A to Bee with my Gelbu Special

ndoghouse

ndoghouse

Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
7,751
Took my Gelbu Special out for a walk today. Driveway was getting a bit unruly and felt like exploring some anyway. She's a little sappy but she's happy! mostly this stuff is green new growth but is fun to cut. Everywhere I go now i have to cut through this stuff to get there. Having a light fast blade was the only solution.
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Was cutting a trail towards the back of my property
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and look what I found! A crapload of bees! the tree is hollow and these are the ones hanging out guarding the nest.

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Now I wonder if there is a way to get them bees from hole in a tree to a hive so I can collect the honey from the tree? Time to make some mead! Any HI beekeepers?
 
you can actually make money that way man, research a little and you can find out how to collect the bees , then you can sell them to a keeper , its more and more necessary because of the mites, flies and fungus devastating italian honey bees-- russian /italian crossbreed honeys are resistant and africanized are too , so beekeepers will pay you for those wild bees, they might have resistant genes! be sure to collect them harming as few as possible, people wiser than me have written on the subject !-- very cool
 
My solution would be a small forest fire centering on that tree. I don't love honey that much and hate bee's. Had I encountered a nest that size I'd probably already be in Idaho and still running.
They got me twice this year on vacation and I had witness's on both occasions that verified that I was NOT bothering them so they shouldn't have bothered me. I know this to be an urban legend now. They bother just because they can.

In our next episode I'll discuss my hatred and fear of snakes, and maybe next after that DENTIST!
 
I have found even smoke follows this rule bawanna, if you don't like something it will follow you , no matter where I stand at a campfire, smoke always follows. Solution for dentist : dont have teeth ( I am from TN)
 
Bawanna said:
My solution would be a small forest fire centering on that tree. I don't love honey that much and hate bee's. Had I encountered a nest that size I'd probably already be in Idaho and still running.
They got me twice this year on vacation and I had witness's on both occasions that verified that I was NOT bothering them so they shouldn't have bothered me. I know this to be an urban legend now. They bother just because they can.

In our next episode I'll discuss my hatred and fear of snakes, and maybe next after that DENTIST!
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Ha! Well funny you should mention that Bawanna. When i left out that morning this is the first thing I saw when I opened the front door.
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I Almost stepped on it! Had Khuk in hand luckily sheathed cause i almost busted my arse trying to step over it. We have copperheads out here and they are very poisonous but this was a rat snake i believe. Luckily non venomous. I hate cute little fuzzy mice that chew out the wiring in your car and crap all over the house so I let it go right were I found it. Mice population has definitely decreased. We did have a forest fire here a few years ago and now the forest is meadow hence the mice. I have already gone Khukri on them mice.
As far as the bees Gehazi I do want to keep them on the property but I have to somehow get the queen from deep inside that tree to a hive so the rest will follow. I do like honey but cannot harvest it regularly from the tree. So from what i have read is that most are africanized nowadays. They dont seem aggressive but ...like you said. They are like dogs in that aspect. They bark cause they can.
Maybe I should have posted this in Cantina...Sorry Karda.
 
You will find a concise treatment of extracting honey and colonies from trees in Euell Gibbons' book "Stalking the Wild Asparagus." It's in the chapter "Wild Honey."

You might consider attempting to find a local beekeeper willing to buy the colony and give you the honey.

edit - I see you want to keep the bees. Still, you may be able to develop a mutually beneficial alliance with a local beekeeper.
 
i am into bees as well, I wanted to buy some russian hybrids a while back but never found time to set up my hives, by now its a service to capture the queen you find so you can get her to a breeder and get those resistant genes into more agriculturalists hands, the perfect set up is a bee suit, a smoke gun and a trusty HI knife , smoke them out ( alone) with bee suit and be sure to bring something to keep them in until you reach your hive , then you just go in an look for her ( she is the big fat one ) and I figure , carefully move her .http://www.bushfarms.com/images/BlackBeesWhere.jpg that website might help.(also i think queen is told by wings according to guy, im pretty much going on memory and usually wrong about everything -- but beez is cool

totally with wallace on this, bees are a beneficial hobby to the ecosystem
.http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm
 
Gehazi said:
I have found even smoke follows this rule bawanna, if you don't like something it will follow you , no matter where I stand at a campfire, smoke always follows. Solution for dentist : dont have teeth ( I am from TN)
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I could be a Tennessee resident, I only got 6 left on top and already lost a couple bottom. I've kind of looked forward to false choppers for quite a spell. The new plastic real looking ones, not the wooden ones like George Washington had. Splinters ya know.

Ndoghouse, any chance of my dropping by for a visit just dropped by about 78 points. Big ole bee nest and now snakes. I was brung up in Missouri, we had some, didn't see em too often. When I was about 5 or 6 had a pond on my grandads farm loaded with bass and blue gill. I loved to fish that thing until I run onto a water mocassin. Don't recollect fishing that pond much after that, too busy looking for snakes.

Oh and the smoke thing at campfires, I get that too! Reckon it's cause we ain't got no teeth? Has to be a common denominator here someplace.
 
