The beekeeping books tell you that you need to remove your supers in the fall and only have two boxes for the bees over the winter. The problem for me is that my bees won't physically fit in two boxes! This is common for backyard beekeepers as their hives tend to be in very good areas which allow for very large populations.
The hive in this picture is the hive that didn't split this year. Even when the field bees are out flying the four boxes left on the hive are pretty full of bees, when I took this hive down to three boxes and the field bees returned there was a pileup at the entrance as the bees tried to find a way into the hive. I added the fourth box (mainly because it had honey I wasn't able to harvest) and the bees resumed their normal behavior.
I've not found having a stack of boxes to be a problem, if anything it seems to help with ventilation. Another benefit is that any boxes I leave on the stack I can trust the bees to take care of and I don't have to store, in a hive without a queen excluder it can be hard to keep wax moths off of supers as they probably had some brood (and pollen) in them at some point.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The end of White Snakeroot
This time of year the bees are getting ready for winter and I should be too. In my area the sign I watch for that the Ageratina altissima stops blooming. This isn't the last forage for the bees in my area but it is my sign that I need to finish any feeding/combining/devarroaing of the bees and transition to winter mode where I build equipment and plan for my next year in beekeeping.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Varroa Treatment
A question from a new beekeeper:
I have discovered that my hive does have a mite problem. The mite board had at least sixty (in 24 hrs) and we also did see mites in the hive as well as on a bee. I have been doing reading on treatment options and am not sure what is a good method. One method that I found was to dust each frame, one by one, with powdered sugar. The theory here is that the bees will groom themselves to removed powdered sugar and hopefully also remove the mites. The powdered sugar, as I read will cut off oxygen and dry the mite, therefore killing it. I do not know if this would work and with the size of my hive, I can imagine this "beeing" a very long process. I do not think the bees would tolerate this very well, considering the significant size of my hive!! What organic varroa methods can be used?
For honey stores, my bees really do not have any. In the medium honey supers (out of four boxes) the honey accounted for about 7.5 frames - this was made up adding together many partial frames. One box was completely unworked, therefore we removed it. In the brood boxes they had 1.65 frames of honey filled. The bees had lots of fresh capped brood.
Since they have very little honey, I am sure I will need to feed. I certainly prefer to give them their own honey back which I have saved from when you helped me extract this summer - how do I do this? At our scholarship meeting we talked about top feeders and feeding rock candy later. But they also said to remove all supers now - that is where my bees have most of the little honey they actually have.
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My response:
For any treatment you want to be sure to mark the frames/boxes that are on the hive when you treat. This will let you know in future years not to use those frames for harvesting honey.
Sugar dusting is a good way to count the mites on a bee but it just isn't an effective treatment to keep a mite population in check. For it to be effective you need to shake all of the bees out of the hive and then dust them with sugar, not an easy task.
The most effective natural way to keep varroa mite populations in check is drone trapping. To do this you put in a frame or three and convince the queen to lay drones in those frames. Varroa naturally prefer the drones over the workers because of their longer development cycle. Once the drone brood is capped you remove it and put it in the freezer, killing the varroa and the drones. This will be difficult this late in the year because the queen will most likely not make drones.
Some treatments that are a bit less natural but might be more effective are Formic Acid and Thyme Oil Extract. Formic acid is present in the hive naturally although not in the quantity required to treat for Varroa. Thyme Oil Extract (Thymol) is another option that also works. Even less natural but very, very effective is Oxalic Acid. Under no circumstance should you put any organophosphates in the hive. I use formic acid and thyme oil extract on hives that I want to try to save.
I typically have 4 boxes on my hives for the winter, you don't need to go down to 2 boxes. In your class's area hives don't usually get as large as they do in our area. I've found that a strong hive here won't fit in 2 boxes this time of year!
