May - June 2008
1. At this time, swarming is about over and the bees should have settled down and working hard. You should see lots of “going and coming” activity at the entrance and lots of bees in the hive. They should be hauling pollen. If you do not see this, check to make sure you have a queen.
Particularly keep your eye on any colonies that swarmed. Since they were queenless just after the swarm and sometimes the young queen does not make it back from her mating flight. This year I am seeing a higher than normal incident of queens missing in collected swarms. I find my bees to be a little more aggressive than normal for times of heavy honey flow. This may be caused by the cool damp weather.
I have several colonies that made almost 3 supers of honey and then swarmed. In many cases enough bees were left after the swarm to make at least another super of surplus honey. That is a bit unusual for me.
If you have a queenless colony, you have several options for corrective action:
· Order and install a new queen right away.
· Mix a small swarm using newspaper with the queenless colony.
· Mix the queenless colony with a queenright colony.
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.
2. Put on supers and keep an eye on them and add supers as needed. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ADEQUATE SUPERS ON YOUR HIVES. As of May 1, the bees are really packing in honey. Empty supers in the honey house will make you no honey!
3. Get your labels on order.
2. Get your jars on order.
3. If 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)
4. Keep weeds cut in front to hives. (This reduces the possibility of snake bite as well as provide the ventilation needed to cure honey)
5. Put comb honey supers on your strongest colonies.
· Use 10 frames for comb honey (cut comb foundation is recommended).
· (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.
6. Number of frames recommended:
Brood Chamber - use 10 frames (9 is acceptable)
Comb Honey 10 frames (as above)
Extracted honey use 9 frames if foundation.
o 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.
Extracted honey use 8 frames if drawn comb.
(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.)
7. If you have dark comb, that has been store with moth crystals (PDB or paradichlorobenzene), they MUST be aired out well before putting on live beehive.
· Frequent orientation flights. These are young bees graduating from house bees to field bees.
· Lots of activity at the entrance
· Hauling pollen
· The bees should be very gentle
· Caution – this will change come fall.
· If too many drones later in the season check for a bad queen or laying workers.
2008 has been a low to average swarm year in north Alabama. To date the honey crop looks as though it will be good. Due to ethanol and biodiesel, farm crops are changing. More farmers are growing Canola (Rape) for biodiesel, more corn for ethanol thus less cotton. This is probably more of an advantage than disadvantage because most cotton no longer produces honey (some cotton fields do but it is spotty. In my opinion this is caused by genetic alteration of the cotton plant). Canola (Rape) makes a very good, near water clear, honey but it does crystallize very fast - faster than cotton. Soybeans may or may not make honey. I find that the long season crop (bluish bloom) makes surplus honey while the short crop (white bloom) seldom does. Short crop Soybeans normally follow winter wheat while long season Soybeans are planted about the same time as cotton.
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