[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Jay—I am the moderator for the Forum. I have 25 hives, 5 years a feral beekeeper, no treatments, foundationless, all rescued bees in LA. I will answer your questions and fill in some other information so the post will educate others about honey qualities and the inputs necessary to produce good raw honey.
First—let’s define the terms. “Raw” honey is not a regulated term, so anyone may slap it on a label. The ONLY term that is legally regulated is “organic” which has many defined, regulatory situations for raising bees and taking their honey to be able to label it as “organic” However, most big concerns are not going to bother with Farmer’s Markets to sell, so unless the seller is going to the trouble of buying up cheap honey and re-labeling it, it is likely a local producer. Learn the questions to ask about how they treat their bees (detailed below) to get a deeper understanding of how the honey is sourced.
Second—color of the honey has nothing to do with its being raw or otherwise. The nectar resource mix from flowers, shrubs, weeds and all other floral sources determines the taste and color and consistency of the honey. Different flowers bloom at different times for different lengths of time in Los Angeles. The nectar source also determines the rate at which the honey crystallizes. Here is a very good, detailed link to explain crystallization rates of different floral honeys and to also define that crystallized honey is NOT a degraded product, as is often the opinion of the American supermarket honey buying public. http://www.montcobeekeepers.org/Documents/Honey_Crystallization.pdf
Third—the scale of the honey production operation, the way they raise their bees (syrup feeds? chemical treatments? foundation in the frames? artificial pollen feed? migratory hive trucking to different crops all over the place?) brings economies of scale concepts into the pricing structure. Ten dollars a pound is CHEAP for truly raw honey. I charge $12 a pound. It is VERY labor intensive for the bees to make a teaspoon of honey (takes 12 bees their entire life production to produce one teaspoon of honey) It is very labor intensive to carefully tend a bunch of beehives to their optimum health and take only the EXCESS honey they produce, bring it home in a plastic crate, frame by frame un-cap the honey, run it through the extractor, strain it through a mesh screen (NO heat used to run it through bottling equipment as typically happens in big operations) and then put it in labeled bottles. I want folks to not have any illusions as to the real labor involved for the human beekeeper. Not to mention the millions of miles flown by the bees to collect the nectar, then process it.
I hope this helps you and others to understand this precious sweet.
Susan
Fourth—some 60-70% of the honey being consumed in the US currently is being brought in by exporters from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and other countries. It is often trans-shipped with false paper work to mask the true originating country. Much of it is adulterated (thinned with water, corn syrup, malt syrup, rice syrup or other cheap stuff) and is NOT inspected by the FSIS or USDA. The US does not even have a defined standard for what constitutes honey, a situation that enrages (rightly) domestic honey producers who are seeing honey as cheap as 5 cents a pound getting dumped into the processed food market in America. Watch the movies, “Vanishing of the Bees” (a lot on the honey-laundering crime) and “More Than Honey”.
The “ultrafiltration” of honey to mask its origins, stripping out the pollen grains is another gambit the exporters are coming up with to fake the origin of their honey.
Finally, I am glad you posed this question to us beekeepers (I am guessing you don’t keep bees?) and always caution people to be circumspect about EVERYTHING seen on the Internet. This tool is simply the opinions of billions of people and carries no particular factual evidence for anything. Something about your experience rightly set off the caution light for you to question what you had seen on the ubiquitous Internet!