Wow! Thanks Howard and Gehazi for all the good info. I always was a Euell Gibbons fan even as a kid. He was way before his time. He was an encyclopedia of good info before the internet. That will keep me busy for a while. Ill keep ya posted! Starting to sound like I need A Chirruwa AK to crack that hollow log open if my baby wants that sweet honey on bisquits:D
 
Come on over Bawanna! Bring your new mini AK! You can pop that tree open while I grab the queen!
 
Ya know I love you man and I usually would have your back but this? Well this is bad stuff. Maybe a triple bee suit, with smoke control, hear bees don't like smoke.
And I'll of course have the Mini, gonna always have it, but I'll bring my big AK so we can bust that tree proper.
Kind of risky though, as I'll have a flame thrower with me as well and if that queen or any of her servants even looks crossed eyed at me it's flame on.

Might be best just to leave em be (no pun intended). Maybe it ain't nice to fool with mother nature? Heard that before too.
 
The only way to get the bees out willingly is with a queen. The hive will follow a queen anywhere. Smoke only makes them docile and less likely to sting.
 
Less likely to sting, I like smoke. Lot's of smoke, more smoke the better.
 
Bawanna said:
Less likely to sting, I like smoke. Lot's of smoke, more smoke the better.
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Man You crack me up Bawanna! Im not fond of getting stung but im not allergic either and I do have an Epi-pen in case i go into shock! Im going for it! From what i understand I have to trap them OUT but give them a desirable place to go right near their home. Gotta Be the Bee! I have to get some protection first and a beehive for them to call their new home. Wait a minute!... The tree is dead! If i have bee protection I can cut the tree down crack it open put all the bees into the new hive and long as I get the queen in there im good! "They" say if there is darkening (propolis) around the opening then they have been there for a while. Propolis is some component they use in the wax to make the honeycomb. Like a glue I guess. "What has this got to do with Khukris?"...Everything! If I can sell this stuff I can buy me a big CAK! I feel bad now...This was originally meant to be a thread on clearing green bush with my beloved new Gelbu Special but I found Bees at the end of the trail.more on that a little later.
 
Dude, save yourself. I'll save up and buy you a big CAK! Burn them bee's. Make smoke. Burn baby burn!
Them bee suits gotta cost a plenty and probably hot too. Use the money towards the CAK and a flame thrower.
Other than Bee's, how did the Gelbu Special work or did you get derailed.
 
Not to rain on your parade, because I don't really know how it is in your area.
But I know around here in NY and many other places in the states, honey bees are becoming a rarity. Not only because of the African bee Hybridization factor, but also because there is some type of sickness that is causing whole wild and beekeepers stocks to be wiped out in a pretty short order. My wifes granddad (may he RIP) was an avid beekeeper for many years and had many hives here, just around the corner from our house. In the space of a couple seasons he lost everything, 30 hives worth of bees. He tried to start up again by ordering bees in and they all succumbed to the same thing.

My opinion and suggestion would be to live and let live. Let them bee.
 
Great pix, peaceful Sarpa!
Thank you for sharing
 
Apocephalus borealis-- @karda -- this fly used to only lay its eggs in ant heads, once they introduced them up here they began killing bees-- so what likely took out your old man's bees was probably the borealis wiping them out . on top of the mites, and the fungus, now they have flies that lay eggs in their bodies , bees dont have it easy.
 
Well… after another extended visit to the nest I decided I probably don’t need another hobby at this time. For now it doesn’t make sense to disturb someone else’s nest while trying to rebuild my own.​

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I did get very close to them this time and they seemed very docile. They were all pointed in the same direction except the ones doing the dancing. I will let them be bees. So no Flamethrowers Bawanna :D. I figure when they start to get overcrowded then they may want to swarm and by then maybe I can get a new colony to split off if I can get educated enough in the meantime. Five gallons of honey mead sure sounds good tho!
OK Back to the topic! I am looking for an air compressor and some other burned out tools that used to be my shop before the fire. Environmental people say I need to get rid of scrap steel on the property because there is an endangered species (toad frog) that could be harmed by it??? My building permit expired and I need to renew it. Anyway I need to cut a trail through this stuff. Seems like a 25” siru job but it was too confined so I out comes the 21” Gelbu Special….again. The dried stalk in the middle is giant ragweed from last year. By the end of the summer there will be a forest of the stuff (he he..Siru waiting patiently).
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Rest of that green is Pigweed and Poke salat with some American beauty berry (French Mulberry). I don’t cut the beauty berry as it makes good wine, jelly and repels mosquitoes. Poke Salat…well we wont go there.​

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OK there she is! A 1939 Gilbarco Compressor. You would think it would be hard to lose 700 pounds of steel but it is possible! This piece is not going to the scrapyard. It stays. She was only about 50 feet away but only took about five minutes to get there.
Along the way I found another item I bet a few of you can recognize.

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Well back to the house! Don’t laugh at my house! It ain't done yet​
!

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I just cut this trail a few weeks ago and look at it now. That’s why I need good tools! My 17.5” Chitlangi could have done this job but the 21” length of this GS was perfect. It didn’t get in the way, it sliced through this stuff like its not there, and the 25 ounces was just enough to get through last years mixed in dead stuff when needed. When winter comes and all this stuff is dead I will be sharking hard for a big CAK, Ganga Ram, or the like to do some delimbing and firewood chopping but for now this Gelbu Special is King!
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