Loyalty Nearly Killed My Beehive | Hacker News Reader

Loyalty Nearly Killed My Beehive

nautil.us

356 pointsdnetesn110 comments

I started beekeeping 2 years ago, and I cannot be any happier about this hobby. It's easy and fun. Bees do not require feeding, cleaning, just an occasional check up. And they give my family the best honey the money can buy.

To start, I read (believe it or not) Beeking for Dummies (http://www.amazon.com/Beekeeping-For-Dummies-Howland-Blackis...). It's a well rated book, and it has all the basic info. Then I watched various YouTube videos.

Then I ordered the following list of supplies. (I buy all my equipment from Mann Lake. $100+ it's free shipping. http://mannlakeltd.com/)

This is a list I recommend:

Note that the hive boxes and frames, are unassembled. Mann lake does have assembled hives. Assembly is easy, and I did it with my kids.

1) WW-605_b Med Hive Qty. 5 2) FR-811 Med Frames Case of 10. Qty. 5 (so you get 50 frames) 3) CV-305 Suit - economy - Medium (Buy YOUR size.) Qty. 1 4) HD-540 Smoker Qty. 1 5) CL-620 Economy cowhide leather gloves(Buy YOUR size. This is small) Qty. 1 6) HD-210 7D Nails (1lb) Qty. 1 7) HD-220 Frame Nails Qty. 1 8) HD-620 Hive tool 9) HD-660 Bee Brush 10) WW-310 Bottom Board 11) Your choice of top cover (buy with Inner cover)... http://www.mannlakeltd.com/beekeeping-supplies/page29.html I practice foundationless but some prefer not to deal with the cross comb headaches and use foundation. Foundation part number is (FN-720).

I adopted my hive from Jack at Los Altos Honey Bees (http://losaltoshoneybees.wordpress.com/). He goes and rescues feral colonies.

I also joined Beekeepers' Guild Of San Mateo County (http://www.sanmateobeeguild.org/). The club is great: the mailing list discussions keep me informed about things to do right now, and what to do to prepare for upcoming seasons.

For those of you who are concerned about getting stung, I can say that I never was stung, and I cannot possibly get stung. I am completely covered, with gloves and boots.

Until you start getting sloppy. I went to a beekeeping lecture (/ honey tasting), and the long-time beekeeper said he usually doesn't deal with all the gear, sometimes gets stung but at this point it doesn't bother him much.

More experienced beekeepers start shedding gear. Some only go in with a veil.

That said, some also go in without a veil. This is _not_ a good idea. There was a very experienced (25+ years) beekeeper who told a story at the PA State meeting how he nearly died after knocking over a beehive.

I was helping a friend of the family out once w/ his bees, and he was the kind of keeper that didn't have any veils. I ended up getting stung three times on the same side of my face (twice in my eyebrow, once next to the eye) when they got angry, and I had to leave ASAP and drive 20 minutes home before the swelling would affect my vision.

I was out of commission for about a week after that. The whole right side of my face was swollen, and I couldn't see out of that eye for most of that time. It looked like I got in a fight and lost :)

And that was the last time I went into a hive without a veil.

I've kept bees for years, and I don't know anyone who does it that hasn't ever been stung. You get stung all the time, regardless of the safety gear you're wearing. Bees will get stuck in a fold of cloth, get mad, and sting (your suit isn't THAT thick). It's hot in those suits too, and your veil will sometimes stick to your skin, which is another way they get you. Or you use the same gear for a few years and it starts to wear. What's really no fun is when a bee finds its way into your suit. Been there, done that :)

What changes is you stop caring about being stung after a while, and you build up an immunity to it (stings start to swell less and clear up faster). And you learn to know when the hive is getting real angry, and it's time to back off for a while. But bees will be bees, and they sting things that mess with them.

I don't know: I've done it for two years and I have not been stung. I check my clothing, make sure I am all zipped, put my boots on, and there I go.

