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Bee Bread

nordicfoodlab.org

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Re: Bee Bread

#81

Post by noipv4 »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #80
noipv4 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a hypothesis as to why it works? In my case it has almost the same antihistamine effect as 60mg Allegra pill.

No mechanism of action I know of other than placebo effect. You did not describe anything that resembles immunotherapy. Immunotherapy takes a very long time (months to over a year) before you start to notice an improvement in symptoms and requires year round treatment, not just during allergy season. After 3-5 years treatment is discontinued.

Can you suggest what kind of blood test can determine if my immune system is reacting to the concoction? In the past my eosonophil and neutrophil numbers were very high during seasonal allergies. Would testing for these numbers be indicative?

Re: Bee Bread

#82

Post by saalweachter »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #75
dpratt71 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it could be argued that the behavior you ascribe to humans exists for the same reason that some dogs chase after cars. That is, it is an ingrained behavior that tends to enhance our survival and is sometimes expressed or triggered in contexts where it doesn't really make sense. In truth, I believe that life has a spiritual dimension, that my life has purpose, blah blah blah, but I find it useful on occasion t…

Okay, but bees are arguable even more social than we are, so the same might apply to them. I'm not saying that's the cause, that they recognize a person they like and let them have some honey, I guess they simply don't have a good enough reason to attack (which is not "free" for bees, either), and in the long run, it turned out to be useful to play nice with humans. But I don't know.. and I also wouldn't be surprised…

It doesn't really require any sophistication on the bee's part so much as a conscientious or unconscious understanding on the beekeeper's part of the bee's algorithms and their limitations.

Bees don't really have a good rule for "giant, landscape-sized creature carefully disassembling hive -> sting that asshole". It's just not something a bee needs to have a rule for. They do essentially have a rule for "giant animal destroying the hive -> sting that asshole", but that's because smashing a hive also smashes some bees, and they do have a rule for "smell a smashed bee -> go freakin' nuts". So the rules for barefoot beekeeping boil down to "be extremely careful and don't squish any bees".

Most of the bees' defenses are actually focused on other insects, especially other bees. Robbing by other bees is a much bigger threat than robbing by the landscape. A bee's sting is only fatal to the bee when it stings something like a human, and its stinger gets stuck in our skin. When a bee stings another bee or other insect, it can sting as many times as it likes. So it's more of a surprise to the bee when stinging us proves fatal, than some sort of altruistic suicide mission for the greater good of the hive.

Re: Bee Bread

#83

Post by byron_fast »

beardicus wrote: post #76
byron_fast wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of differen…

Where is this common practice? I've heard of warehousing bees, but not gassing them to death.

This was common in central Canada in the 90s, where I worked for a beekeeper. I don't know if cyanide use is still common, but the majority of the dozen or so beekeepers I knew back then all did this and I understood it was common practice in our region.

If you don't winter your bees, you have to kill them somehow. And most beekeepers with any kind of scale do not have a way to overwinter.

Overwintering has since become more popular because of diseases and queen availability, but judging by the existence of the queen industry I'd guess many are still killing their bees.

Re: Bee Bread

#84

Post by pvaldes »

kawsper wrote: post #58
yawz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, up until very recently (relatively speaking), it was not really "harvesting", but it was "destroying the hive while getting the honey". Modern hive design (there are a few popular ones) allows us, beekeepers, to harvest the honey without harming the bees. It also allows us to manage the hive and the colony much more productively.

Could you link to the modern hive designs, and maybe tell a bit about them?

In a few words: In the old middle age hives didn't have methods to keep the queen putting eggs anywhere she wanted. Thus all the larvae where distroyed when collecting the honey. Currently we know that there is a measure that permit all bees enter except the queen. You can put a metallic mesh splitting the hive in two areas that the queen can not cross. In the upper area only workers (smaller) can enter and they store honey and other products as usual, but there aren't eggs, so there is not any dead larvae in your honey. It was a big revolution.

Re: Bee Bread

#85

Post by LeifCarrotson »

byron_fast wrote: post #71
saalweachter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Modern hive designs allow a beekeeper to take excess honey or pollen from a hive non-destructively. The trick is to only take it from strong hives, while leaving the bees a sufficient quantity to overwinter. Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about 80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for rais…

In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of differen…

Where do they get new queens in spring? And where do the new queens get workers?

Re: Bee Bread

#86

Post by yawz »

pvaldes wrote: post #84
kawsper wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to the modern hive designs, and maybe tell a bit about them?

In a few words: In the old middle age hives didn't have methods to keep the queen putting eggs anywhere she wanted. Thus all the larvae where distroyed when collecting the honey. Currently we know that there is a measure that permit all bees enter except the queen. You can put a metallic mesh splitting the hive in two areas that the queen can not cross. In the upper area only workers (smaller) can enter and they stor…

...If I may add: And through good management (most of the time) one doesn't even need a queen excluder (which is called a "honey excluder" by some beekeepers :) ). A beekeeper who has time to invest on his/her hives can manipulate the frames (that are in the boxes) in a way to "encourage" the queen stay away from the honey boxes. Also there are other matters, such as swarm protection etc. that can be done thanks to modern hive design. For example, I can give my colonies more room (adding more boxes with empty frames) and/or split a colony by taking some brood frames (and nurse bees) and putting them in a brand new hive (which lets the queenless nurse bees to raise a new queen).

Beekeeping (I can only speak as a hobbyist) is lots of fun... and some stress :). Highly recommended!

Re: Bee Bread

#87

Post by yawz »

byron_fast wrote: post #71
saalweachter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Modern hive designs allow a beekeeper to take excess honey or pollen from a hive non-destructively. The trick is to only take it from strong hives, while leaving the bees a sufficient quantity to overwinter. Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about 80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for rais…

In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of differen…

I'm a beekeeper and I cannot disagree more... about gassing, and about the recent disorders.

I'm not old enough to talk about beekeeping in the '70s and '80s, but our losses are much more important now than 10-15 years ago.

CCD is probably a combination of various pressures such as Varroa mites, pesticides, mono-culturing, destruction of natural resources, etc. But these days, one has to work (often hard) to get one's colonies survive... unlike before, when you could let them do their thing most of the time.

Re: Bee Bread

#88

Post by dang »

ComteDeLaFere wrote: post #11
emidln wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that I forgot, more that I was reminded by an email: Hi there, [snip] looks good, but didn't get much attention. Would you care to repost it? You can do so here: [snip]. Please use the same account (emidln), title, and URL. When these match, the software will give the repost an upvote from the mods, plus we'll help make sure it doesn't get flagged. This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submis…

Wait, so upvotes from readers are secondary to mod upvotes in some cases? Not that I immediately disagree, but it's an interesting feature.

I've posted extensively about how and why we do this. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and follow the links back from there.

The purpose is to ensure that the HN front page sees more of the many high-quality stories that get posted here. In that respect the experiment has definitely been a success.

Re: Bee Bread

#89

Post by dang »

cvs268 wrote: post #3

@emidln U probably forgot that U had submitted the same article on HN ~6months ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nordicfoodlab.org Thanks for sharing though, i had missed it the last time around. :) :)

In addition to the bit about repost invites, it's important to know that if a good article hasn't had significant attention in the last year or so, reposts are ok. That's in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

So even if we hadn't sent an email, the repost would have been just fine.

Re: Bee Bread

#90

Post by byron_fast »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #85
byron_fast wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter. From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of differen…

Where do they get new queens in spring? And where do the new queens get workers?

From places that sell queens, usually by mail these days. The last I heard they were only buying queens from New Zealand because American bees were getting too aggressive; not sure if that's still true.
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