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Jay—I am the moderator for the Forum. I have 25 hives, 5 years a feral beekeeper, no treatments, foundationless, all rescued bees in LA. I will answer your questions and fill in some other information so the post will educate others about honey qualities and the inputs necessary to produce good raw honey.
First—let’s define the terms. “Raw” honey is not a regulated term, so anyone may slap it on a label. The ONLY term that is legally regulated is “organic” which has many defined, regulatory situations for raising bees and taking their honey to be able to label it as “organic” However, most big concerns are not going to bother with Farmer’s Markets to sell, so unless the seller is going to the trouble of buying up cheap honey and re-labeling it, it is likely a local producer. Learn the questions to ask about how they treat their bees (detailed below) to get a deeper understanding of how the honey is sourced.
Second—color of the honey has nothing to do with its being raw or otherwise. The nectar resource mix from flowers, shrubs, weeds and all other floral sources determines the taste and color and consistency of the honey. Different flowers bloom at different times for different lengths of time in Los Angeles. The nectar source also determines the rate at which the honey crystallizes. Here is a very good, detailed link to explain crystallization rates of different floral honeys and to also define that crystallized honey is NOT a degraded product, as is often the opinion of the American supermarket honey buying public. http://www.montcobeekeepers.org/Documents/Honey_Crystallization.pdf
Third—the scale of the honey production operation, the way they raise their bees (syrup feeds? chemical treatments? foundation in the frames? artificial pollen feed? migratory hive trucking to different crops all over the place?) brings economies of scale concepts into the pricing structure. Ten dollars a pound is CHEAP for truly raw honey. I charge $12 a pound. It is VERY labor intensive for the bees to make a teaspoon of honey (takes 12 bees their entire life production to produce one teaspoon of honey) It is very labor intensive to carefully tend a bunch of beehives to their optimum health and take only the EXCESS honey they produce, bring it home in a plastic crate, frame by frame un-cap the honey, run it through the extractor, strain it through a mesh screen (NO heat used to run it through bottling equipment as typically happens in big operations) and then put it in labeled bottles. I want folks to not have any illusions as to the real labor involved for the human beekeeper. Not to mention the millions of miles flown by the bees to collect the nectar, then process it.
I hope this helps you and others to understand this precious sweet.
Susan
Fourth—some 60-70% of the honey being consumed in the US currently is being brought in by exporters from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and other countries. It is often trans-shipped with false paper work to mask the true originating country. Much of it is adulterated (thinned with water, corn syrup, malt syrup, rice syrup or other cheap stuff) and is NOT inspected by the FSIS or USDA. The US does not even have a defined standard for what constitutes honey, a situation that enrages (rightly) domestic honey producers who are seeing honey as cheap as 5 cents a pound getting dumped into the processed food market in America. Watch the movies, “Vanishing of the Bees” (a lot on the honey-laundering crime) and “More Than Honey”.
The “ultrafiltration” of honey to mask its origins, stripping out the pollen grains is another gambit the exporters are coming up with to fake the origin of their honey.
Finally, I am glad you posed this question to us beekeepers (I am guessing you don’t keep bees?) and always caution people to be circumspect about EVERYTHING seen on the Internet. This tool is simply the opinions of billions of people and carries no particular factual evidence for anything. Something about your experience rightly set off the caution light for you to question what you had seen on the ubiquitous Internet!

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Fred—thanks for the quick reply. The thing with beekeeping, which you may be finding out, is that a answer is not a rule. “It depends” is the answer, and this is something you learn as you gain the knowledge of the craft of beekeeping. You are dealing with living creatures and the ambient air temp. and humidity, the placement site (full sun, shade, part shade) the size of the colony and the hive boxes they are in, (TBH or Langstroth) the entrance configuration, etc.
So, the white plastic board is coated with oil when a mite drop count is being done. I do not do these things. I want the bees to take care of their health challenges without me dumping chemical treatments into the hive. If yours are VSH, they should not need to be treated or do counts.
I strongly urge you to get a mentor (and pay them for their time) as well as do some good reading. Have you read Michael Bush’s book “The Practical Beekeeper”? The whole thing is on-line, no purchase necessary. Also, Rob and Chelsea’s book. You will learn a lot faster and make fewer mistakes with the help of a mentor and constant education.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, Chris—the message is a little garbled, but I will try.
You don’t say if you have ever kept bees before. WHERE are they building comb? Do you have them in a manageable hive or just a cardboard box?
I would guess you need a lot more background info than how fast they build comb or die off. Beekeeping is a pretty education intensive practice, especially if you live in the city and want to practice responsible beekeeping that won’t annoy your neighbors—or create a safety issue.
We have monthly meetings, we are sponsoring a beekeeping conference loaded with knowledgable experts and good networking opportunities which starts on August 19. I urge you to get a mentor and do some reading on beekeeping before things go too far. This forum allows a way of asking for help, but you need to back up a bit and get the basics in hand.
Rob and Chelsea’s book, listed on this site under “support” is excellent
Please let us know how it goes Susan

