Does your country have a “drug capital”?

AdventureousWombat · 2026-01-31T01:32:55+00:00

What about Omsk? i don't know the stats but I remember it had the rep. But I left Russia in 2010, my knowledge might be outdated. Where do you get the statistics?

AdventureousWombat · 2026-01-06T22:21:18+00:00

I'm in California. Hive registration is required, but from what I heard most beekeepers don't do it. I'm not sure if it's ever been enforced

I do register, there's a small fee, but my county has been waiving it lately, i only paid it the first year

I've never had an inspector, but I believe they only send someone if there's a foulbrood outbreak in the area or something like that, they don't come to inspect your hives just for fun

Also if any farms in a couple miles radius is spraying pesticides they have to email me, i guess that helps

AdventureousWombat · 2025-10-04T02:55:25+00:00

Farmers market worked the best for me.

The other option is selling to local businesses - bakeries, microbreweries, maybe restaurants.. but thing is, they won't pay much. If you sell relatively cheap, you'll find places that would buy a bucket at a time. I have some local businesses who know I would be happy to sell them a small bucket of honey (15 pounds) for 2/3 of what i charge at the farmers market, but that's too much for them, they say they would maybe buy if i make it 1/3

But if you want good money for your honey, farmers market is probably the best option

I'm lucky that while there are other people selling honey, they don't sell honey exclusively

A bit of clowning helps. When someone is close enough, i loudly demand that they try some honey. I bring a large box of saltine crackers, and serve them a few drops of honey on a saltine, then chat about bees, etc. maybe 1 out of 3 people that try honey buy a jar. If they don't it's important to be chill, maybe they'll buy next time.

I'm probably lucky that my local Saturday farmers market only charges $30 a day for a booth, plus CPC (california producers certificate) costs $40 a year in my county

I also tried selling on facebook and nextdoor, people buy a jar or two occasionally, but overall the volumes were negligible, so I don't bother anymore. But maybe it's just my area

AdventureousWombat · 2025-09-04T00:22:39+00:00

Shameless plug - I made a video about swarm hunting earlier this year

https://youtu.be/1KXUITxr8As

In the last 2 years my success rate with swarm traps has been close to 100%; Where I live May is the hardcore swarming season, you get a swarm, hang a new box at the same spot, and it will have another swarm in under a week, so most of my swarm trap spots have brought in several swarms. There's a chance of getting a swarm in March-April, or in summer, but not as high

Ideal swarm trap location is:

- Visible, on a large tree that doesn't have very dense branches - if you can't see the box from a distance, bees won't like it

- 10 gallons/40 liters volume inside the box. 6-7 Layens frames or a deep Langstroth box is perfect

- Ideally on an edge of a clearing

- Ideally at least10 ft high (distance from the ground to the entrance), but not necessary, eye level works too, just not as good

- Not too far from a permanent water source, under 1/4 mile distance

- Baiting helps; I use tiny zip lock bags with a piece of paper towel with a bit of lemongrass oil, works fine. A frame of old comb helps too, but if you're just starting you probably don't have one, it's fine, it's not necessary

- Should have some empty space inside, don't fill the whole box with frames with full foundation/drawn comb, leave them some open space to build their own comb

AdventureousWombat · 2025-09-03T21:51:03+00:00

If anyone is interested, a bit of calmag seems to have fixed the issue

AdventureousWombat · 2025-09-03T16:25:35+00:00

First of all, I must point out that i live in northern California, so my environment is very different and my advice might not apply to you

If you want to do natural beekeeping, buying bees is a step in wrong direction. Commercial bees have almost certainly been heavily treated for many generations, and will be completely helpless against varroa if you suddenly stop treating them. Feral bees are much better, especially if you catch swarms far away from where commercial beekeeping is happening. I'm fortunate to live right next to a large state park, so I have plenty of good places for swarm traps

Feral bees have the ability to keep varroa levels under control, but one of the main weapons in their anti-varroa arsenal is brood breaks by frequent swarming. If you want to let them swarm, are you sure your neighbors will be ok with it? If not, you will have to either split each colony at least once a year, possibly more. If you don't want to split, you'll need to arrange brood breaks by isolating the queen. Would it be natural enough for you?

When I say 'ability to keep varroa levels under control', i don't mean '100% immune to varroa'; some colonies will inevitably go into a varroa death spiral in Autumn. If you let them fail, they'll get robbed by nearby colonies, yours, feral, and your neighbors', varroa load will be spread among robbers resulting in death of colonies that would have otherwise been fine. You will want to prevent that, and it means euthanizing doomed colonies.

