Bee Chronicles Nov 2014

What a hectic month October has been. The end of the fall flowers was very dry in regard to nectar. Really I think it has been a dirth since the golden rod started in September. Many experienced bee keepers looked into their hives in early October to find nearly all the honey eaten by the bees.

The October weather has been adequate to allow fall feeding which has built the honey stores back up. Many colonies are still showing robust populations with adequate brooding going on.

I like to see some brood in the hives, here in N. Georgia, Thanksgiving weekend. The later the bees are born the better they will survive the winter. The Almanac is saying “a longer and colder winter” than usual. Would someone please tell me what “usual” was. If you go by “wooly worms”, the black stripe indicates the length of winter. Wider stripe longer winter. I have only seen totally black wooly worms no brown ones with a black stripe. Some folks say’ “The closer the bald face hornet nest (the big gray paper balls) is to the ground the colder the winter. I have two with the entrance on the ground. Go figure.

Mite control is an absolute must. Oxolic acid fumigation is a good technique after all brooding stops. It can be done before also, but must be repeated weekly for 3 weeks to get the best mite coverage. Remember some of the mites are in the brood cells and won’t be killed. Api Life Var is a good practice late in the season. It may be too cool for Apiguard. Ask all your friends what they do and pick a technique you like. But, do something.

There is still some thoughts that we must fight nosema cerenae. Fumigilian B is the only known treatment. There is lots of skepticism that it might work. Having lots of really fat and healthy bees is a great helper to resisting nosema. Reducing mites is the first step in health bees. Some folks are saying to mix the fumigilian powder into pollen patties so the bees will ingest it as food, versus mixing it in the syrup where it is stored in winter honey and then consumed by the bees. The pollen patty trick would get it into the bees’ gut track immediately. Nosema is a protozoa that damages the gut track.

If you have strong and weak colonies, one way to help the weak ones is to remove honey and maybe some capped brood from the strong hives and place it in the weak hive. If you relocate bees from the strong hive you might create two mediocre hives. Keep the strong hive working and move their finished product to the weak hive.

Stimulating a queen that has quit laying can be tricky this time of the year. What can make the queen stop laying? How do you counter act that?

If you have been feeding the hive too heavily the storage bees can put too much honey in the old brood area. This back filling will eliminate all the empty cells so the queen does not have a place to lay. Slow down on the feeding and place an empty frame of comb in the middle of the hive for the queen to lay on. You might need to add some mixed age brood so the pheromone will stimulate the queen. Make sure you have enough nurse bees to cover the brood so it doesn’t chill this time of year.

I hear that a queen will stop laying if there is not enough honey stored for larvae food in the future. Add honey frames, and then restimulate the queen same as above.

If you have a weak hive that is limping along, on a warm day you might want to switch places with a strong hive. The foragers from the strong hive will come back to the weak hive. The foragers from the weak hive will come back to the strong hive. You need to have a field feeder out this time of the year. Bees returning to the wrong hive with food will be accepted in. Empty bees will be treated as robbers and attached.

If your hive is just too small and you don’t think it will make it regardless of what you do, Kill the queen and combine it with a mediocre hive to boost it. You are going to loose the queen anyway, why not save the bees and maybe the other mediocre hive. Make sure you aren’t passing some dreaded disease when you combine the two. Next spring you can split this surviving hive, add a queen and you are back in business.

Start locating and ordering your spring bees and queens. If we have a “bad” winter, the bee producers will have trouble filling all their orders, be at the top of the list. I know bee producers who did not get caught up on orders until mid July this past spring. They also have to grow their own bees to make up for lost colonies. Order bees and queens shying on the high side. It is always easy to sell your extras to your neighbor who didn’t get his order in.