Thanks for the great introduction to the subject .. as an avid gardener (permaculture variety) I can say without question that we will add beehives to our environment in the coming years - you've given me a good stash of inspiration to get ready for next year. I'll be a total noob, but am very gung-ho .. so I really appreciate your willingness to share these details in a fashion that can be easily subsumed. If you care to add more info, or perhaps have a follow-up, just know that there's an interested party out here who will pay attention. We love our garden, and we love our bees.

Scientific Beekeeping (http://scientificbeekeeping.com/) is a great blog run by Randy Oliver here in Silicon Valley. He is very knowledgeable. His blog has beginner's pages, and other useful info.

DO NOT FEED YOUR INFANT HONEY

Just in case anyone read the first paragraph and thought, "Hey that's a good idea!" Honey contains bacteria that causes infant botulism [1]. Once a child has a more fully developed digestive system, this is no longer a problem.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism#Infant_botulism

Botulism is one risk from honey, and it's a good reason to avoid it until the child is a year old.

It's also mostly sugar and thus is not needed by tiny children. Avoiding it is probably a good idea for tooth health.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/foods-...

"English teeth" is a bit of banter, but it's true. Tooth removal is the main reason to hospitalise (primary school age (4 to 11)) children. One in four children at five years old had some decay.

Being strict with sugar - especially in drinks - and proper toothbrushing will reduce this.

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Dental-decay/Pages/Introduction...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10964323/Tooth-...

Honey is a natural expectorant, however - used in cough drops like certain Ricola flavors, so assuming your child is > 1 year old, it's actually beneficial to administer occasionally.

Yes, the careful use of honey is beneficial in some situations. I'm not suggesting that all sugars should be excluded from a child's diet.

I've also seen honey used in burn dressings which was fascinating. Also grusome.

Just to be clear - the story in the first paragraph is about royal jelly not honey. Royal jelly a totally different thing than honey: a bee glandular secretion rather than bee processed plant nectar [1].

However I doubt it should be given to infants either and would not base any health decisions on anecdotes like this no matter how appealing the narrative.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_jelly

I guess I made a couple of assumptions when I wrote my comment. 1) I thought a lot of people wouldn't know the difference. 2) I guessed that royal jelly would be host to a similar spectrum of bacteria to honey. These are possibly not true, but I figured that caution was better than anything else.

Thanks for your clarification though!

> not base any health decisions on anecdote

It's not even an anecdote. It's a "short story by Roald Dahl". You know, fiction from a writer known for his "unsentimental, often very dark humour." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl

Really, don't base health decisions on surreal horror stories.

Royal jelly? +1 str. Would eat any day.

I don't understand how this is the most important thing one can say about this article. No remotely reasonable person would take this as an endorsement of feeding honey (or royal jelly) to an infant.

I hope no one mistakes Roald Dahl for Doctor Spock.

I'm not at the top of comments list am I? I agree that there are definitely more important take aways from this article. However, I felt that it would be worth my while to write this comment to make people aware of the issue.

It was the top comment when I made this one which was confusing.

Absolutely fascinating article. I'm really glad that HN contains the occasional non-tech related story. It seems somewhat obvious how an engineering mindset transfers very well to other disciplines, and unbeknownst to me, beekeeping is one of them.

When I saw the title my first instinct was, okay, what's the metaphor between a beehive and a development team or a startup? You could find some parallels, but I agree this article is better.

I'm glad to see interesting niche stuff like this that isn't either tech, Silicon Valley gossip, or a mainstream scandal.

It's stories like this that get the brain thinking in different directions than we do in a typical tech day. I absolutely love stories about ants and bees in general, so very refreshing to see here.

While I really like the non-tech topics (I remember one about raising chickens as well), and I love reading all the HN comments (more detailed how-to experiences, startup metaphors, and beehive monitoring devices), I really did not like the tone of this article. I felt the form actually detracted from the content enough to come here and mention it.

I like learning about the details of a new field, and I like to hear about issues facing beginners, but this article seemed somewhat pretentious and naïve. I'm all for admitting and learning from mistakes, but not making them into some Shakepearian drama (loyalty, death, duels). The whole tie-in with literature seemed formulaic, not to mention strained, as if it were an assignment for a writing class. I felt this story would've been better served with a straight-up blog-like narrative--just the facts. Not every story belongs in the New Yorker.