[susan rudnicki]

HI, Fred—your “kit” as it sounds, came with a sticky bottom board marked with a grid design. The point of this is to assess varroa mite numbers when they drop off and get stuck in the sticky surface. But a bit of backing up here is required.
First, where do you live? Do you have a mentor helping you with the beekeeping adventure? Are the bees feral survivor stock from a swarm or cutout or are they package bees? In HoneyLove, we are mostly using feral bees which do not need monitoring for varroa as they are resistant and keep it in check. Package bees usually come from stock that has been treated with miticides and are dependent on this treatment to survive. (unless you deliberately ordered from a breeder with VSH bees)
Let us know the answers so we can help you further Susan, Moderator

[susan rudnicki]

Hi Shiva—I have a few questions that a experienced beek will probably ask you, anyway, before they come out to your place. Posing these questions will help other newbees with understanding bees.
How often have inspections of the hives been done? Without this regular “looking into” it is impossible to determine if they have excess honey that you may take honorably. We only want to take if it is in EXCESS. Depending on your floral sources and their abundance, the bees may have nothing to yield , may have just enough to make it the rest of the year, or have a excess you may harvest. Not all parts of the LA basin are the same, though you say you are in the Palisades.
Typically, in Spring and Summer we would want to assess the health of the queen and her work force by checking for eggs every 3 weeks to a month. Has this been going on? Beekeeping is more than taking honey, but managing and working with the bees at all times. Sometimes problems occur that we are not aware of till things have really collapsed. Checking on the health of the brood and queen every month can help you spot things before they have gone too far. Also, bees that are worked with regularly are usually more compliant about you getting in and taking honey than bees that rarely interact with you. Let us know what is going on.
thanks Susan, Moderator

[susan rudnicki]

Excellent!! you are gonna have so much fun!

[susan rudnicki]

sorry Missy—I have to check the Forum notes each day, because the notifications don’t ever arrive to my inbox to tell me—even though I am signed up to get them!
These are simply Queen cups and mean NOTHING. Bees will put them around the combs as precursors in case they need them, but the distinguishing feature is that they are rounded, like a tennis ball with a slice cut off. A real queen cell is elongated and narrow and often has “frosting” of white wax on it, showing the interest the bees are taking in it.
Queen cups are often a confusing thing to newbees.

[susan rudnicki]

sorry Missy—I have to check the Forum notes each day, because the notifications don’t ever arrive to my inbox to tell me—even though I am signed up to get them!
These are simply Queen cups and mean NOTHING. Bees will put them around the combs as precursors in case they need them, but the distinguishing feature is that they are rounded, like a tennis ball with a slice cut off. A real queen cell is elongated and narrow and often has “frosting” of white wax on it, showing the interest the bees are taking in it.
Queen cups are often a confusing thing to newbees.

[susan rudnicki]

I have this suit for doing big cutouts. For everyday inspections or smaller cutouts I wear a “Sherriff” jacket with fine mesh veil—from the UK.
http://www.bjsherriff.co.uk/product-category/bee-suits/s41-honey-rustler-jacket-with-hood/
The Brushy Mountain suit is big and the crotch being so low, is hard to bend and squat while wearing.

[susan rudnicki]

Dennis—please read our website for information on the issue of bee stings in the urban environment. To summarize, there are 9 to 11 WILD honey bee hives in the LA basin and surrounding urban areas. The bees are already here, so keeping them in managed boxes is simply another way, not a increase in the likely incidence of stinging events. This is simply misunderstood urban mythology.

