The Hives and Lows of Beekeeping in Alaska | Indie Alaska
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- What does it take to keep bees alive in the last frontier? Strong genetics. Keith Malone and Nathan Broumley are going back to the basics with beekeeping. Through genetic tweaks and all-natural methods, they have learned to keep their hives happy and healthy year-round.
Video: Kaysie Ellingson
Music: Starship Amazing
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Wow, I so appreciate hearing people who are taking a stand for the bees. I have always know that we have Human Collapse Disorder and NOT CCD. We are toooooooooooo involved with bees, and to hear of you sharing your story simplifying your beekeeping practice is so helpful to hear. Thank you
I'm so glad, so happy, so pleased to finally see this completed Spotlight on your Great and Compassionate style of Beekeeping.!!! Not to be confused with bee-having for the summer, or bee-killing for the callous greed of it all. ~ You make it all look Good and Right. ~ I Love your Wit & Candor !!!
I'm approching my first overwintering at the 53 parallel in Quebec (baie-james area) and thoses types of video really helps with preparations. Thanks you for posting theses !
I feel like I've learnt so much through this video. What a great way to handle Bee keeping. :)
TheRainydayvideo thanks Sophie! Be sure to tell your UK friends about Indie Alaska ~
;) I'm on it!
Aloha to Alaska/Indie Beekeepers!
Historical, keeping honeybees in Alaska Year-Round was crazy. 'Beehaver's' keep bees only during the flowering seasons, robbing them completely of their honey stores and just letting the poor bees die each year. The Bee-havers would just restart each spring with a new set of bees.
This story is encouraging, since things change, for the better, mostly, very slowly.
In Hawaii, you don't have a stopping of blooming flowers and the yield of nectar, ever. It averages out to about 30 types of honey per area if you harvest each flow and replace the supers quick enough. Otherwise, you end up with a 'rainbow of different kinds of honey on each comb. This is not so bad, as far as the favor and taste and aroma, but Varietal Honeys sell for a very good price and it is worth the effort to 'catch' each capped honey apart from the next run of nectars. In my first years doing beeing in Hawaii, it was interesting to have been caught 'too slow' by the bees and find a mix of strange combed kinds of honey that you could guess you could find never find again.
There are local favorites, Kiawe, Coconut, Macadamia Nut, X-mas berry, the first 2 are year-round, the next 2 are seasonal. Knowing your trees and flowering seasons, made all the difference between 'mixed up' kinds of honey and pure types. It was all good. Raw, Local, Pure, and the market was crazy. People would be waiting for us at the 2 farmer's markets and even get nasty toward each other if the one person thought the other was buying up all of this week's latest crop. We never had a storeroom of stock, we sold out each week.
What I had read about Alaska Beekeeping and robbing the hive to death was a sad state of beekeeping. Hope that it's better now than when I first studied it 30 or so years ago. Bee good or Bee Stung!
I'm from Alaska and would love to get started with beekeeping! Are there any sources you guys would recommend that would take into account our conditions up here?
Well I'd like to get a package/ hive for you boys! Sure would be nice to over winter a proven hardy colony... this will be my first year trying to winter over my hive here in Anchorage AK, I'm so invested in this hives survival I haven't done a single harvest yet, and I'm still on the fence about making some sugar boards and liquid feed... fingers crossed I'll still have a strong colony come spring!
🥃cheers🍻
Mites were an introduction to the lower 48 bee population so the bees didn’t have enough time to adjust to the new parasite. I am a holistic bee keeper and have been keeping bees for only 10 years. The first 4 I didn’t treat my bees at all and lost on average 40% of my hives each year (20-30 hives). There in AK it’s too cold for your bees to have a heavy infestation of mites and I hope you never have to deal with it. To put down those of us that have to deal with them the best way we can is a bit on the, at the very least, uneducated side. I would love to live 50 years ago and not have to deal with all of this stuff like the old timer mentors of mine but I don’t so I can only try to keep my girls as healthy as I can as close to natural as possible and continue to evolve, hopefully into a better bee keep. I think that’s all any of us want, I hope. Best of luck to you.
One more Note:
When I 'see' as many drones as I did in your hives in my hives here, I know its time to re-queen. But maybe since your area has such a short flowering season, it's not easy to re-queen and keep up production. A '2 queen system' maybe a way to keep the worker stock up and running. In my stock, I never keep an old drone producing queen and thereby miss a 'new nectar flow'. But in your neck of the woods, with such a short time of flowering and extremely long days, it must be a different sort of problem to deal with. The shortest daylight hours of this time of year here. are only about 3 hours shorter than our longest sunlight of the summer. Mac Nut blooms needed the 'cold snap' overnight of below 65 to cause the flowers to 'pop' open and start the flow of nectar from the trees. That is the only flower of the Hawaiian crop that 'needs' the cold to start flowing. Others are just very rainy seasonal controlled, either needing no rain to get going or a lot of rain so that the bees harvest a bumper crop of nectar and we then get honey capped and harvestable.
Again Aloha!
He says the bees were protecting the queen and they had a ball around her. Umm isn't that exactly how they kill the queen? Also you said you get your bees from Vermont. That's where I'm from and we have long winters. I was always told the bees hybernate all winter (they basically slow down as it gets cold and eventually look dead. Then when spring comes you start seeing alot of them on the ground walking around very slow until it's warm enough and they can fly again. Does this not happen everywhere?
is it easy to keep bees in Alaska?
Hello, Keith Malone.
Beekeeping alaska
congratulation, IAM BEEKEEPER IN MEXICO CAN GO WORK WHITYOU
Actually the Honey Bee hive collaps disorder is because the use of pesticides with nicotinoids in them. It started in 2006. The nicotinoids cause the bees to become disoriented and cannot find the hive any more. So all the bees go out and die. So it is caused by pesticides and not the other reasons you stated.
well ccd is mostly over and neonics are still around so just like the guys in this video its easy to talk out of your ass but harder to actually prove one thing or another is causing hives to die, how about the movement of tens of thousands of southern packages to northern beekeepers?
It is Varoa !
4:25 how unhygienic.
Unhygienic? Really...... Are you one of those people who only buys honey in the bear bottles from walmart or something?
Please could you do a video or explain how you winter your bees and natural treatments. Thanks