>I felt this story would've been better served with a straight-up blog-like narrative--just the facts.

And now blogs are the gold standard for 'just the facts, ma'am'?

Nothing is forcing you to read someone's personal blog. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I quite liked the prose and the way it was written. Regardless, it was extremely well written and taught many of us non-bee keepers something new.

> Queens typically live for about four or five years

This figure is from an old study that others have repeatedly failed to reproduce. More recent attempts to determine queen longevity have shown they live to an average of about a year, and furthermore failed to find any of significantly advanced age. So it shouldn't too much of a surprise that she only lasted a season. Since there seem to be a few beekeepers hanging out here, I'd be curious to hear anecdotal evidence of queen lifespan.

My uncle ran a hive for about four years on a single queen. He had a name for it and everything (Betty or Beatrice or something else typically reserved for cows). When the queen finally did die, he said it was a really bad time of year for that to happen and the hive never recovered. That was the end of his beekeeping adventure.

I still miss the honey he'd bring by when I was a kid.

I ha a three year queen before. Most start to flag around year two and need to be replaced. I've heard anecdotes from other beeks having four to five year queens, but it is exceedingly rare. The big players don't want the production drop that comes with old queens.

If you like this story, I'd unabashedly recommend that you try and keep bees. They are relatively low maintenance, interesting to observe and fun to debug (no pun intended). Success is amazing - both to eat and think about.

The other benefit is psychological - beekeeping requires an almost zen like approach when dealing with the hive. You cannot get angry or flustered, even when surrounded by thousands of bees desperately trying to sting you. You have to focus, be calm, and do the work.

I've been wanting to get some beehives for a while. I am a bit concerned because when I was younger I used to have a minor allergy to bee stings. From what I understand, if I'm careful, I shouldn't have any problem.

Anyway- do you have any websites or other sources you would recommend to someone just getting started?

You will eventually, no matter how careful you are, get a sting. Everyone does eventually when keeping bees. I'd get a checkup with a doctor to see how bad the reaction is. It'd be a good idea to keep an epipen around not just for yourself but also in case a visitor is allergic as well.

I started with First Lessons in Beekeeping by Keith Delaplane: http://www.amazon.com/First-Lessons-Beekeeping-Keith-Delapla...

2 few things to know about beekeeping: * Beekeepers disagree on everything. * Bees have been surviving without humans for a long time.

So in general as long as you're not horrible and actively trying to kill your bees, they'll manage fine.

> * Bees have been surviving without humans for a long time.

While this is true, the point in the article about 'feral' hives and genetic diversity was pretty interesting.

My first thought after reading this, being a couple of weeks away from owning my first home with land, and a roof terrace was… is it safe to keep bees on a 3rd floor balcony where there's occasionally going to be people? The terrace is 16 square meters, and right outside what will be our bedroom.. but I'd love to keep bees. Especially since the evidence suggests we need them, and they thrive in cities.

You certainly can put them on the terrace. I'd recommend looking for a local provider of nucs who has "gentle bees".

Point the entrance to the hive facing "out".

During high season, bees don't really hang around the hive; they leave and go forage. You can stand 2 meters in front of my hives and turn your back and have no idea there's a beehive anywhere near you.

Some bees are calmer than others.

But what I really want to tell is: > ...bees don't really hang around the hive; they leave and go forage.

When they change, and decide to hang around the hive, don't let anybody at the terrace, or near it in any way. That does not happen often, and does not last for long, but you better stay away for a while.

Stinging insects in general are remarkably unaggressive when you are not directly threatening their hive. I've a hornet nest in my woodpile that I discovered after being stung after moving a piece of wood, and since then I've stayed 2-4 feet away and they haven't attacked again.

Likewise, you don't need to be garbed for most of your beekeeping activities. You can change out feeders or pop open the top for a quick peek without being bothered. Many beekeepers have found that they can pull frames or shuffle boxes if they are gentle and don't rile up the bees.

You could put them on a balcony, if you don't mind them coming and going. They will live almost anywhere really. I have friends with beehives on their garage roof.