[susan rudnicki]

HI, John. You are right to be concerned with heat build-up in our more hot summer weather. I had several large colonies (3-4 deeps and 2 honey supers) that suffered collapsed combs last summer during a 90 degree heat wave here in Manhattan Beach in my large apiary (22 colonies) Since I keep my hives foundationless and no wire in the frames, the heat with conventional lids in place was too much for my bees to moderate. The result was a river of spilling honey running out the entrance and the floor vents from collapsing honey combs. I now have fitted all the hives with screened tops underneath the migratory lids that are turned over from the usual position to create a 1/2 inch shaded air space to allow heat venting. The tops are a simple wood frame with window screen stapled to the edges so that bee-space is maintained but the free flow of hot air is naturally funneled upward. Screened bottom boards are another option, but obviously heat rises, so I am not as sure of their effectiveness if it gets really hot.
By the way, when you added the upper deep box, did you brood up some of the brood frames to the middle of the new box to encourage the opening up of the brood nest? This is a important management of the impulse to swarm, something we must control more carefully near our urban non-beekeeping neighbors.

[susan rudnicki]

Hi, I am Susan, the forum moderator, and pleased to address your question. In this club, for the most part, we are using feral bees taken from the urban environment which ALREADY have Africanized genetics. Please familiarize your self through reading the excellent book written by our club founders, Rob and Chelsea, “Save the Bees with Natural Backyard Hives” to understand the background on AHB and the genetics of the honey bee in general. Purchased package bees are often very genetically inbred and do not have the strong resistance of our feral bees—purchased queens, then logically, are simply the same weak genetics laying eggs in your hives.
Some of our members are raising their own queens and quite successfully using the natural genetic make-up of the bees they already have. As long as the behavior and resilience to pests and disease are satisfactory to the bee keeper, the selection of these “foundation genetics” for the raising of queens is met. There are a number of technical methods to do this but remember—-this is a natural impulse for bees to do anyway on their own. Splits, adding in swarms as a combine, provision of eggs to a queenless colony—these are just some of the ways queens can be raised.
It sounds like you need to read a bit more on the reproduction of bees and understand more fully the way their society works from day to day and in the replacement or supercedure of queen bees. Certainly, to make some of these manipulations without buying bees or queens requires developing multiple colonies for provision of the resources you will need. My advice is to be somewhat skeptical of the general information describing AHB as “bad or ill-tempered” bee stock to keep.

[susan rudnicki]

HI, Allison—Are you a HoneyLove member? We often announce mentorships that are available at the regular monthly meeting. If you come out (the meetings are announced under the “events” tab of the website) you will get the opportunity to meet a potential mentor. Regarding this hive—are YOU the one who actually needs a “experienced” keeper? Hives placed on tenencies need inspections just as often as ones kept at home. One thing to know—unless you are willing to pay a person with the resources (brood, eggs, stores) it is not a fair exchange.
There is a lot of missing information here that a experienced beek would need to know–
How old is the colony?
How was it obtained—swarm, cutout, package bees
How many hive bodies is it, both mediums and deeps—or is it a top bar hive?
How often have inspections been done and when was the last one?
What was seen on the last inspection? (how much brood, eggs, honey, bee population)
Put up this information and help educate everyone reading. Thanks

[susan rudnicki]

Good, you have read a lot of the best sources. But you should try to hook up with a mentor—mention it at the meetings. A lot of things need the hands-on guidance of a mentor. What you can do to compress the size of the space they have to warm is make a follower board. This is simply one of your frames with a piece of fiber board tacked to one side so as to make a temporary “wall”. Put in the four frames they have drawn, and put in the follower board as the 5th one. Here is a good view of one—
http://www.outyard.net/follower-board.html I did not make a purpose built one, but just applied a piece of fiberboard to one side of the frame and put the frame with the fiberboard TOWARDS the other occupied frames. ‘
The crate they are on is NOT a sturdy enough stand for a full hive and will convey ants right into the hive. There are very strong, iron stands made of rebar at Pierce Beekeeping supply in Fullerton—only $20. A strong stand with legs you can coat with Tanglefoot sticky ant barrier is just not something you want to skimp on. Argentine ants will devastate a young hive or cause it to abscond. The ants simply mob them. Especially if you are feeding the colony, you must help them avoid ants. The ants are everywhere and build their numbers strongly in Summer.

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