Wranglerstar Forum

Hey All, looking to get into bees. Anyone here in northern IL (Kane county) doing bees?
How are the Wranglerstar bees holding up?
Thanks in advance!

Bees are the hardest thing I have attempted so far. Raising mammals is basically all the same. Feed them, water them, look for signs of sickness. Pretty simple. Difficult to wrap my head around caring for an insect. Seems like the amount of new information is overwhelming.

I built a top bar hive and my bees did great for a while but eventually stopped capping brood/honey. I think my queen may have died or stopped laying. Going to attempt it again this year but it was upsetting that my bees left after all that work.

I would like to see an update on WS bees!

I am also very interested in an update on Cody's bees. Last year I purchased most of the materials to build my own top bar. I just have to cut it to size and construct my hive. And of course order some bees. If you're going to get bees, order now. Stocks sell out quick.

Cody's bee's didn't make it through their first winter. One thing that always gets left out of the top bar hive is the Kenyan top bar hive. The top bar hive was developed for warm climates. At least that's what all the books and all my instructors have told me.

I live in Northwestern Illinois(Ogle County) and one thing that is always talked about in class is what people around the country breed their bee's to do. South, they breed their bees for Honey production, South West, they breed their bee's to pollinate. North, we try and breed our bee's to survive. The Honey bee is not native to North America the bumble bee is our native pollinator.

That is too bad. I was looking forward to new bee videos.

But speaking of bees, I just saw an interesting video. Has anyone seen honeyflow .com ? Appearantly some guys invented a beehive that can extract the Honey straight from the hive without opening it! I'm really curious about it.

JC-DRAGON wrote:That is too bad. I was looking forward to new bee videos.

But speaking of bees, I just saw an interesting video. Has anyone seen honeyflow .com ? Appearantly some guys invented a beehive that can extract the Honey straight from the hive without opening it! I'm really curious about it.

I just watched the video on their website. That looks amazing! It is hard on both the bees and the keeper to harvest honey the old fashioned way. This seems to solve the problem! I would love to find out how it works.

They are getting ready to put up an explanation video shortly. If you sign onto their mailing list they sent out a brief message explaining how it works. It mentions having honey frames that are designed to split down the center. So after the bees cap the honey, you turn the dial and gently split it from the inside, causing the Honey to flow down and out. I'm seriously considering backing this on kickstarter in a week when it goes live.