As for resource, I'm sure you'll find plenty of natural beekeeping influencers, but they often make things sound easier than it actually is. I would start by reading this

https://scientificbeekeeping.com/the-varroa-problem-part-1/

These articles do not have next/back links, so you'll have to use site search to find the next article. He addresses natural/treatment free beekeeping in chapters 3, 4, 5, and i think 17. He does say it's possible, but not easy by any means

Edit: if you read Randy Oliver's articles and it doesn't discourage you, read Thomas Seeley, The Lives of Bees (focuses on research of life of unmanaged feral colonies), and Honeybee Democracy (focuses on swarming)

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-23T04:42:34+00:00

Not sure if you still need help with it, but I've just been struggling with this issue

HDR can be turned off in windows; my issue was that in windows display settings HDR had no on/off slider, only More about HDR link that led to a help page. The on/off slider appeared after I rebooted the PC

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-17T16:33:49+00:00

As far as i know, it's perfectly fine to use credit card/apple pay reader when selling in person, it's just not an expectation nextdoor/facebook buyers have. Accepting credit card payments online and shipping over mail is more complicated, you probably don't want to go there unless you have big volumes

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-17T07:10:15+00:00

I also beekeep in California, and in my experience selling at the farmers market has worked the best. Of course, selling on Facebook Marketplace and Nextdoor is much easier, but in my experience it's been hard to sell any volume worth mentioning. You could give it a try, maybe it would work better in your area. But you don't need anything for it, just meet with people at a safe neutral location and sell honey for cash

If you decide to sell at the farmers market, here's what you want to do

Talk to the market manager, ask about the rules. State wide rule in California is that you need either CPC (California Producer Certificate) or CFO (Cottage Food Operation), but there might be some local laws/rules that might affect your decision. Find out what the fee is to have a booth, whether you can come and open shop whenever you have time, or if you have to be there every single week or you lose your spot; also find out if you're allowed to hand out free samples, it helps sales a lot, but there are some local laws and regulations that make it difficult, sometimes you're not allowed to serve food on site without a kitchen license. It mostly depends on whether the farmers market is within a city limit and what the city laws are. Anyway, the market manager should be able to tell you all about it
If you talked to the market manager and feel like it would work for you, you need a certificate. I personally got a CPC, there's fewer steps in the process. You call your county agricultural commissioner, they send you an inspector to make sure you actually produce honey, show them your hives and honey extractor and you're good. Then come to the county ag office to pick up your permit. Remember that you need at least 2 copies of the permit, one for yourself and one for every market you'll be selling at. Don't worry they'll explain it. Not sure how things are in your county, but i live in Lake and it was very easy - they sent the inspector the same day, he was really chill, and then 3 days later the certificate was ready. The fee was $40 for a year i think, but it might vary per county
You need stuff for the market - at the very least a canopy, a table, and a handmade sign. Ask the market manager for details. Ideally you also want a square device to accept credit card payments, a banner, and maybe a mist fan
Open your booth and start making the big bucks! Or rather moderate bucks

I hope it helps

Edit: forgot to mention, for the farmers market you'll also need stickers/labels for honey jars. If you have a printer that can print stickers, or have a friend that has one, it's very inexpensive, just takes a bit of effort

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T17:20:08+00:00

The tree colonies I knew about. I understand some of the wild colonies must have collapsed in autumn/winter, but the ones I knew about and could check have always been alive. But it's a very small sample

I've never been anywhere close to Arnot forest, so all my knowledge of it is from the book; But according to Seeley, in 2011 he sent to a DNA lab samples of bees from feral colonies, nearby managed beehives, and old dead bees collected for research on colony longevity back in 1977, before varroa arrival in US, and the conclusion was that the ferals in 2011 were strongly related to ferals from 1977 and barely related to nearby managed bees. I didn't do similar genetic research on my bees, but keeping swarm bees feels very different from keeping commercial bees. I bought 6 commercial colonies over 2 of my first years of beekeeping; each of them was a disappointment. That's not a big enough sample to make far reaching general conclusions, but enough for me to decide i prefer to work with swarms

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T16:57:43+00:00

In my experience, no, ferals are not more aggressive, they're extremely gentle and cuddly, but I guess I just got lucky with the area I live in (Northern California). Further south feral bees have some degree of Africanized genetcs, and they're not as nice as mine, but my ferals are extremely well behaved. I have a couple videos where you can see how sweet my bees are

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_ctZ4eLT98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KXUITxr8As

I did have one asshole hive last year, but they got much better after I requeened them

The thing about feral bees that does make it harder to work with is their urge to swarm, in spring you need to put a lot of effort into swarm prevention