As far as how to feed an entrance feeder and a frame feeder both work but they will encourage the other hives to rob (attack) the hive you are feeding. The entrance feeder is most likely to do this so you should avoid using those with other hives around. The feeding method I prefer is open feeding. This is where you put the source out near the hives but not in the hives. The bees will fly out to collect it and then store it in the hive, the trouble is that the stronger hives will collect more than the weaker hives so it can be difficult to put weight on a weaker hive this way. Combining the two works fairly well, if the strong hives can use the open feeder they are less likely to rob the weaker hives that have feeders.
A hive top feeder is a very good feeder; I don't have one but they are easy to use and very effective. Rock candy should be avoided if at all possible, it should only be used in emergency situations and I wouldn't recommend planning on using it.
To feed the honey back all you need to do is put it out and try to prevent bees from drowning in it. You can dilute it with water if you want but this isn't necessary and it will cause the honey to spoil fairly quickly.
My simple suggestion would be to reduce the entrance sizes on all of your hives to help reduce robbing and use a frame feeder to feed the honey to the hive you want to give it to. Check the hive at least twice a day to ensure the other bees aren't robbing it though, Italian bees are very bad this way!
Lastly a word of advice. You should always consider letting a hive go (or at least re-queening). If we help bees out whenever they have problems they don't learn to take care of themselves, a hive that didn't store any honey this year probably might not store any next year. A hive that has a varroa problem this year will probably have a problem next year as well. A new queen will give you a new hive though since that is the source of all of the genetics of the hive.
I have discovered that my hive does have a mite problem. The mite board had at least sixty (in 24 hrs) and we also did see mites in the hive as well as on a bee. I have been doing reading on treatment options and am not sure what is a good method. One method that I found was to dust each frame, one by one, with powdered sugar. The theory here is that the bees will groom themselves to removed powdered sugar and hopefully also remove the mites. The powdered sugar, as I read will cut off oxygen and dry the mite, therefore killing it. I do not know if this would work and with the size of my hive, I can imagine this "beeing" a very long process. I do not think the bees would tolerate this very well, considering the significant size of my hive!! What organic varroa methods can be used?
For honey stores, my bees really do not have any. In the medium honey supers (out of four boxes) the honey accounted for about 7.5 frames - this was made up adding together many partial frames. One box was completely unworked, therefore we removed it. In the brood boxes they had 1.65 frames of honey filled. The bees had lots of fresh capped brood.
Since they have very little honey, I am sure I will need to feed. I certainly prefer to give them their own honey back which I have saved from when you helped me extract this summer - how do I do this? At our scholarship meeting we talked about top feeders and feeding rock candy later. But they also said to remove all supers now - that is where my bees have most of the little honey they actually have.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My response:
For any treatment you want to be sure to mark the frames/boxes that are on the hive when you treat. This will let you know in future years not to use those frames for harvesting honey.
Sugar dusting is a good way to count the mites on a bee but it just isn't an effective treatment to keep a mite population in check. For it to be effective you need to shake all of the bees out of the hive and then dust them with sugar, not an easy task.
The most effective natural way to keep varroa mite populations in check is drone trapping. To do this you put in a frame or three and convince the queen to lay drones in those frames. Varroa naturally prefer the drones over the workers because of their longer development cycle. Once the drone brood is capped you remove it and put it in the freezer, killing the varroa and the drones. This will be difficult this late in the year because the queen will most likely not make drones.
Some treatments that are a bit less natural but might be more effective are Formic Acid and Thyme Oil Extract. Formic acid is present in the hive naturally although not in the quantity required to treat for Varroa. Thyme Oil Extract (Thymol) is another option that also works. Even less natural but very, very effective is Oxalic Acid. Under no circumstance should you put any organophosphates in the hive. I use formic acid and thyme oil extract on hives that I want to try to save.
I typically have 4 boxes on my hives for the winter, you don't need to go down to 2 boxes. In your class's area hives don't usually get as large as they do in our area. I've found that a strong hive here won't fit in 2 boxes this time of year!
As far as how to feed an entrance feeder and a frame feeder both work but they will encourage the other hives to rob (attack) the hive you are feeding. The entrance feeder is most likely to do this so you should avoid using those with other hives around. The feeding method I prefer is open feeding. This is where you put the source out near the hives but not in the hives. The bees will fly out to collect it and then store it in the hive, the trouble is that the stronger hives will collect more than the weaker hives so it can be difficult to put weight on a weaker hive this way. Combining the two works fairly well, if the strong hives can use the open feeder they are less likely to rob the weaker hives that have feeders.
