About BBE-Tech
BBE-Tech Apiary is run by me, T Sandoval, also known online in various and sundry forums as Big Bear or bigbearomaha.
Our goals are:
- To help build healthy and prosperous honey bee populations in the state of Nebraska and specifically in the Omaha/Metro area.
- To provide a place that fosters an environment of education and conservation for honey bees.
- To provide honey bee related services and products in an ethical and beneficial way for both honey bees and people.
- To support local beekeepers and provide an outlet for their products.
Area residents are encouraged to call us and we will arrange to assist with removing honey bee swarms and hives in buildings and re-locating them to the conservation yard at Fontenelle Forest.
Our special relationship with Fontenelle Forest:
BBE-Tech and Fontenelle Forest have one thing in common, we have both prioritized conservation in our work. BBE-Tech wants to step forward and work to increase the populations of healthy and naturally selected “survivor stock” honey bees in the state of Nebraska and in the Omaha/Metro area. Fontenelle Nature Association works diligently and persistently to conserve the natural resources and special ecological environment that is Fontenelle Forest
By collaborating with Fontenelle Forest, BBE-Tech is able to provide a protected and resource rich environment to raise rescued honey bees and facilitate their building of resistance to diseases and pesticides. This protected environment also allows rescued honey bees to build genetic adaptations and behaviors that will support healthier colonies and hives.
At the same time, Fontenelle Forest benefits as well. Honey bees have an important role in a forest. There are wild flowers, trees that bloom and other plants that benefit greatly from these industrious pollinators.
A forest like Fontenelle Forest can play a big role in honey bee’s lives. Honey bee’s need a constant supply of nectar, pollen, fresh water and more. A forest can go a long way in providing a variety in nectar and pollen sources and helping to ensure that they have the resources to build their strengths to overcome the other issues they face that threaten their lives, such as disease, parasites and pesticides.
There’s another benefit to this collaboration as well in terms of education. We will team up to provide educational opportunities for the public in understanding honey bees and the vital role they play in the food we eat, the economy, and the impact honey bee related products have in the world
Study and community collaboration
We want to take an educated and educational role in studying and observing bee breeding and development. Every colony in our breeding and conservation yard will be observed and documented consistently. With inspections and observations kept on our site online. We also intend to collaborate with other educational and conservation apiaries by collecting and sharing observations and data collected by our bee handlers.
We intend to work with local farmers and gardeners, residents needing help, and schools and community groups interested in learning about the vital relationship bees and human societies have.
We are also here to facilitate the experience of new beekeepers. We want anyone who thinks they would like to start learning about working with bees to feel comfortable in coming to our small apiary and getting hands on experience with the daily workings of hive and colony interaction.
We are hosting this website to foster communication and neighborliness among those who are beekeepers in the Omaha/Metro Area or are interested in it. There is a user forum for all folks who want to start, are just starting and want to help others get started.
Free Bees! Yes, you heard right.
Our primary goal is to increase the healthy populations of honey bees and the number of beekeepers in the area who want to keep healthy bees.
In our conservation yard, we take in a lot of swarms, bee relocation’s and we do splits to somewhat manage swarming (or at least try to). That means that every year, the number of colonies in our conservation yard could double, perhaps even triple.
All you pay for is the box and the frames, that’s it. You get a colony with a queen, up to 5 frames of newly drawn comb on foundation-less frames in a new box. You can get the box, frames and bees all for about $30.00 (no charge for the bees). Even less if you don’t need the box. You can bring your own box and some new, empty frames to swap for the drawn out frames and we’ll call it even. Or, if you are interested in to top bar hives, you have access to getting 5 top bars of bees on fully drawn comb.
How many nucs will we have each year? That depends on how many splits we make, swarms we catch and cut outs we do.
We are ‘selective’ about who we provide the bees too. We want to bee sure that who is getting them is committed to keeping healthy bees and not in a habit of harmful or negative practices.
Our goal is to provide bees to new beekeepers who are just starting out and to beekeepers who have suffered losses beyond their control, such as storms, tornadoes, people sabotaging hives (kids and drunks are good for that), etc…
Beekeeping Wisdom
Charles Martin Simon’s Ten Principles of Beekeeping Backwards:
Principle #1: Work with Nature, not against Her.
Principle #2: Profit doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot if you’re dead.
Our forefathers postulated that bigger bees would make more honey. The bigger the bee, the more nectar and pollen she can carry. The bigger the cell, the more it can hold. And so forth. So they devised a larger worker cell size, and it became the standard.
Principle #3: Dead bees make no honey.
Anatomically bigger bees are metabolically slower bees, more prone to disease and predation. And the diseases did come. The industry standard is a sickly bee.
My encounters with feral bees have instilled in me a greater respect for bees and contempt for the way we usually deal with them.
I knew I was finished with beekeeping as we know it the day I read the publication of the great scientific discovery of the “housekeeping gene” in relation to survivability in regard to Varroa. That was exactly where my suspension of disbelief finally snapped, and I realized our industry is directed by madmen. They have been driven mad by the fear of death and simultaneously compelled irresistibly toward it. Death of our beloved bees. Death of our beloved industry. Death of ourselves.