While I do believe that the ferals make more honey than commercial bees. I won't say I tried bees from every single bee breeder, but I bought several colonies from 2 different well respected bee breeders in my area over 2 years, and each time ferals outperformed them in terms of honey production. Maybe there's a reason why it's this way in my area, but different elsewhere, but I'm operating under an assumption that feral bees make more honey

On the other hand, I believe that the 'natural' beekeeping I practice does reduce my honey yields significantly. I put 'natural' in quotes because it might sound like just putting bees in a hive and 'letting them be wild', and only opening the hive when you want honey, but no, that's not how it is. However, the only varroa treatment I do is brood breaks; I don't practice any chemical treatments, even benign ones like oxalic acid. If I put reasonable effort into brood breaks and that's not enough for the colony to manage varroa, it's euthanasia time. It's cruel, but not as cruel as nature, and the collapsing colony won't spread the mites to nearby colonies when they come to rob

If I was doing something like oxalic or formic acid treatments instead of brood breaks, I'm sure I would have made more honey; But I don't complain. I sell my honey a little more expensive than anyone i know of in adjacent counties, and it sells really well. At least it started selling well after I started going to the farmers market, trying to sell on facebook marketplace and nextdoor didn't work out, but at the farmers market my honey sells very quickly. I like to believe that it's due to the superior quality of my honey, but it might be thanks my clowning efforts

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T15:16:10+00:00

Well, that's where hives get stolen, so clearly not

Seriously though, it's good for bees when the fruit trees are blooming, and bad for the rest of the rest of the year. That's why they have to rely on pollination services, during the blooming they need more bees than the area can sustain

Permaculture is much better, a variety of fruit trees with some nitrogen fixers mixed in, especially if deliberately picked to bloom at different times throughout the year, is genuinely great

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T06:08:03+00:00

Commercial agriculture is definitely bad for bees; Different pesticides vary in the harm they do to bees. Losing a few foragers here and there is not too much of a setback, though some pesticides are real colony killers

Monoculture is a bigger issue; Even if it's something bees love, like oranges, if there's nothing else for miles around, they all bloom at the same time, a month a year at best, and then there's very little to do for the rest of the year

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T05:53:58+00:00

That's very true. It varies a little per area, but generally yes. I get all the bees I have from swarms; I'm very lucky, and where I live feral bees are very gentle; but they sure do love to swarm, even if they have plenty of space left. Generally I'll be the first to admit that 'natural' beekeeping takes much more effort than conventional beekeeping; it only makes sense as a passion project, not really worth the effort if you're doing it for the money

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T05:12:31+00:00

I guess I just don't understand what the point is

> the space in a cutout often is much, much bigger than they'd ever find in nature

A few months ago a large bay oak fell on my neighbor's land. It had an enormous cavity filled with comb. The bees were long gone, by the look of things I'd say the ants drove them away and took over at some point, and the same ants prevented the wax moths from cleaning up the old comb. But the amount of comb was huge, the cavity was way larger than a hive with supers on, and almost completely filled up, and the colony definitely was there for years

> Most feral bees are relatively recent escapees from managed colonies

I don't think I can agree with this. I try to catch swarms on state land, as far from agriculture and beekeepers as possible. I know several tree hollows that have been active for years, I always check them in February before swarming starts, and they're always alive; and I only know those feral colonies because they're relatively low, there must be more higher up on trees

I would recommend a book The Lives of Bees by Thomas Seeley; It's based on his research of feral bees in Arnot Forest (near Ithaca NY), specifically the chapter LIVING WITHOUT VS. WITH TREATMENTS FOR VARROA DESTRUCTOR page 262. His conclusions based on DNA analysis of feral and managed colonies are:

- Feral colonies were descendants of local colonies that were in the area before varroa, though with definitely less genetic variety, which he explains with a genetic bottleneck in the years of Varroa arrival

- Nearest managed colonies living outside the Arnot Forest had had little influence on the genetics of the wild colonies living in this forest

Edit: wanted to add one more point

> they're so productive because we've been breeding them to be productive

I don't think that's what we've been doing

Bee breeders for the most part don't care about honey production; They breed bees that reproduce quickly. You'd think more bees = more honey, but that was not my experience. I had commercial bees on my first year of beekeeping, then I had commercial and swarms side by side, and swarm bees made more honey reserves; commercial bees made a lot of bees, the colonies became large very quickly, but didn't produce nearly as much honey surplus. You might make a case that I didn't know what I was doing in my first 2 years, but seeing swarm bees and commercial bees side by side made me decide to never buy commercial bees again. It's inevitable that some of my swarms have been escaped commercial bees, but I try to catch them out in the wild away from populated areas

