Bee Chronicles July 2015

Fellow beekeepers!

The buzz about the mountains is that it is warm.

The strangest thing about Georgia. Twice a year we complain about the weather. When summer arrives and when winter arrives. I think it is because it is too hot to wear jeans and then too cold to wear shorts.

This heat means the bees are air conditioning. Every bee carrying water back to the hive is not carrying nectar or pollen. The result is decreased honey production even though there are blooms out there.

Some beekeepers have reported problems with their hives. The bees are all over the outside. But not just that they are underneath and on the cinderblocks all the way to the ground. Most of these hives also have screened bottoms. This is just a modification of normal behavior. It is too hot for all the bees to go into the hive except in the most severe weather. To regulate the interior heat many foragers rest outside the hive. This can result in “bearding”. The front of a hive can look like a swarm has landed. Bees all the way up the front of the hive body. Bees burying each other on the landing porch. Bees hanging on each other off the landing porch. The new modification with the screened bottom board is that the bees go under the hive where it is shady and cooler. They also prefer this because they can catch the queen pheromone through the screen. They also can continue to work by passing nectar through the screen during the day reducing congestion at the front entrance. The major concern to the beekeeper is that the minute the nectar flow stops this hive is ready to swarm. It is full of honey stores, full of brood, full of bees, and there is no more room to work. The answer: add a super and pull the two outside brood frames even if they have brood instead of honey. Replace them with foundation. This should create enough work spread through out the colony to keep the swarm pressure down. This is also a good opportunity to even out the population in your weaker hives even if the aren’t that weak. Put some honey in the honey super that you put on the hive. It will full up with bees immediately. Lift it off, carry it over to the weak hive and place it on top of the weak hive. BUT, before placing on the weak hive, remove the hive cover and inner cover of the weak hive, place one sheet of newspaper on top of the weak hive, put five ¾” slits arranged like the 5 on a dice in the paper, then place the new honey super with bees. The slits let air circulate and the new queen pheromone. By the time the new bees eat their way through the paper they will accept the queen in the base colony. Strengthening the this hive will pay off in the fall. The more bees in the fall the more brood the better chance of surviving winter.

20 June. The sourwood is just starting to bloom in my neighborhood, but not in my “yard”. Mostly I see it along the road. I have seen some along tree lines 1 mile away. I have to remember my “yard” is 700 acres of forest, mostly US Forest Service property, on the north facing slope. This more shaded relief makes my blooms a little later. I hope my bees have read chapter 4 of the book and know they are supposed to range out to 2 miles to get nectar and pollen. I have trained them to look both ways before crossing the road.

I have noticed a slight dearth the past 3 weeks. Since the end of the tulip poplar bloom it has been pretty dry. Then the past two weeks, practically no rain with abnormally high temperatures into the 90’s. Couple that with the air conditioning activity and the bees have started eating their stored honey. As the beekeeper I am concerned that there is enough honey in the brood area to feed all the larvae so that they did not dip into the stored honey in the supers. I made the judgment call to not pull my honey supers of spring flow honey to save it. I was hoping the dearth would be short and the interior stores high enough to get through 4 weeks of reduced nectar flow. Mostly I think this was the right call. If I had pulled the honey to save it for sale, I probable would have had to feed sugar syrup for a short period to simulate nectar flow. The queen would have notice running out of stored honey and stopped laying eggs without the substitute syrup. She needs to stay in the maximum egg laying mode so there will be new bees coming along at the end of sourwood flow. Especially if the sourwood flow goes a little longer than normal. Remember, foragers only live 4-6 weeks during a nectar flow. They work themselves to a frazzle, actually wearing their wings out and crashing. More flying more crashing.

You can recognize when bees are eating honey supers because of the pattern of the cappings along the bottom edge where cappings meet open honey. When the honey is put into the comb the meeting line is generally wavy, a smile or less seldom a frown. When they are taking the honey out enmass the line is straight across full length of the frame.

I am just now (3 ½ months) getting the majority of my hives up to an adequate population to collect honey at the maximum rate. Two thirds of my hives did not build population very fast this past spring. This is probable cool weather related. They were not ready for spring nectar flow and that is reflected in the number of supers of spring honey. I have some hives with 3 supers and still some with none.

I don’t know why but I have lost a lot of queens. My count as of yesterday is 33 out of 44. I don’t think it was swarming as the populations left in the hives were too large. There was no brood left behind and no queen cells. Some of the hives I caught before they died out. Six were goners that had good populations. Mostly I just replaced queens and kept going. This is one reason I keep a bunch of nucs growing. I did not have to buy 33 new queens, only 15. Other bee keepers have reported similar problems. Modern queens don’t last too long but reports of dead/missing queens in 2 weeks to 2 ½ months is unacceptable but may be the new norm. Queen replacements are too expensive. $20-65 on the open market. Price does not guarantee a good queen. Only test driving them does. Switch around where you buy you queens and ask you friends until you find a good source.

Along that line, I already have my fall requeening queens ordered for late July delivery. I want to get them into the hive as soon as sourwood flow is over so they can grow as may babies as possible before winter. When I pull my sourwood honey there will be too many bees in the hive. You will have reduced the interior volume my at least 1/3 and maybe more if you had lots of honey supers. This will stimulate the queen to swarm as the hive is full of brood and bees with no place to work. I will pull these extra bees off the hives and start nucs with them. I will put the fall requeening queens in the established colonies. The queens I remove will be put into the nucs. By doing this in July the nucs will have time to grow into 10 frame hives before fall. Now I have extra hives going into winter to help cover my “normal” hive losses. If more hives survive the winter than I desire to work, I have bees to sell next spring.

Now I sit back and wait for the sourwood flow.