I don't keep them myself, but I have friends who do. AFAIK, you need to be concerned about:

* food/water - The bees will fly up to 2 miles to forage. So as long as you have flowering vegetation within 2 miles, you're good!

* predators - You want the hives to be reasonably protected from things like mice and raccoons. This is one reason boxes are raised up off the ground. If you live where there are bears, good luck.

* sun/moisture - I think too much shade and moisture can invite bugs, mites, mold, etc. I believe this is another reason the boxes are raised up off the ground, so the bottom box isn't just sitting in a puddle.

* access - You will need to be able to get to the hives sometimes. They will weigh a lot during honey season. And moving them, and extracting honey is messy. I had friends who put a hive a half mile into their sometimes swampy woods, and while the bees didn't care, the owners later regretted it.

Moisture also is what kills bees overwinter. They need ventilation and breezes.

Also, they actually forage up to 4 miles away [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage_(honey_bee)]. Outside of that range, it is an energy negative (but some beekeepers will tell you that bees forage up to 7 miles away).

The hive needs to be south-facing (if you live in the northern hemisphere). Stay out of flight path, for best results...

There's a whole host of laws and ordinances governing beekeeping. You may even have to register your hive with the state. Don't start without knowing your local laws.

http://www.betterbee.com/beekeeping-state-and-federal-laws

http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/honeybeechronicles/artic...

Many regulations are to protect bees. In Iowa for instance, its all about registering your apiary to keep pesticides from being sprayed during the day near your hives.

But you're not compelled to do anything - you can skip registering and take your chances!

Definitely. That said, you can keep bees nearly everywhere.

If not, your local group is probably fighting to make it happen.

Fun fact: In German civil law we have four sections on bees: beekeepers got special rights to enter others' properties in order to catch flown-out hives, regulating who owns a new hive that formed by merging two hives of different owners, and so on.

Awesome info, thanks for sharing that!

We have that in Italy as well: there is a section of the civil code that states your right to chase your domesticated animals, but an other one that singles out bees explicitly. Curiously, the section about bees comes before the generic one.

One of my side projects is building a sensing electronics package to monitor the health and activity of beehives. The idea is to make it easier for someone just starting to maintain their hive.

Any one have feedback on the concept? Or features we haven't thought of?

I'd love to hear more about it! What is it exactly that the package is sensing? I've often thought it would be interesting to record the internal buzzing of a hive, then go on observing the colonies behavior. I have found there is a subtle but noticeable shift in the sound of a hive that has gone queen less, and there is a distinct piping sound that queens will make before swarming or taking their virgin flight. https://archive.org/details/QueenBeesPiping

I've also heard rumors of old timers being able to tell when a colony is hungry just by putting an ear to the hive. It all makes me wonder what other kinds of information we could gather by studying the buzz.

We certainly have a microphone. There is such a richness in the sounds a colony produces. Our minimal sensing package also contains temperature and humidity sensing. We're shooting for collecting a labeled data set this coming season to see what we can pull out of the information we collect.

I know nothing about beekeeping but having read the article it seems that weight would be an important measure.

Weight is another good one, it drives our complexity and cost up but is hugely important. Most extant hive monitoring tools record weight. NASA uses some of these measures to track mass flow rates of nectar.

Presumably the weight change you're looking to monitor mainly is volume of honey produced? Perhaps there's an analogue for that - maybe reflectivity of the frames or opacity to IR or some such?

Perhaps even just look at the heat retention against time accounting for external temperature (eg cooling rate at night vs. the ambient cooling curve) as that will give you the thermal capacity which should increase with increased honey volume. That should give you a first-order approximation at least (humidity would factor in to rule out waterlogging, not sure what the other main causes of hive weight change are beyond bee numbers which you'll also presumably have from the audio-volume and/or the ingress-egress readings).

Throw some load cells on the base. Hell, you could make a frame that acts like a 1 load cell bench scale, it's not like it'll weigh too much.

I came across an open source initiative to beekeeping; one that includes a sensor to monitor bee health and the activity of the colony.

If you haven't heard of it or checked it out, I recommend taking a look at what they've put together and maybe working with them (I also realize this may actually be YOUR project... if that is the case, please disregard).