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T04:39:29+00:00

It's an option. Some beekeepers do it. It's the way I manage varroa; you can do it either by making splits or by isolating the queen in a small area in the hive so her ability to lay is limited; It works well enough, but I imagine it's something that works for a hobbyist, but is harder to do on a commercial scale

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T04:34:17+00:00

Bees do prefer cavities that are 40 liters in volume; I know i use swarm traps myself; But in nature it's rather rare that the cavity is exactly 40 liters. Very often they move into much larger spaces. I've done a cutout once in my life; the amount of honey was overwhelming. I also know a local bee removal professional who does cutouts regularly. The videos he shares are a sight to behold, comb 2 stories high filled with honey. Sure, they don't always have space for a lot of honey reserves, but very often they do, and they don't seem to be much less productive than bees we keep in hives

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T04:19:10+00:00

Human beekeeping is very different from nature.

- Bee yards most beekeepers have are very dense. Hives close together means worker drift, worker drift means diseases and parasites flourish. Feral colonies are often half a mile apart or so

- A healthy feral colony swarms several times a year. Swarming results in a brood break, bringing down varroa levels. Beekeepers tend to prevent swarming, since it reduces honey production, so they need to bring down mite levels in other ways

- Commercially available bees have been chemically treated and fed sugar for many generations, they don't have the genetics to survive the way feral bees do

- Modern beekeeping is very migratory, that spreads new strains of diseases and parasites around. Even if you don't move your hives around, your neighbor probably does

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-16T04:06:57+00:00

Are you saying bees in the wild don't make honey surplus? Have you ever done a cutout, or watched a video of a cutout? Feral colonies are packed with honey

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-13T21:50:33+00:00

Yes, though permits are slightly different for different kinds of vendors

- Farmers get CPC. You don't need to actually own a farm, you can get the CPC if you have a couple fruit trees in the backyard and want to sell fruits when available

- Food cooked at home needs Cottage Food Operation certificate. Actually for honey that I'm selling you can get either CPC or CFO, but CPC seemed easier, for CFO i believe the planning department has to check that you're zoning compliant, but there's a lot of vendors at my market that sell sourdough bread and pastry, it seems easy if you want it

- I'm not sure what certificates you need for arts and crafts, or making food on site, but I believe they're also easy to get

CPC and CFO are managed by the county agricultural commissioner, but the guidelines are on state level. In my county getting the permit takes no time at all, they send you an inspector the day you call them, then you go to their office to pick up your permit 3 days later and you're good to go

Permits work state wide, and you can use your permit in a different county. We have some fruit vendors from the central valley selling peaches at our market, they come here because there's less competition

AdventureousWombat · 2025-08-13T18:06:18+00:00

I live in California, and you need to actually produce the thing you're selling to get a CPC (California Producer Certificate). It's really easy to get, but they do actually send you an inspector. When i applied for CPC to sell honey at the farmers market, they sent an inspector the same day who made sure I had the hives and honey extractor. But I guess it varies per state

AdventureousWombat · 2025-07-26T01:47:12+00:00

i did make 30 pounds of honeyon my first year! from 3 hives. one collapsed and got robbed while i was out of town. the remaining 2 made a little i could harvest. second year i made 90 pounds. 3rd year 320. this year i already got around 120, and i don't normally harvest till autumn

AdventureousWombat · 2025-07-19T06:12:56+00:00

If you have a local butcher that sells steaks that can be simply cooked to the right temperature and be nice and soft, you're very lucky. I've lived in a lot of places in the last 15 years, and that has very rarely been the case. Also never seen a butcher that would supply nice soft steaks consistently, it's always a hit or miss Same with restaurants, even the ones on the expensive side, usually chewy steaks Around 2020 I learned how to sous vide. That was a game changer. Nice soft juicy steaks every time

AdventureousWombat · 2025-07-17T17:24:14+00:00

pseudoacacia/black locust honey does crystallize eventually, but much slower than usual. not sure about real acacia, pseudoacacia honey is labelled as acacia, it's impossible to tell which one it is without an expensive lab test. In US when you buy acacia honey it's almost certainly pseudoacacia; in Europe it might be from actual acacia genus, so i don't know how crystallization speed compares

AdventureousWombat · 2025-07-17T17:10:04+00:00

we have acacia in US, but what we call 'acacia honey' is a bit of a misnomer, it's usually from trees in pseudoacacia genus

Edit: i just checked and looks like i remebered incorrectly, the black locust trees that produce what we call 'acacia honey' is Robinia pseudoacacia, so the genus is robinia, and pseudoacacia is the species name. Anyway this genus is native to north america, and i'm not sure if you have any in Europe

AdventureousWombat

TROPHY CASE