Bee Chronicles
4 September 2018
Not much to note in September, seldom is.
Let me back up to 9 August. I saw my first goldenrod blooming. This may not be too astounding to the novice beekeeper, but it is important to the honeybees. Goldenrod is loaded with pollen and some nectar. It causes the queen to get really excited and lay eggs at the maximum rate. We have enough moisture the fall flowers will be very good. There will be 4-5 kinds of asters blooming over the next two months. They are excellent nectar sources. We need lots of nectar to feed the crowd of new brood and have enough for the bees to put up extra for winter food stores.
The extra for winter food is where I always get concerned. How do we know when the bees have enough? Do we know what enough is? It will take about 90 lbs. of honey to get a decent population of bees from Thanksgiving to the end of February. We can expect a “normal” winter. That means the bees will fly several days every week. They come home hungry and eat stored honey.
Honeybees don’t make honey when the temperature is under 50 degrees. On any given day we may have 4-5 hours above 50. But the bees might eat 6 hours of honey. By the end of January, they are ready to starve. Emergency feeding is not the best situation to be in. They might process the emergency food (fondant, powdered sugar, granulated sugar, peppermint candy, syrup, old honey), but again there may not be enough hours to save the colony.
Now is the time to keep treating your colonies for mites. You can do mite counts to see if you have very many mites but I don’t waste my time. Chances are you have mites. One mite is too many for me! Pick your favorite treatment and go at it. It is now cool enough to use the “jelly type” treatments (formic acid and thymol) mita away quick strips and apiguard respectively. Oxalic acid vapor may be the best treatment. It is all up to each beekeeper.
I like the oxalic acid fumigation because it is quick and not outside temperature dependent. The Jelly types need to be between 60-80 degree. Hot enough to vaporize but not so hot as to gas the bees with excess vapor. They do work well.
I recommend grease patties for traceo mites. You don’t hear about this much but the mites are still around. Make your own patties the size of hamburgers 3/8th inch thick. Mix Crisco and sugar (powdered or granulated) until you have a consistency thicker than peanut butter. Place it on the top bars of the brood area. The bees dislike it so much they will try to remove it form the hive getting themselves greasy. The traceo mite only gets on the 4 day old bee. They can tell by smell. If the bee is greasy it will mask the smell and the mites can’t find her. The bees will eat a lot of the grease patty because of the sugar, extra food.
Load your bees up on sugar water syrup. If you are just trying to store honey use 2:1 sugar to water. Water weighs about 8 lbs. to the gallon so add 4ea. 4 lbs. bags of sugar. Mix in a 3-5 gallon bucket. One gallon mixed up is more than a milk jug will hold.
If you are still drawing comb use a 1:1 mixture. This will stimulate wax drawing versus honey storage. As it gets colder (in the 30’s) switch to 2 :1. This will reduce the amount of moisture in the hive as the bees try to dehydrate the raw honey.
I feed until end of December if it is warm. This allows the replacement of some honey. You never know when the bees will cluster up and not break the cluster. This is when you need the most honey in the center of the hive. You also never know how long this cold spell will last. We are not in Minnesota so we are only talking 6 weeks at the longest stretch. They will cluster tightly for 3-4 days frequently throughout the winter. Then they loosen up the cluster and get a little food for a few hours before clustering up again for the night.
Varroa mite attacking. Every bee born without the varroa mite attacking it in the cell is a bee that will live longer and work harder. They also resist the diseases spread by the varroa mite. The more healthy bees born now equals more healthy bees next spring resulting in sooner start and faster build up.
FEED FOR THE SPRING IN THE FALL
Honey bee Healthy, amino acids, and vitamins can’t hurt. I don’t know how much they help but I use them just as a guess. They are expensive but you only use a teaspoon at a time. You can make your own Honey bee healthy.