OpenSourceBeehive (http://www.opensourcebeehives.net/index.html)

Ah, well here is where I could use some advice. I disagree with the way they have gone about their hardware both in the sensing electronics and the hive box itself. I don't want to go into it here; I'd feel a bit rude criticizing someone else's work in a public forum.

Should you approach someone for collaboration if you don't agree with how they're going about the project?

I agree (in that I wasn't impressed by that project) :) - also trying to find time to build temp/humidity/weight/sound monitoring. Would be interested to hear your thoughts. monsterlemon@gmail.com

I never heard of replacing queens, beehive always raised new one. But perhaps there are different methods in Europe.

I have good story to share: we had 10 beehives at cabin in middle of woods and one of them got stolen! We moved remaining across the town to safer location. Carrying 100 pounds out of which 40 pounds are life bees is quite something :-)

The thief might have been a bear :)

Or it could have been a thief. =)

Bee rustling is a thing! http://stories.weather.com/stolenbees

Back than the average month net salary was $200 and unemployment rate 30%. Stolen things included rain gutters, copper wires inside building walls...

And it's a big problem in New Zealand too. Possibly exacerbated by the high prices Manuka honey fetches for its interestig properties. http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=...

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&obj...

This is why I always recommend new beekeepers start out with at least two hives. If the author had another healthy hive, he could have moved a frame of young brood to his queenless hive and they would have raised a new queen on their own.

Is there a book/resource you'd recommend to people who know absolutely nothing about beekeeping but think it sounds terribly awesome and would like to know what it takes to get started?

There is likely a beekeepers' association in your state/county area (see what comes up on a Google search).

They usually have meetings and education/demo days, or at least would be happy to answer any questions that you have about keeping bees.

I think this is better than reading a book, because there are often special rules or challenges depending on where you live, and these are things that the local beekeepers would know about.

I've learned the most from lurking around the forums at http://www.beesource.com/forums/. Some kind of beginners beekeeping book that covers the basics would probably be good too, but I don't really have any good recommendations.

This - http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Bees-Honey-Selling-Beekeeping/dp... - is one of the "standard" books, in the UK at least.

Another thing that might have happened - the queen might have swarmed. It's not uncommon in the spring. Sometimes they don't like where they are living, sometimes there is a queen power struggle, sometimes it just happens for no reason.

I have heard that some beekeepers use a trick where they keep a spare empty box somewhere else on their property. If the queen wants to swarm, she'll often decide to move into the empty box. Then the beekeeper gets to keep a hive that would otherwise be gone.

One year a swarm of bees moved into the chimney in our house. My bed was right next to the boarded up fireplace, it was great to wake up to the sound of bees at work every morning in the summer.

There's a whole industry around renting beehives to farmers to pollinate crops: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/migratory-beekeepi...

There's an interesting supply'n'demand thing going on as a result of the decline in the bee population, coupled with the growth of almonds as a cash crop: http://scientificbeekeeping.com/2012-almond-pollination-upda...

I lived in southern France for a year, and it was interesting to watch the beekeepers move their hives from week to week based on what was in bloom. They kept to a pretty elaborate schedule, and they would market the honey based on what the predominant plant was. The variations in color were amazing, from dark mahogany brown to almost transparent.

These were mainly family businesses and you had to be careful not to tailgate the wrong pickup truck, lest you wind up with a cloud of angry bees suddenly filling your car.

Bees here (Western US) produce a similar range of honeys(sp?). During the busiest seasons it's hard to drive a highway and not find one, two, or three bee keepers selling honey 'harvested' from different crops.

Bees are mighty good workers, I tell ya what.

I'm a huge fan of ants, bees, and wasps, but I have never kept bees, only ants. There is something I don't understand.

Is there any rational advantage to keeping the beehive alive between the two queens, especially since the new queen is probably only remotely related in terms of genealogy? Is it just so the production of honey, propolis, etc remains uninterrupted? What happens if you let a beehive completely die and then put in a new queen? Would the beehive become too filthy for the new colony to develop easily?

Or does the author's wish to keep the beehive alive only stem from emotional attachment?

