Bee Chronicles Nov 2011

November fast approaches. It may be so nice to relax and not worry about the bees? What beekeeper can really do that? We are a worrisome lot. If there is no obvious concern, we’ll think one up.

Remember, Fall is the time to prepare our bees for next spring. Bee Healthy in the Fall and live till spring. There are all which ways to raise bees. I have said before and will again. The correct way is the way that keeps them alive.

By knowing what basics the bees need, you can constantly adjust to the ever changing situation. What the bees need now is food. Do they have it? Did they do a good job of foraging here at the end of goldenrod season and the hive bodies and maybe additional supers for winter storage are pretty full. You need to check to see which hives are light weight. Add feeders as necessary.

You need lots of bees. Large colonies will over winter better. If you have a light hive with not a lot of bees sacrifice the queen (Kill her) and combine the bees with another hive to create a really strong hive which can create enough heat to keep the hive alive all winter. If you have a really, really strong hive you might move some bees from that hive to the week hive. Don’t make your strong hive too weak by doing this. If you change locations of the two hives, all the foragers will switch hives, weakening the strong hive. This time it might be better to put a honey super on the strong hive with lots of sugar syrup sprayed in it and on the combs in it. A bunch of bees will go in it. Then move the honey super to the weak hive. Place a piece of newspaper under the super when you place it on the weak hive. Cut 5-6 small slits in the paper with you hive tool. This will create air circulation and mix the queen pheromone so the new bees will be accepted in a few days when they enlarge the slits to go back and forth. This technique allows you to manage the number of bees that move.

You need healthy bees. Do we medicate, use chemicals, do the sacred bee dance and pray? How can we get healthy bees? Manage your mites!! The number one nemisis of the hive. You need to use Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques. Check for mites. Do a sticky board mite count. Or, do a powder sugar role. Or, look for deformed bees that had too many mites in the larval stage. Or, squint real hard and look for mites on the bees. It is okay to use a magnifying lens here. Management means you have to do something. If you are above the economic threshold, you have to use a chemical suppressant. This can be Check Mite, Apistan, or essential oils. You are going to need big guns here. If you see some mites but are below the economic threshold, you might get by with powdered sugar dustings (once a weak for 4 consecutive weaks). If you barely have mites you might get by doing the sacred bee dance. Mite reproduction goes down as the bee brood goes down. However, the number of mites per larvae goes up until there is no more brood for the mite to reproduce on.

You have other diseases to watch for. Nozema is the first biggie. With Nozema Cerana out there, if it gets into you hive you bees are dead. Fumigilan B might work. It is a lot like the flu shot. The Fumigilan B is for the old kind but might help with a little resistance to the Cerana variety. In this case you will want to try the Sacred bee dance also.

It is questionable if you need to use a terramiacin treatment for foul brood or not. It is not as common as it once was. You may want to take a chance. You may want to treat once in the fall, or once in the spring but not both as was done in the olden days (like last year). There is some terramiacin resistance. Agricultural terramiacin in getting harder to procure.

In order to keep this letter under 3000 pages we will not go into each procedure step by step. That will be good club discussion.

If your queen is happy you should be able to keep new brood coming along until Thanksgiving. Each hive will be different. The youngest healthy bees will be the ones that make it through the winter and get the hive going in the spring.

Now is the time to order new bees and queens for next year. It is always better to bee at the top of the list for due outs than at the bottom when there is not enough bees to fill all the orders. If you don’t need the bees in the spring, there is always a club member who does and was the “grasshopper”.

Inspect your hives when it is above 65 degrees. We will have a few of those days, but you can’t count on when.

Good Luck! I’ll be looking for the music to the Sacred Bee Dance. It is buzzing in my head but I don’t recall it all.

Glen