Bee Chronicles Aug 2015

23 July 2015. What a strange spring and early summer blooming period we have experienced. It has been so long since we have had a “normal” honey season it is hard to decide what to base our successes on.

One good event was the black locust bloom. I have never seen such an abundant locust bloom period. The bees took advantage of this and put up supers of the lightest spring honey I have ever seen.

The spring nectar flow started about on time but it was too warm. Flowers were blooming on top of each other which normally bloom successively. This shortened the total time of the nectar flow. This came immediately after a cool spring. The bee populations were not built up to the point you would like to see at the beginning of the main nectar flow. This resulted in not enough bees working too many flowers and they can only do so much work at a time. Most of the beekeepers got less honey than expected. Although there were some beekeepers that got excellent long and abundant nectar flow and honey, it depended on your neighborhood.

The sourwood flow came about 3 weeks after spring flow, but it too was early. The bees didn’t care, they just went to work. If you were counting on good weather you missed out. The intermittent violent rain showers started shredding the blossoms in the first week. Every couple of days another strong wind and heavy rain would hit. You could see the blooms piling up on the drive way. But, still some sourwood was collected and some beekeepers got a respectable amount. It would have been nice if I could have been counted in the very successful. This is my third year running that I am at about 30% of my expected honey collection. I’ll keep trying.

On top of the bad nectar flow, I was experiencing problems with my queens. I replaced 29 of 44 queens. Some of them twice. They kept disappearing.
A working queen should leave behind some eggs that can be drawn into queen cells. I was finding colonies with no eggs or young larvae. Usually some capped larvae and no signs of a queen. If the workers didn’t like her and wanted to supersede there should have been a queen cell. If they swarmed, there should have been a queen cell. If the queen got punnie the workers should have drawn a queen cell. The queens were all young enough that if she ran out of sperm she still should have lain drone eggs. BUT no, she just vanished.

Very exasperating and some what costly. All this said I grew five of the wintered over single hive bodies into double hive body hives.

Now at the end of July I am working on next years bees. I got up to 34 hives with 12 surviving the winter, 20 packages, and 2 swarms. I have just installed 15 new queens as fall requeening. I took the 6 month old queens out of some of my best hives. These hives could afford to loose several frames of food, brood, and bees. I started nucs with the bees/frames with the old queen. This way the queen is comfortable with her own bees. I installed the new queens in strong hives so they will have all the support bees necessary to start laying eggs at their maximum level. There won’t be any question about having enough larvae food or nurse bees. I will have to monitor all these hives for potential fall swarming as these young queens should be very productive.

I will feed all the colonies once the honey supers are removed to keep the queens thinking there is a nectar flow still going on. I also will feed the nucs pollen patties. There may not be enough foragers to bring in enough food stuffs for brood, winter stores, and draw comb. I want some insurance as I grow the nucs into 10 frame hives before the end of October. I will also move frames of honey in the comb from strong hives to the nucs. This will reduce the work load on the nucs while giving the strong hives more work drawing comb so they don’t swarm.

I am taking a big chance this year with queens from a breeder from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. These queens cost $65 each. They definitely are beauties. But what if they winterm kill like my bees normally do? Well, they are supposed to be “survivor bees”. Supposed to be hardy, hygienic, anti varroa, and be able to handle nosema cerenae. The one missing factor is me. Also there is very little large scale agriculture on the peninsula, so not so much contamination. The weather is very similar to ours here in the mountains, cool damp winters with intermittent snow, and warm flying days all winter long. Next June I’ll be able to tell you how I did.

I will also treat all my hives for varroa mites in August. I will use the oxolic acid fumigation process. I will gas some of my non fancy queen hives weekly for 3 weeks. The fancy queens will get gassed once. There will be mites in the colony. I want to help the population of workers until the super queen’s off spring population builds up. After mite checking the end of September I might treat again using formic acid if needed. Maybe I will only do those hives that need a second treatment. All the rumors out there say fight the mites aggressively and the bees will take care of everything else including nosema.

In my spare time I will make up 150 brood frames to fill out my nucs. I will make more brood frames and honey frames but not put foundation in them for next spring.

Actively monitor for swarming. Remember, first year queens are not supposed to swarm, but they don’t know that. Every 10 days go through the hives to make sure you don’t have queen cells forming. Keep lots of room and work in the hives to discourage swarming. Pull bees off the strong hives and level them with the week hives to keep the strong populations in check and get weaker hives better ready for winter.

Use this period when your hives are fullest of bees to draw new comb for next year. If they don’t get it completed, take it out of the hive and replace it with frames of honey that you pulled out and stored. Use the new frames to rotate you dark brown frames out next year.

I like to keep my bees as busy as the weather permits up until Thanksgiving. I like to see brood in the hive until Thanksgiving. The more young bees the more that make it through the winter.