Bee Chronicles

6 August, 2018

This is a hard one to write. I collected exactly ZERO honey this year. My bee populations would not grow. I have no idea why. I hope this does not ruin my reputation as the greatest beekeeper on Epps Mountain.

The sourwood nectar flow in my 2 mile radius was at least 6 weeks long. That is excellent. I say trees blooming ¾ mile away by 1 June. I had trees in full bloom 10 June 1 mile away. I say the 1 mile trees were more attractive to my bees than the ¾ mile away because of the way the terrain lays. The trees 50 yards from the beeyard, started to bloom about 20 June. These trees are in the northside shade of Epps Mountain. They are basically right next to the bees. Epps Mountain rises 750 above the apiary. There are sourwoods all the way to the top. Some large enough you can see them from several miles away. I have several 30-40 foot sourwoods along my driveway which never bloomed. Go figure! My neighbor ½ mile away on the banks of the mighty Notley River, had a good bloom. His bees collected 1 shallow super per hive. Mine, nothing.

It is not that my bees did not collect nectar. They did. It just all went to feed the larvaes. There were just not enough extra bees to collect surplus honey.

I tried feeding the bees inside the hives so the syrup would not contaminate any honey collecting bees. That did nothing to stimulate the population growth.

It was about 15 July when the last flower petals (little white bells) fell off the trees with a not too severe rain storm.

During this full period there was about 10 days of extra hot, with no rain. This could reduce the amount of nectar in the blossoms. However, the ground is plenty wet down to tree root level nectar should have been produced every night. Then the hot sun dries it out of the flower by about early afternoon. This would reduce your total collection, but the bees should have put up something.

Now is the time to hit the varroa mite treatment hard. Get the hives cleaned out now so there is a long fall production of mite free new bees. This will make your winter hive stronger and increase survivability.

You might also feed pollen patties. There are few flowers for the next month. Your queen is used to laying eggs at the max rate. Keep her going. She need nectar (sugar water syrup 1:1) and pollen (the patties) to encourage her to lay. If the food coming into the hive drops off the queen will slow egg laying.

If you have really strong hives now is the next swarm season. By the time you see this you are 3 weeks behind. If you have queen cells in your hive, pull the queen and 3 frames of bees and start a nuc. This can be in a 10 frame box, just put the frames for the nuc in the middle of the box. Leaving space on the two sides.

Leave the nuc at the location of the original hive. Move the full hive just 10 ft away. The old hive will think it swarmed because the queen is gone. The nuc which needs more bees will be at the original location so the foragers will leave the old hive (at the new location) and fly back to the nuc filling it up with bees.

In order to guarantee that the queen does not swarm out of the nuc: Take a queen excluder and cut it so you can make a gate over the hive entrance. The foragers can come and go but the queen can not (maybe).

If you have weak hives that you are not crazy about the way that queen worked. Kill her and replace her with a mated queen purchased from a reputable person who raises good bees. Use the workers in the weak hive to get that new queen going. She has until Thanksgiving to fill the hive with new bees.

Using a mated queen is necessary. If you grow a queen for a weak hive, she will take 40 days to be laying lots of eggs. You don't have that time! Growing a queen for you fall spits is a little different because that hive is full of bees and brood. Where as the nuc is not.