Keeping the hive alive is actually the most natural thing to do. While the bees won't carry the same genetics, they will support the queen while she lays. This is crucial, because a mated queen cannot truly defend herself. The new queen an immediately get to work if bees remain.

The hive won't be too "dirty" - bees are remarkably fastidious. The queen just won't survive/thrive without bees.

The best way to think about it is that while the queen is the center Of the hive, she is just one part of the whole organism. The bees will even kill her off if she stops producing and raise another queen.

My friends are currently serving as missionaries in Tanzania and are teaching the art of beekeeping to help diversify the local economy and diet: http://makondefrasers.wordpress.com/

Great article, well written and fun. Though how is nobody weirded out by him just leaving his hive on the roof of an apartment he no longer lives in. What a hilarious dude.

A beautiful article, makes me yearn for that recent-convert's enthusiasm for a new hobby. Reminds me of when I first took up mycoculture. Perhaps I'll get a behive and join the legion of "that guy" :)

So is there any truth to the "africanized/killer"(I dont know any other way to state it but I dont like the term) bees being more difficult to manage and more aggressive? I live in Texas where they arrived in the early 1990s. I would be leery of keeping bees that were not as docile as the european variety. I am not too worried about getting stung once or twice, but I have heard that the "killer" bees go ape shit once the stinging pheromones have been released and you can get stung hundreds of times in a short time span.

Yes. In NZ we don't have them, but one of the guys who works for AsureQuality (google them) on bee-related stuff here is from Paraguay, and his description of beekeeping experience there (where basically all their bees are apparently Africanised) makes me think I probably wouldn't enjoy the experience over there.

Here, you can open a hive of "gentle bees" on a warm day and they will sit on the frames and basically completely ignore you.

There, I'm told once you take the lid off, most of the colony will take to the air to have a go at you. Which makes examining the frames easier, as they're no longer covered in bees - if there aren't too many on your veil, I guess.

Great article!

We're on our 3rd season beekeeping; we just collected honey, last night.

In fact, I got my first ever bee/wasp/hornet sting ever, last night, from one of our bees. I was being sloppy, wearing running shoes under my bee suit, instead of boots. It hardly hurt at all, though. (I've had worse mosquito bites; so far, horseflies are the worst bites/stings I've ever had).

We captured our first swarm, this year, and got another hive "for free." Woo hoo!

As far as ordering stuff, since somebody mentioned it, we just go to http://www.beekeepers.com/ to get our gear, since our local farm stores don't carry much.

I am interested in these projects, so I can get my bee geek on, but I don't know if I should commit the time and money to them (any success stories out there)? http://www.opensourcebeehives.net/ http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Beekeeping http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/102

I don't know why I didn't expect this, but this article was the most interesting thing I've read all day. It made me almost feel compassion for the bee hive by my mailbox (if you can call it that), in a hole in the grass. We've tried to be rid of them.

you can call local beekeepers who will come out and take them home. I had a swarm adopt my tree as a new home. I called a local keeper and he came and removed them free of charge.

For those interested, Beekeeping For Dummies (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470430656) is actually quite a good way to start. We've had our queen replaced by our swarm and it was quite an amazing thing to witness. Our hive/swarm gave more than 40 pounds of honey a year and we kept our whole street well fed with local honey for a few years. And my garden almost doubled in productivity once the bees were in place. A win all around. Sadly a family member developed an allergy so we have to discontinue keeping bees, but it was amazing while we had them and I strongly keeping bees to anyone interested.

"Undeterred, I installed the bees on the roof of my Brooklyn apartment and began the absurd process of learning how to keep them alive. Incredibly, they flourished, and by October I had perhaps 70,000 bees..."

That has to make one unpopular with the neighbors.

My biggest fear of putting a beehive in my parents yard is that it would result in my dog getting stung or my parents.

They learn quickly (dogs and parents). Most people aren't as allergic as they think they are, and it would have to be pretty persistently dumb dog to keep bothering a hive that continues to sting it. Anyhow unless you aggressively bother most hives, the bees want nothing to do with you even when you're right up close: if you're not a predator or a source of nectar, you're not interesting.

