trees. I agree that the lighter clover honey has a clean light tast but the dark honey has much more flavor to me. I some times think some of the best honey is sold in bulk to be added to mass production bakeries recipes.
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I’m picking up my bees tomorrow, how close can hives be to fruit trees? They will be sprayed all summer. I know as far away as possible…
Wow! You guys have taken me from worrying about the existence of canola to looking forward to it!!! And I’m especially thankful to @MuddyMess_8a and @Sara_in_philly for the very helpful education on crystalized honey. Clearly it can be more than the crunchy old stuff my honey turns into after sitting in the cupboard too long. That stuff has crystals the size of rock candy and I couldn’t imagine anyone saying they enjoyed it. Now I understand that crystalized honey can still be fairly smooth if the crystals are smaller. In short, this has been a very helpful thread and I appreciate it.
One other note- the same farmer who was kind enough to warn me that he would be planting canola next year also made another very kind offer. He already grows soybeans beside me (many, many acres) and he said once I get my bees in place that if I want him too he will change his soybean type from the ones he uses now to some that have purple blooms. He said he has always been told that bees greatly prefer purple bloom soybeans to the white blooms and that it makes the honey better as well. Anyone know anything about that? True or False? Thanks.
@ChrisL- others can answer your question better than me, but if the fruit trees you are talking about are yours or if you can get the owner to cooperate, my understanding is that you can have bees pretty close to fruit trees as long as you try to work the spray schedule to accommodate them (ie not spray when bees are working or just before). After all, there are lots of videos of large commercial orchards that have haves right by or even in the orchard for polination and I’m sure they still spray. What I’ve read just says you need to be careful but they can be done together. Mine will be about 150 feet from my fruit trees and I will be spraying all year. Good luck.
Soybean honey is a light amber honey with a mild taste. Some years soybean honey will save the year, other years there is none. I’m sure the farmer is happy to change beans to benefit bees, his yield will increase also, 2-3 bushels/acre. Honey bees won’t be in the trees after bloom except to get sugar from fallen fruit.
The guy that took over my honey business brought over 3 packages installed today. He’s using welded steel stands. Sturdy, but heavy, scavenged pallets always worked for me. Cheap and heavy.
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one thing on my to-do list for this week that was given to me by my bee adviser is to set up some stands with concrete blocks and level them up for my hives to sit on. The pallet idea sounds even better…I may go that route instead!
Hi Kevin, really been enjoying this thread. I wanted to get into beekeeping a couple years ago. After looking into whats involved however, and between my orchard, berry patches, and tennis obsession, I decided I couldn’t give the endeavor its proper due. This year my daughter decided she wants to get into it. Heres a couple pictures from the release yesterday. She’s being helped by my father in law who kept bees for about 20 years. Nice to have a bee keep in the family!
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Thanks Kevin, they’re my trees so spraying shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I wanted to put them about 30 feet from the nearest tree, but am going about 150 feet also.
Mike- I enjoyed those photos very, very much!!! I, too, have worried if I really have the time needed to do this, but my local adviser tells me that once everything is set up, it really doesn’t take a lot of work. We’ll see about that!
I’m really impressed by your daughter!!! Not every young lady would take an interest in such a hobby, and I’m not even sure I- a grown man- would have the courage to work with bees wearing nothing but the hood and gloves! I must say I spent around $150 for a complete bull suit!! Then I see your daughter out there in her t-shirt! haha. Very courageous if you ask me! Its also nice to see she or someone painted the boxes something besides the standard white. I’ve got to paint mine this week and I’m considering doing something besides white as well. THanks for the pics!
Thanks Kevin. When she was little she would pile bugs and worms of all types into a stroller and push them around, talking to them and treating them like her “babies”, (man I miss those days!), so you could say she’s a natural. The boxes she painted white originally but changed them to green a couple days ago in hopes of drawing less attention and possible complaints from neighbors. BTW, my father in law is 80 and doesn’t have a lick of arthritis, he thinks, from the bee stings over the years.
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When my arthritis gets bad, go for the bees! Anecdotaly, I don’t ever recall a bkeep w/ cancer either.[quote=“thecityman, post:89, topic:4536”]
I’m considering doing something besides white as well. THanks for the pics!
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Kevin, I always thought white was an advertisement for help yourself. I got recycled paint and mixed it together for a lovely grey, green, brown color, bees don’t mind and complaints went away when the neighbors no longer could see the bees so clearly.
Over the years, I’ve had 3 out yards disappear(stolen). Security for your bees is getting to be a serious issue. With so many people not working with nothing to do but create trouble, driving around to find some thing to steal, bees become an inviting target. A story…the last year I had substantial nos. of bees, I was working a yard 35 miles south of Des Moines, way out in the sticks and down a private lane and in the middle of a hayfield around a deadfall. I’m talking truly, you can’t get there from here, I was in the cab of my truck, about half done with the work, and a car w/ three dudes show up at the end of the lane. All three had veils on, they were there for my bees. Believe me, I’m glad I had my gun. When we went to harvest that yard. the bees were gone, all the way down to the pallets. The next spring at the central Ia bee auction, my equipment was for sale. I recovered it because it was UV marked.
Speaking of bees on concrete blocks, I find the blocks will sink in the soil. Pallets rot but I can always just add more pallets and they’re free.