A hive top feeder is a very good feeder; I don't have one but they are easy to use and very effective. Rock candy should be avoided if at all possible, it should only be used in emergency situations and I wouldn't recommend planning on using it.
To feed the honey back all you need to do is put it out and try to prevent bees from drowning in it. You can dilute it with water if you want but this isn't necessary and it will cause the honey to spoil fairly quickly.
My simple suggestion would be to reduce the entrance sizes on all of your hives to help reduce robbing and use a frame feeder to feed the honey to the hive you want to give it to. Check the hive at least twice a day to ensure the other bees aren't robbing it though, Italian bees are very bad this way!
Lastly a word of advice. You should always consider letting a hive go (or at least re-queening). If we help bees out whenever they have problems they don't learn to take care of themselves, a hive that didn't store any honey this year probably might not store any next year. A hive that has a varroa problem this year will probably have a problem next year as well. A new queen will give you a new hive though since that is the source of all of the genetics of the hive.
Monday, September 27, 2010
You borrow bees for the first two years, then you keep them.
There are a lot of new beekeepers in recent years, and this is great. In eastern Nebraska I personally know of approximately 100 beekeepers who started in the last three years! Most of what I do with beekeeping is mentoring of these new beekeepers and I would feel lost without newbees asking me questions.These new beekeepers all start with one or two hives but beyond that there is a lot of variation. Some of them don't enjoy or don't have the time to enjoy working the hives so not much happens other than installing the package and harvesting honey. Some open the hive every week to do their best to (attempt to) help the bees out. Unfortunately though, no matter what type of beekeeper they want to be, I would say 4 out of 5 of these newbees don't last.
Small scale beekeeping is difficult to get hard numbers on because simply knowing your neighbor has bees brings about unwanted trouble in many situations even though there is no actual harm or danger. Additionally many areas have laws which forbid beekeeping or regulate it so strictly that the beekeeper chooses not to follow the overly stringent requirements. This encourages beekeepers to remain silent in many situations and most are warned not to register their hives unless absolutely necessary.
Given that difficulty there aren't reliable numbers but I do have some observations that are interesting: 3 out of 5 new beekeepers only last a single year. 4 out of 5 new beekeepers only last two years. Why? Beekeeping is not easy. Honeybees do their best to create at least one new hive every year by swarming and there seems to be good reason for this, an established hive has a hard time lasting without serious and careful beekeeper intervention.
Before 1990 a beekeeper could put bees in a box and just check back when they wanted to take some honey out. There were few complications but in general the bees would thrive with little intervention. In 1987 Varroa destructor was introduced to the USA. I believe this mite to be the cause of or a contributing factor to every beehive collapse today.
Varroa destructor is the reason why everyone seems to know someone who used to be a beekeeper. It is also the reason you aren't really a beekeeper until your third year.
Monday, September 20, 2010
A little help for my friends.
A fellow beekeeper asked me this question and I thought it would be a good idea to copy it here:
If we don't have enough (honey), when do we put in additional feed and what form would we use if syrup would freeze?
You need to be done feeding the bees before the first hard frost which is around November 1st in our area.
One option is to feed the bees honey you harvested earlier. Another option is to not feed them, there's a reason they don't have enough stored for the winter and that reason might be one you don't want to have to deal with next year.
If you decide to feed sugar to your bees you will want to use a 2:1 solution for building winter stores. That is 2:1 by weight, so 2 lbs of sugar for 1 lb of water. A gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs and 2 cups of sugar weigh about 1 lb. so 2:1 by volume is just about right as well.
1 gallon of water : 32 cups of sugar
You have mostly Italian bees which are prone to robbing, which is stealing honey from another hive. If you put a feeder into a hive it makes it much more likely that that hive will be robbed so be VERY careful if you do that. An alternative is open feeding where you put the feed in your yard and you rely on the bees to gather it and carry it back to their own hive. This will do a great deal to reduce the likelihood of robbing.
