[roadkillbobb]

A few years ago i put up a bunch of swarm traps to try and catch some free bees...and then mr black bear knocked them all down, that was the following year, I rebuilt them and rehung them and they are still up..
the first year I caught several small swarms and transferred them to a hive box so they could grow in numbers and survive the winter...regardless to say none of the swarms survived...so I basically gave up on the bees till I have more time and finish up other projects....
but last month I noticed one of my swarm traps had some bee activity going on, and yes a swarm moved in, Im going to leave them alone till next spring, the swarm trap is a decent size that can hold alot of bees, I would say inside volume is about 80% of a deep...I am curious if they do better not being disturbed through the winter...
Ill know in spring..till then ill just keep an eye on them..

 

[roadkillbobb]

I have never been a very good gardener, never had a green thumb. My vegetable gardens are always a hit and a miss because of fighting weeds and what nots, the what nots being pesty bugs that do my plants in. I don't like to toss insecticides on my plants.
I've been pretty busy these past couple days with tilling and running the disc with the tractor on a large section of my property so I can plant Milkweed seeds. I found two Swam Milkweed plants growing on my property. Yo would think that in 45 acres, I would find more but two is all I found. I gathered pods from them and my beekeeping friends came through and gave me some of their pods so now I have my work cut out for me. I think soon, it will be good to go ahead and plant them. I tried the cold stratification last year and put some seeds in the frig but they never came up so I thought about how Milkweed pods open up in the fall and are carried off by the wind to spread their own way. Good enough for them, good enough for me.
I think you are going to have a very interesting swarm season. Your mixture sure sounds like it will draw the scouts in without hesitation. Must give a full report on out swarm trap outcomes.

I have tons of milkweed and golden rod all over the place, I get thousands of the monarch butterflies each year on my property as the milkweed is their food....I figured most open land would have the same...but I guess not...

 

[roadkillbobb]

This reminded me that I should have posted some time back a little info on getting GREAT results on refining some of that old black beeswax. Here is a site on YouTube that stresses the first part of the cleaning processes.
Having a hard time cleaning BEESWAX? TRY THIS!

The next part is "How light-colored do you want your beeswax? IF the brown beeswax is to your taste that is great, however, what if you want something that is really pure, like for cosmetics, or lip balm? You need a box frame with a metal interior, tilted somewhat, and a removable glass top. The box should have the lower end fitted with 45 degree angled metal to exit through a slot down into a container. The sun will lighten the wax more every time you put the batch through box. Of course you use fine netting that will allow the melted wax (from the sun) to filter through and contain all of the 'garbage' from the black comb. The beeswax can be made almost as white as the newly made pure comb from a new frame.

Sorry for being quite a bit off topic, but I thought this was important and wanted to get it typed out and in front of people.

I built a solar bees wax melter....it does a great job reclaiming the ugliest bees wax you may have...I line the ramp with paper towels that act like a filter for all the junk, and the melted bees wax flows down the ramp into the collection container ( foil tray)..usually after the 1st or 2nd melt the wax is very clean and yellow...