Bryson Captures Wild Bees & Harvest Honey!
Successful Beekeeping Experience
Bryson started beekeeping awhile ago and it has been such a beautiful adventure! I'm personally allergic to bees so I have kept my distance but I'm excited for my brother! Watch the video and please like and share! We'll see you next time :D
Additional Information
How Bryson Built a Top Bar Hive
Bryson's First Time Capturing a Wild Bee Hive
Shae aka Winter_Apple
May 27, 2016
Transcript of Video
Bree: Last year was Bryson’s first attempt at capturing bees in his homemade top-bar hive. If you missed it, you can click on the video box or find the link down in the description.
Bryson: We got her in there. High Five!
Bree: Byson’s success was short lived however, as the queen bee slipped out of its hive and moved on. But, Bryson doesn’t give up that easy. This spring has given Bryson ample opportunity to renew his hopes of becoming a full fledged beekeeper.
Bryson: This might be Little Homestead’s best adventure ever. We’re in a car and we’re looking for a beehive. A neighbor e-mailed us and said she had a beehive inside of a camper that she wanted to get rid of.
Shelly: This is pretty.
Bryson. Alright, we’re lost. No wait, there’s tires.
Shelly: She said they were by the tires or something, didn’t she?
Bryson: She did.
Shelly: There’s the trailer!
Bryson: Is that the trailer?
Shelly: That’s the trailer. Might be a little grumpy bees. Where’s the refrigerator? It’s where the old fridge used to be, she said. Did they already move?
Bryson: Careful Mom. There’s a hornet’s nest up there.
Shelly: Hornet where?
Bryson: See it right up there? Hornet’s nest.
Shelly: Awwww
Bryson: I bet the hornets killed them. When we got there it was a little too late. The wasps had gotten to it and eaten the whole hive. They kill the worker bees and then they eat all the honey and comb too. They eat everything.
Bree: Then, Bryson gets a call from another neighbor in an abandoned trailer home. Bryson goes to check it out.
Bryson: It was in-between a half of a mobile home. Went to check that out. The hive was about yea big. And it seemed like they were fairly active. And then I was going to come back, plan my strategy. Box built. The hope is to get the queen, close her up, tape it and then move it out to the hive. I got everything ready, I was going to head over there.
There’s hornets right now. They are flying around all over the place. They are attacking the bees. There isn’t anything that I can really do that I know of. It’s kind of a sad fate for them. They used to be up there. In that drawer right there and then the wasps came and they’ve eaten the hive. There is no more hive left. It’s dead. It’s gone.
When I arrived, the wasps had wiped them out again. I started getting really discouraged because I started realizing the hornets can take them out.
Bree: Bryson is O for 2. Then something surprising takes place.
Bryson: I took the top bar hive that I built and put it in the corner of the property. I went to go check my hive this morning and I found there were bees moving in and out of the entrance. They moved right in. I don’t need to find a hive. How beautiful is that? They’re flying all over the place. They liked my top bar hive so much they decided to make it their home. Yeah, that was real exciting.
Bree: While Bryson is basking in his good fortune, Garen comes in with some news.
Garen: I found a beehive in one of our drawers in our hoop barn.
Bryson: And it moved right by where my brother works.
Garen: And the hoop barn is where I work on all my cars.
Bryson: Yeah. Lets just say Brother …Bees …not good. The box that I built that I was going to use for the neighbors, I can then put the bees temporarily into the box while I built another top bar hive to put them in. It’s a simple top bar hive here.
Alright, so here is the beehive. Here is the entrance. I 3D printed this piece here.
Looks like they moved themselves into a drawer. Oop, I’m getting watched by a couple bees here so I’m going to move back. I’m going to come back tonight and move them. Ooh, ooh, I better get out of here.
Shelly: I can’t say that I was exactly thrilled when Bryson said he wanted to do beekeeping. You hear all the stories about the killer bees and potentially the bees he is dealing with could be Africanized.
Bryson: Well, they are still mad at me for interrupting them so I’m going to get out of here. Ha. Ha. Alright.
Shelly: I can’t really dwell on the negatives because if I do then I’m gonna start saying things that are going to prevent him from going forward and doing the things that he loves to do.
Bryson: I definitely caught the queen bee. If I hadn’t of caught the queen bee, they would of flown away on me. So I moved all the bees into the box with food. After 3 days, I transferred them into their new home.
See how they’re moving up the leg, going in the hole? Alright, we definitely got the queen in there. I took the old honeycomb inside and we harvested some honey off the hive. I decided to take it since I couldn’t keep it. That’s honey alright. Mom was extremely excited about the harvesting of the honey.
Shelly: Yeah. Mmm. Mmm.
Bryson: Is it good honey?
Shelly: Um hm. So now how do we get it out?
Bryson: He’s gorged himself on honey so they don’t move. Take this rag here, put him outside. Go live. How we harvested the honey is we smashed up the comb and then tossed it in a strainer.
Shelly: Wow
Bryson: Now that should start dripping in the bowl. And just let the honey filter on through. It filtered all the wax away from the honey. It dripped over about 2 or 3 hours.
Shelly: It’s still dripping out too.
Bryson: There it is.
Shelly: That is just fantastic Bryson.
Bryson: There hive is from here over to here. They have build honeycomb.
Bree: With two new hives. Bryson is going to do some real beekeeping. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next week.
Shae: Please subscribe. For More information, you can click website link below. If you like what you see, please share it with your friends. Thanks for watching.
Garen: No, just kidding. But the queen she came out and started eating my face, slowly.
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Resources
www.greenhomebuilding.com/adobe.htm
www.earthbagbuilding.com/articles.htm
www.earthbagplans.wordpress.com
We moved from the city to the country in 2005. Since then, we have been building structures, raising livestock and growing some of our own foods. We are crazy about family, nutrition and want the best for our growing family.
