I find the Blackwater
>River bottoms better than the Missouri River bottoms.

Asters ???

The best nectar I hive found for bees to winter on is smartweed (
heartsease).  When bottoms flood then the pink variety look like a field of
wheat but pink. This year not enough to pay for the move.
if looking for winter stores I look for smartweed. If looking for honey to
sell as wildflower I look for queen annes lace, goldenrod, sunflowers ,
Spanish nettles and asters.

>But, like your work with Russian bees not that long ago, I'm just trying to
>adapt my management to work with the local feral bees that seem to be
>making a comeback in my area.

Friends say the Russian line has improved since I kept Russian bees and did
the Bee Culture article ( 2002 or 2003)and did a few presentations at
meetings.

> Weren't you just lamenting a couple of months ago about not seeing any
> bees on your fishing trip?
I was and really surprised by not seeing a single honey bee.

>I'd be interested to learn more about your experiences with Russian bees.
The article was in Bee Culture in January of 2003 (not sure) but was the
same month I had a article in ABJ about Dann Purvis.  Most of what I learned
is in the BEE-L
archives. Go back and read my posts and you should find interesting.

>It's just a response to more of the same petty name calling that both sides
>are engaging in. "Amateur" would probably be a better moniker that fits.

In our local association only a handful keep over a dozen hives. I would say
you are a serious sideliner.
Numbers of hives only means to me the beekeeper is serious about his
beekeeping.

With livestock comes responsibility. Dog/cat /cattle or bees.
The only way to really know what is going on in your beehives is to go look.
The longer you work with bees the less time it takes to solve problems.

Problem I have never found a good solution for:
What's upsets my help the most is bees bur combining brood boxes together.
During a
strong honey flow the bees bur comb the brood boxes together (we use two
deep boxes). The only way I know to get apart is working slowly to break the
seal upsetting the bees. honey runs from comb and brood in cells of bur comb
excites bees.

Have others on the list a method?

 Correct bee space helps but we mix different makers deeps. Even then at
times bees make comb
solid between the boxes. Usually happens the most towards the end of our
major flow when were are trying to crowd the bees a bit to finish filling
and capping supers. I hate bringing in supers with only 2 or 3 frames filled
or 2 or 3 with unsealed nectar. Costs me money to pay help to work those
supers. When I pay another beekeeper to remove supers, extract and bring me
the drums of honey not an issues as I pay a fee per pound for the
extracting.

Full capped supers fill tanks fast.

One solution is to run singles instead of double deeps in the flow and we do
run quite a few singles we have made up but then we have to deal with those
after the flow when we are trying to get extracting done.

bob

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