the maintenance shots are 2 bee stings worth once a month? so if once immune and off the maintenance shots, couldn't you maintain your immunity with regular stinging in a similar fashion?
I'm no expert as I have not had an issue (yet) but from the post quote further above from the guy from the states who went through it and got cured and started bee keeping again but this time with Top Bar Hives was that he just uses a few regular bee stings to keep his immunity going. The body is a strange thing how it can sometimes not ever get a reaction and other times people just flip and go allergic reaction after a lifetime of no issues.
I know a lot of the non-degenerative Multiple Sclerosis people seem to seek out bee stings as part of bee sting therapy. That stimulation of the nerves through venom and making it regrow and recover must do wonders for the few that react so well and get years of steroid free relief from a few stings every few years.
Ok now one last photograph should be enough to get the basic education complete.
Capped Honey this time in the Comb
Now how different does capped honey look to capped brood. Can you tell the difference?
You are on your way now to identifying most of the basic items you will see inside the hive.
Last on the list is a Queen Cell in the comb
On the top bar hive you will see these along the outer edge of your comb. This queen cell is a "Swarm" queen cell on top bars when on the edges. These are made most often when bees run out of room to expand the hive or you are slow keeping up and adding more bars if using divider boards in your hive. Or sometimes because they just plain feel like it. Bees don't read rule books
On a top bar hive if the cell is built into the comb in the middle it usually means the cell is a "Succession" queen cell. This means the old queen is about to go or the workers are about to give up on her so they made a queen cell for a queen to replace her. Provided the old queen does not find the cell and sting the new queen to death inside you will have a colony that automatically re-queens itself.
The last type is when you see a normal cell extended to make a new queen cell in a quick and slightly sloppy fashion. This is an "Emergency" queen cell. Usually when your Queen dies and the workers suddenly find her gone they go out of sync and don't get much work done unless a new queen is made. If you have brand new grubs they can expand a cell and feed the grub like a queen and hopefully get a new queen to replace the missing one. If this can not take place or the new queen does not return from the mating flight you will likely slowly lose the hive as it dies off from lack of new brood. Just move the bars to another (or stronger) hive with a Queen. Using newspaper you can separate the bees from each other in the Top Bar hive so they don't attack each other. By the time they can chew through the paper they are used to each others scent and will normally get along. If not dust them in powdered sugar to mask the scent and give them something to do like licking themselves instead of killing each other.
Cheers,
Brewer Pete
PS. That ends the construction post unless people want to keep on talking about it. Or ask for updates as the season goes on. My first year I expect little if any honey and use the year to let the bees build up big colony population. Then next year the survivors are ready to attack the nectar in force and work mostly on storing excess honey.
EDIT: Also the large honey numbers of hives from the traditional beeks and monks who keep bees seems to be from excessive feeding of sugar syrup-water to the bees. Realistic pure unadulterated honey amounts are much less per hive. Abbe Warre the monk said expect 30kg/year per hive for a realistic number. Time will tell and we will just have to see how the bees react a year or two from now for good numbers.