If a hive isn't able to collect the feed that hive won't make it through the winter. You should kill the queen and combine the bees into another hive but be careful - there is a reason that hive isn't storing for the winter and it could be because they have a disease that you don't want to spread to another hive.
As for the syrup freezing that isn't a concern as long as the bees have enough time to correctly store it. If you feed too late the bees won't be able to store it correctly and it may freeze and ferment so the sooner the better!
If we don't have enough (honey), when do we put in additional feed and what form would we use if syrup would freeze?
You need to be done feeding the bees before the first hard frost which is around November 1st in our area.
One option is to feed the bees honey you harvested earlier. Another option is to not feed them, there's a reason they don't have enough stored for the winter and that reason might be one you don't want to have to deal with next year.
If you decide to feed sugar to your bees you will want to use a 2:1 solution for building winter stores. That is 2:1 by weight, so 2 lbs of sugar for 1 lb of water. A gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs and 2 cups of sugar weigh about 1 lb. so 2:1 by volume is just about right as well.
1 gallon of water : 32 cups of sugar
You have mostly Italian bees which are prone to robbing, which is stealing honey from another hive. If you put a feeder into a hive it makes it much more likely that that hive will be robbed so be VERY careful if you do that. An alternative is open feeding where you put the feed in your yard and you rely on the bees to gather it and carry it back to their own hive. This will do a great deal to reduce the likelihood of robbing.
If a hive isn't able to collect the feed that hive won't make it through the winter. You should kill the queen and combine the bees into another hive but be careful - there is a reason that hive isn't storing for the winter and it could be because they have a disease that you don't want to spread to another hive.
As for the syrup freezing that isn't a concern as long as the bees have enough time to correctly store it. If you feed too late the bees won't be able to store it correctly and it may freeze and ferment so the sooner the better!
Friday, September 17, 2010
A change of plans.
I've decided to declare that I will post once a week. I'll also put a photo or video in each post.
Wish me luck!
Wish me luck!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Liquid Gold or Solid Gold?
For some reason honey that I harvest using a "crush and strain" method stays liquid for a long time, three years and counting in some cases. Honey I harvest using an extractor like most honey producers doesn't last very long, less than a year in most cases. I'm not sure why this is but it is one more reason not to use extractors unless you have too much honey to manage otherwise.
For most uses I actually prefer crystallized honey. It can be spread easily with a knife and it tastes the same although the texture is different. If the crystals are large it can be grainy and not so good but if the crystals are small you get what is called creamed honey which is my favorite form honey can take. I don't make much of it but I savor every bit that I do, if you haven't tried any you are missing out on one of the finer things in life.
I found myself in need of some liquid honey to sell to some friends so I decided to re-liquefy a few jars at the expense of some of their finer qualities. When honey is heated hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is produced which isn't terrible for humans but it isn't desirable in honey. More importantly some enzymes are destroyed and the fragrance, taste, and appearance of the honey is altered. Because of these reasons it is best to use as little heat as possible when liquefying honey that has crystallized. I've found that a setting of "3" on my stove and a pot of water to distribute the heat do the job pretty well.
For most uses I actually prefer crystallized honey. It can be spread easily with a knife and it tastes the same although the texture is different. If the crystals are large it can be grainy and not so good but if the crystals are small you get what is called creamed honey which is my favorite form honey can take. I don't make much of it but I savor every bit that I do, if you haven't tried any you are missing out on one of the finer things in life.
I found myself in need of some liquid honey to sell to some friends so I decided to re-liquefy a few jars at the expense of some of their finer qualities. When honey is heated hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is produced which isn't terrible for humans but it isn't desirable in honey. More importantly some enzymes are destroyed and the fragrance, taste, and appearance of the honey is altered. Because of these reasons it is best to use as little heat as possible when liquefying honey that has crystallized. I've found that a setting of "3" on my stove and a pot of water to distribute the heat do the job pretty well.
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