Bee Chronicle August 2010

And Now the Honey gathering for the year is nearly over. You noticed as you pulled the honey supers off the colonies that “you had way too many bees”! What to do now. The excess crowding will stimulate swarming until the goldenrod nectar flow starts. Leave the hives alone for one week. When you go into the colony look for queen cells. This is a good time to divide your hives if you want more hives for next year. A queen taking a mating flight in August has a very good chance of being mated well. To ensure a strong hive for the winter you will want to make sure plenty of bees and food are transferred to the new hive. If you have double hive bodies the problem is solved. If you split single hive bodies you will want to put 5 frames in each colony. Then you might have to feed syrup so there is enough nectar to draw comb and store nectar. The queens will continue to lay many eggs until October.

I think we have had the best sourwood year ever. That is “Ever” to me. I am not that old. Excellent quantity and even I got light colored honey. Store it for the future. You don’t have to be in a hurry to give sourwood honey away. The lighter it is the longer it will last before sugaring. We are talking years here. The lack of pollen and the very fine sugars in sourwood help it remain stable in a cool dark storage area. You can also freeze honey to keep it stable.

If you are interested in selling medicinal honey, get ready for ragweed and goldenrod. Fall allergies require fall honey. When the goldenrod starts blooming there is a fairly decent nectar flow coming off the fall asters, ironweed, and joe pie weed. Use your currently empty (drawn comb) honey supers and the bees can refill some of the frames with fall honey. It is hard to predict how much you will get because it is typically a dry (not rainy) period. Once you have some frames of mostly fall honey you can finish they (cap off) using non-flavored sugar water syrup. A little cheating here but it will be in wax not so much in the honey. Be sure and mention this to your customer verbally or on the label. You are making medicine so you can use whatever recipe you like as long as it is disclosed.

This is also a good time to think about fall requeening. You will need to order or grow queens immediately. You want well mated queens who have time to get settled into the colony before fall gets cold.

Happy extracting bottling and eating bisquits.