Yes, I always carried when I worked bees. At least a dozen times I was glad I had the gun w/me.
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Now you just brought up something that never even crossed my mind- potential theft of my hives!!! One of the locations on my property that I’m considering is literally RIGHT beside the road. Its also pretty much out of sight of my house and any other house. In other words, it would be very easy for someone to pull over, jump out, load them up, and take off. So I need to look into that. I’ve got lots of places that can’t be seen or accessed from the road so I’ll consider those instead.
I had my first negative experience regarding bees yesterday and it really kind of surprised me. I’ve been so excited about getting into my bees that I’ve been telling almost everyone I see that I’m about to start keeping bees. Every single person I’ve told- including all my neighbors- have been extremely supportive and excited and interested. Yesterday I was talking to a woman who lives about 1/3 a mile from me, maybe more. Not even my closest neighbor. When I told her she got all snooty and said she had already heard and she “just hoped they stay at my house, because she doesn’t like bees and doesn’t want them around her”. WHAT?!?!?! Come on!!! Really? I tried to assure her that me having 2 hives down the road from her isn’t going to cause her to have a bunch of bees, especially since she doesn’t even have any blooming trees, plants, or a garden. I also told her I see bees everyday already and I’ve had 2 swarms on my property in the last year and a half, so bees are already around. But really it kind of aggravated me a little. Of course I want to be a good neighbor and its my nature to try and get along with everyone. But having someone try to tell me that don’t approve of what I’m doing on MY PROPERTY just rubbed me wrong. She doesn’t have kids, btw. Oh well. I guess everyone can’t be a fan of bees and maybe I’ve been lucky that my actual neighbors have been so supportive. I suspect other bee keepers have had people who didn’t approve.?
BTW, Phil. How are you going to tell us that great story about your bee hives/equipment being stolen but then showing up at an auction without telling us what happened. Did the people selling it get charged? I’m sure they just said they bought it somewhere and had no idea it was stolen? Did you get it back? Finish that story! 
Kevin, people like that lady will step on a yellow jacket nest, get stung all over, and complain that your bees attacked them. They don’t know, and have no interest in understanding, anything about honey bees. If it has a stinger, its a bee. She may have a longstanding fear of bees. You can’t change that, even with all your enthusiasm. With a gentle education on the behavior of bees, those fears can be lessened. You may need a bit of experience before you’re up to the task of alleviating her worries.
We don’t hide our bees. They’re in very colorful hives. It’s funny, but we kept the hives in plain sight a few yards from a very busy road for several years. Yet, most people who drove or walked by on a daily basis didn’t even realize they were beehives. I didn’t publicize that we had them, but didn’t hide them, either.
When deciding where to position your hives, take into consideration wind and weather in your area. Also, that you will be transporting heavy frames and other equipment back and forth from there to wherever you will be storing it. You’re also likely to find that full gear bee suit can quickly become uncomfortably hot in the summer. Having some shade available can be helpful. It’s also nice if you just want to leave a chair out there so that you can sit next to them and lose track of time ‘girl watching’.
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The guy selling the equipment was another bkeep who purchased the equipment from ‘some guy’. Right…
Tell your antibee neighbor your bees are all labeled so she’ll know if yours come on her property. Hide them, outta sight, outta mind. Some people are stupid.
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The lady may have an allergy to the venom. One of my close family friends 2 miles from here could die from a sting. I keep a box of Benadryl around. My grandpa was a beekeeper and he always took everyone around him a little honey. As far as stealing bees goes I’ve never had a problem. Most beekeepers are not thieves. Thieves typically don’t enjoy having their shirt nailed on. As was mentioned keep them out of site.
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If you have shady beekeepers around add an electronic dog collar or the under skin microchip that’s used to track dogs and mention it to no one. Most people like I said are very honest and the scandalous typically don’t steal bees because in the thieves mind that’s last on their list of great ideas to make money. Btw if you have wind like we do drive 2 t-posts in the ground one to three feet on each side of the hive.
Actually, there exist people who are allergic to honey:
http://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/Anaphylaxis-honey
This is my first year beekeeping also, spent this winter putting together 2 10 frame hives and bought two sets of bees. one was a nuc (which is basically a couple of frames taking from an existing colony with the bees and the queen in with them, you just slide them into you hive and your done, and the other one I bought was a 3lb package of bees with a queen. in my profile picture im holding the box the bees came in. they were buzzing like crazy all the way home from the bee store Hudson Valley Bee Supply Installed the bees on Friday, Boy was it wild. was a lot of fun though
This is the Queen cage, shes in there with a couple of other bees
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That is awesome, Sean! I pick up my bees on Saturday and I’m really excited about it. Sounds like we are both having our first bees at almost the same time. BTW…in your second photo, that looks like the little box that my queen is suppossed to come in. But looking at yours, it appears that in addition to a queen there are 2 or 3 worker bees in there. I thought the whole purpose in the little box was to keep the queen seperate until the others get used to her phermones so that they don’t kill her. Seems like the workers in that little box might kill her? Obviously I’m missing something here because I’m sure Hudson Valley Bee Supplys know what they are doing- I was just curious. IF you or another reader can explain that would be great. Good luck with your new hobby. We will learn together!
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Those other bees are called her attendants. They feed and take care of her. She is the QUEEN, after all; she doesn’t do menial tasks like feeding herself. 