Even my turkeys, quite possibly the dumbest animals I have around, don't mess with the bees any more after their first time!

Yes, this. Honey bees aren't aggressive, unless you really threaten their hive (e.g. knock it over).

I think a lot of people just mentally lump them together with wasps and hornets, which can be much more aggressive.

I don't know I've been mostly stung by bees, and I had hornets and wasps live in attic of my parents house at different timesand they never stung us. Maybe it's because both my grandfathers kept bees and sometimes they swarm out.

Usually a bee flies into hairs and can't escape, people panic and try to make it go away and then it stings.

It's not that bad, hurts for a few minutes only, if you are not allergic. My grandpa said it helps for reumatism and he tended to bees with only a veil.

I wonder if American bees are the same as European ones.

Trading queens and trying to switch them seems to be very popular here. I remember my parents trying to catch the queen in some grandpa hives.

Reading all this I feel a little bad for never being particulary intrested in bees, my parents even met in beekeeping high school, but they ended up working different jobs.

In my experience dogs can handle bees pretty well. I've never seen a dog get stung by a bee but on many occasions I saw one of our dogs eat a bee flying near him without any problem. They just clap with their mouth and the bee is gone.

A neighbour of some of my bees had a Labrador pup that kept trying to catch bees in its mouth. It apparently reacted badly (which became expensive), and didn't learn. Had to move the hives in the end.

Is Colony Collapse Disorder largely affecting only domesticated beehives?

It's hard to say with CCD being so large and varied. One thing we know is that beehives exposed to certain pesticides [1] are much more likely to collapse.

[1] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/study-streng...

It's hard to believe that spraying a bunch of stuff to kill insects all over might have a negative affect on insects.

Kept waiting for this to turn out to be an allegory about a startup.

Fortunately, not everything on HN is "an allegory about a startup". We still get some interesting articles on non-startup related material.

Personally, I'm here for the hacking content, not the startup content, although I'm occasionally interested by something from the startup camp.

I've been wondering, and no insult to the startup oriented crowd out there, if it would be possible to add a 3 tag system to HN posts; "startups", "hacking", "other".

The guidelines[1] state "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups" which, in a naive sense, means that the simplest classification scheme would be the 3 terms listed previously.

This would allow a simple search query such as "-startups" to exclude posts tagged exclusively with "startups", or "-other -hacking" to include only posts tagged exclusively with "startups", or "+startups" to include any post with the tag "startups" etc.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There is, sort of.

As the CEO/Founder/President ("Beekeeper"), don't be meddling and over-involved in the day-to-day of your employees ("Bees"). Your job is just to steer them in the right direction, not to command every movement. As well, recognize when your idea ("Colony") is a bust and start new. You can't force a bad idea to be something it isn't.

I have two hives in the yard. (Palo Alto) We produce 10-20 gallons of honey per year. Fun to harvest - kids love to get hands-on. Fun to give away esp to random strangers.

I can't believe I read that whole thing, it was written so well. Quite informative and very interesting.

This is so meta.

Why? It's a perfectly straight-forward article about beekeeping, isn't it?

How is bee keeping not analogous to start up development? The anxiety and experience of the bee keeper is parallel to building a user base for an application.

I was reading the article while writing a user acquisition strategy. I almost died laughing.

Might be a case of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusIn...

I'd argue that the illusion of grander depth within a narrative is the very thing that makes a work great.

I did mean 'meta' some what humorously. I had not expected it to be received so literally. Of course it is a subjective parallel.

Also, I think their are quantifiable parallels that many people on HN would relate too. It may explain the rise of a random bee keeping article. It would stand to reason that if the attributes and narrative were familiar it could possibly take on certain unconscious meaning to that group.

Lots of people (including me) have actually toyed with keeping bees. I think it's just one of the things that appeals here, like eg practicing martial arts. (Even though we don't get many articles about that.)

It really isn't.

Oh come on, just replace beekeeper with founder and modify surface details to make it a story about a start up :-)

I ain't even mad. Just surprised no one else noticed. Like mad libs.

Wait, replace bee keeper with VC and queen bee with founder... lol

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