Beginner's Corner
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May - June 2010
1. At this time, swarming should be about over and the bees should have settled down and should be working hard. You should see lots of “going and coming” activity at the entrance and lots of bees in the hive however swarming was delayed by late spring build up due to late cold and you can still expect swarms. The bees should be hauling pollen. If you do not see pollen coming in, check to make sure you have a queen.
2. Particularly keep your eye on any colonies that swarmed. Since they were queenless just after the swarm, sometimes the young queen does not make it back from her mating flight.
3. If you have a queenless colony, you have several options for corrective action:
a. Order and install a new queen right away.
b. Mix with a small swarm using newspaper with the queenless colony.
c. Mix the queenless colony with a queen right colony.
4. When mixing colonies, leave each group as intact as possible and let them mix on their own. For example, should you decide to move frames from one colony to the other, move them as a group. Don’t mix frames. If left alone - in a group, a colony will protect its own queen. If you expose one queen directly to the other colony, they will often times kill her. If the two groups are allowed to mix “on their own”, this is much less likely to happen.
5. When bees reject a new queen, they get in a ball with the queen in the center and kill her (this called "balling the queen") If you suspect this might happen, take a pan of water with you to the hive. If the bees start balling the queen, pick up the ball and drop it in the pan of water. The bees will swim for their lives. You can then pick up the queen, put her in a queen cage and reintroduce her by your favorite method.
6. Swarming seems to have been unusually light this year as were swarm calls. This is probably because the late cold winter delayed spring buildup.
7. Put on supers and keep an eye on them and add supers as needed. A strong colony will fill a super much faster than you might think so check them often during the peak honey flow (which we are in right now). MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ADEQUATE SUPERS ON YOUR HIVES. Empty supers in the honey house will make you no honey! I never get an ounce of honey from a super stored in the honey house!
8. Get your labels on order.
9. Get your jars on order (If you are an MCBA member and you buy from Dodson Farms in Columbia, TN, be sure and mention that you are a member of the MCBA so as to avoid sales tax). Jason (Dodson) will ask you to sigh a receipt verifying that you are an MCBA member. It is a state law - he has to do it! Your sales receipt will show the MCBA as the customer.
10. If you are a small operator, develop a method of extracting your honey. (If you are an MCBA member, schedule the Association owned loaner extractor as soon as possible) Contact Dale Rohe to make arrangements to use the extractor.
11. Keep weeds cut in front to hives. (This reduces the possibility of snake bite as well as provide the ventilation needed to cure honey).
12. Put comb honey supers on your strongest colonies in fact really big swarms are the best wax builders and are therefore good comb honey producers..
a. Use 10 frames for comb honey - it fits in the jar better for chunk honey (cut comb foundation is available).
b. (A note for harvest time) Remember that comb honey should be left in a deep freeze for 48 hours before it is sold or consumed to kill the lesser wax moth eggs.
13. Number of frames recommended:
a. Brood Chamber - use 10 frames (9 is acceptable)
b. Comb Honey 10 frames (as above)
c. Extracted honey use 9 frames if foundation.
i. If drawn comb is available put a drawn frame in positions 1 and 9 with foundation between. This seems to draw the bees up into the foundation supers quicker.
ii. Extracted honey use 8 frames if drawn comb.
iii. (Note: fewer frames yield thicker combs. Thick combs are easier to “un-cap” for extraction however there is a limit as to how few you can use. Too few frames or too much open space will almost always result in "bridge comb" - bridge comb is comb going the wrong way between frames.)
14. It is my practice to save foundation supers until last. Most beekeepers put the foundation supers on first because the bees are more apt to draw it out at the beginning of the flow. I concur with that theory but disagree with the results. My goal is to produce honey not draw foundation. I find bees more apt to swarm with foundation immediately above the brood than with empty drawn cells.
It is common knowledge that bees will not draw comb unless they need it for brood or to store honey. If foundation supers are put on last, the bees will normally fill every empty cell below the foundation before moving up on it. That means more cured and capped honey for me and if the bees need the space, they have it available and will then draw it out. Caution do not leave foundation supers on after the flow is over in the fall as the bees will often cut it to ribbons and use it elsewhere. They are likely to do some of that anyhow.
In effect this provides beekeeper managed expansion space.
15. If you have dark comb, that has been store with moth crystals (PDB - paradichlorobenzene), they MUST be aired out well before putting on live beehive. If you can not smell PDB fumes, directly on the comb surface they should be OK.
16. As the summer heats up, watch for Small Hive Beetles. They are much worse in weak colonies. If you find a colony that is already infested, take the infested frames (with SHB larvae) and place them in a deep freeze for a couple of days to kill the eggs, larvae and adult beetles.
a. As an alternative, you can also treat with moth crystals (paradichlorobenzene) just as you would for Wax Moths.
b. Also, SHB larvae will die quickly if exposed to direct hot sunlight. Just make sure that the larvae can not escape onto the ground.
17. If you loose hives and the frames have SHB in any stage, DO NOT mix it with a stronger hive as this can cause you to loose the strong hive.
18. If you have extra frames with pollen, do not store them in an active hive (unless you know that it needs pollen) as this is prime bait for SHB.
19. To date, I know of no defense against SHB except to keep strong hives.
20. SHB will “slime” frames of honey. If you find “slimed” frames of honey, freeze them, and then return them to a strong hive and they will clean the honey up (remove the slime). Never ever do this without freezing first.
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22. What you should be seeing now
a. Frequent orientation flights. These are young bees graduating from house bees to field bees.
b. Lots of activity at the entrance.
c. Hauling pollen.
d. The bees should be very gentle.
i. Caution – this will change come fall.
e. If you see lots of drones later in the season check for a bad queen or laying workers.
23. General comments:
· 2010 has been a low swarm year in north Alabama. To date the honey crop looks really good. Due to ethanol and biodiesel, farm crops are changing. More farmers are growing Canola (Rape Seed) for biodiesel; more corn for ethanol thus less cotton.
· Canola (Rape Seed) makes a very good, near water clear, honey but it does crystallize very fast - much faster than cotton. If possible, extract your Canola (Rape Seed) honey as soon after the plant stops blooming as possible else you may have thick "milky colored" honey that is difficult to extract. It is "milky" in color because it is starting to crystallize.
· Soybeans may or may not make a honey crop. I find that the long season crop (bluish bloom) makes surplus honey while the short season crop (white bloom) seldom does. Short crop Soybeans normally follow winter wheat while long season Soybeans are planted about the same time as cotton.
Further conjecture on my part is that another genetic alteration was made to re-attract pollinators since this can result in up to a 20 % increase in production. Again, opinion with no back up proof.
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Bob Fanning Last update 5/13/10