The Asian bee, the historic host for the mite, the bee that has coexisted with it successfully for a million years, does not usually inhabit enclosures. It hangs out in the open. This leads to the conclusion that when the mite drops off, it falls into the void, which is a good place for it. The immature Asian bee spends less time in the cell, which gives the mite less time to do it’s dirty work. Those are the keys, not the “housekeeping gene , never mind what the “scientists” have to say. But I am not meaning to imply that this “gene” does not exist. I’m questioning its interpretation. Just as I question the interpretation of the “bee dance”. The traditional interpretation of the bee dance is destroyed categorically by the observation of one single factor: The human observer observes from above. The bee dances face to face on a lateral plane. What the bee perceives and what the human perceives are two entirely different things. I grant that the dance occurs. I do not grant that it communicates anything at all. It is a sharing of excitement. The knowledge of where the nectar or whatever is is deeper than that. The colony is a manifestation of generations integrated with the patterns of the environment. There is a great mind at play that humans are generally incapable of comprehending.
Another significant factor in the retardation of Apis melliflera is the chronic abuse perpetrated by the teachings of the art. Colonies left to their own devices have an entirely different consciousness than domesticated varieties. Domestic bees are constantly messed with. A colony is a unified Mind. When it is opened and manipulated, the thought process is jumbled. When it is smoked, it must turn its attention to other things. Stress is good. Stress is bad. It depends on the kind. Exercise is stress. Getting beat up is stress. One event can build self-esteem; the other can destroy it. But the effects are reversible, based on other conditions, the most significant of which being how the subject interprets the experience. There are many variables.
The skill with which one messes with a hive has a great deal to do with the effect the messing is going to have on the future. The master manipulator will do it so that the bees will never even notice anything happening. Indeed, they will proceed with their process as though nothing was happening at all. The quality, quantity, and kind of mentality of the manipulator have everything to do with this. Some beekeepers make bees nervous just by showing up in the proximity of a hive. Woe be unto those keepers and their bees if they light the smokers and crack the hive lids. Beekeeping should be licensed, and I should be the licensing entity. There would be very few beekeepers. Again I need to point out: This is not arrogance, it is humility. For I truly have your best interests and the best interests of the bees at heart.
Principle #4: Don’t fight it.
When I think of all the years I’ve spent fighting ants and all the techniques I’ve employed, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Right now I’ve got naked honey comb and open bowls of honey in my kitchen, and plenty of ants too, but they’re leaving the honey alone. How come? Because I don’t fight them. I feed them. There is a bowl of honey on the counter established for them, where they can come and get all they want. At first they were hitting it heavily, then they lost interest. Apparently, if they can’t have it, they want it. If they can have all they want, they don’t want it.
Principle #5: Beekeeping is not about honey.
Principle #6: It’s not about money.
Principle #7: It’s about survival.
Well, actually, it’s not about survival, since nobody survives. It’s about the quality of life while you’re alive. Do your best to make the bees’ life the best it can be and it will be the best it can be for you. Stop thinking “maximum production”. Substantially less than most is way better than nothing at all. Learn how to leave the bees alone. Benign neglect is the way. Provide them with appropriate cavities. Standard beehives, if they’re right, are acceptable habitations for bees, but don’t use foundation.
In addition to the size consideration, foundation is contaminated. Only the oldest, most used wax gets rendered into foundation. Old wax absorbs and retains contaminants such as pesticide. Go ahead, use frames. Frames do make it easier to perform manipulations. But actually, just the top bars are enough, at least for brood chambers. Further up the hive, you might want complete frames for the definition of the bottom bars, to maintain the space between the top of the frame below and the bottom of the frame above.
I have 15 hives as of this writing (December 2000), after years of having none at this time of year. How did I do It? I don’t know, and that’s the answer. As the years have progressed, I have tried more and more to keep them as close to wild as possible, to not mess with them. I do harvest some honey, pollen, and propolis, but I do it with a leave-alone attitude. I am hoping for their well being. Beyond that I am asking nothing from them, expecting nothing. If they are prospering I add supers. If they make extra honey, I take some. When my combs are crooked and stuck across several frames, I use bee escapes to clear the supers before removing.
I crush the combs and strain them through a system of perforated plastic buckets. I keep quite a few cut combs around to eat au naturel. The wilder, more funky combs may very well be the best.
I’ve been reluctant in recent years to invest money in equipment, because of the Varroa situation. Consequently, I’m using old equipment a normal beekeeper would have thrown out a long time ago – In fact quite a bit of it has been thrown out by normal beekeepers – and I’m liking it better and better the worse it gets.
I’m thinking about running hives without bottoms and up on stands this season, at least during the warm months, and considering designing a bottom board to catch and destroy mites.
Principle #8: Forget everything you ever learned and start observing what is really going on.
In regard to this last principle. One of the first injunctions I received starting out was to keep accurate records. But I realized that accurate records would be obfuscations at best. When you refer to a notebook describing the events of a hive to date, you will not see the hive as it actually is. The level of information that can be cataloged is not vital, has nothing to do with what’s going on with the hive in question, and prevents you from seeing what is.
Furthermore, I have observed that the harder you fight to keep your bees alive, the faster they die. Cut them loose, give them freedom, the freedom to die as well as the freedom to live, and they live better.
Principle #9: Leave your bees alone.
Principle #10: Leave me alone.
