Bee chronicles Aug 2020

Whoooo! What a spring and start to summer.

If you have not seen a perfect honeybee season, you still haven't!

Close but no cigar. The bloom cycle was long and slow. The cool weather helped hold the nectar in the blooms. Colonies of bees that over wintered had large enough populations that they collected good quantities of spring flow honey. Colonies started this year either from nucs or packages missed out on the early nectar flow. The flowers started blooming 4-6 weeks earlier than the historical norm. By 15 June the nucs and packages have expanded enough to collect sourwood nectar.

It is amazing how much nectar must be collected to feed the expanding colonies in the spring. Without 30,000 bees in a single deep hive body and 60,000 in a double deep all the collection energy will go into drawing comb, feeding the expanding brood, and storing honey in the brood deep frames. A new colony in a double deep will never get to the point of putting up excess honey in the first year.

Sourwood is in all stages of bloom from ½ completed to 95% completed. At the 2000' elevation (lake level) I see blooms with only the last bell remaining. Especially in the hotter areas like along a paved road. In my area (2,250') on the north facing shady side of the mountain I am just passing 50% bloom with some very shaded trees at 25%. Moving up my local elevation (up to 2,750') the highest trees are 10%. I am guessing my bloom will last at least 2-3 more weeks. You have to look out to the 2 mile radius away from your hives to gauge the availability of blooms. The bees will forage that far when necessary. All total I will have nearly 6 weeks of sourwood bloom. This is exceptionally long. Last year (2019) was one of the lightest colored, large volume sourwood years in maybe 10 years. I expect this year to be better. We are now (20 July) going into week 5 of sourwood. Wonderful!

All of my packages have nearly filled but not capped a full shallow honey super of sourwood. I am just putting on my third super on the overwintered hives. About ½ of the first super will be mixed spring honey and the rest will be real good sourwood.

Ground moisture is holding at tree root level even though we have gone a week without any rain. The rain will come back. Just hope that it is not wind driven hail and heavy rain that knocks the sourwood blooms part.

You might want to collect propolis this year. It seems to be a good year for it. The beehives are pretty sticky to open. Some of the colonies collect and use a lot more than others. Propolis is 10X more Medicinal than honey. It can be processed as a pure solid, a powder, or as a tincture. A week tonic can be made using water but that won't be as powerful as the alcohol based tincture. It is extremely good as an antibiotic internally or externally. As soon as you pull your honey supers put on propolis traps. You can buy fancy ones or use fiberglass window screen from the hardware store. Remove the inner cover and place the trap on the top bars. On the edge of the hive body place a spacer (a stick or piece of wood) about the size of your thumb. You want to let light into the hive. The bees will completely coat the trap quite quickly to cut out the light and breeze. Remove the trap, place it in a scentless white plastic trash bag. Place it in the freezer. When brittle take it out of the freezer still in the trash bag. Roll it up before it thaws out and all the propolis will break off the trap. Remove the trap from the bag. Dump the pieces of propolis out of the bag into a wide mouth glass container. It is now ready for storage until you use it. Re use the trap forever. You want to collect the propolis while there are still healthy green leaves on the trees where the bees collect the sap goo off the leaves. This extra work can help deter swarming.

Your next big project will be removing the honey supers and extracting the honey. There are several ways to remove the bees from the honey super when removing it from the hive to be extracted. More important than how to get the bees out is keeping them out while you move and store the supers before the actual extraction process.

Robbing honey: Do not use smoke to calm the bees during robbing. You can create a unique bar-b-que flavored honey. FIRST: inspect the honey supers. The frames should be 90% capped which indicates the honey is ripe (18% moisture or less) enough to extract. The 10% may be dehydrated enough but the labor force just hasn't gotten the work done. You will be alright mixing some 20% moisture with 17% moisture and it will not ferment after it is processed. Switch the frames that are not ready so that all the frames in one super are ready and all the ones in another are not. Leave the not ready super on your best hive so they can finish the work.

Second: You have to get the bees out of the super. There are several "bee gates" you can use. Some fit in the vent hole of the inner cover, some replace the inner cover. Place the cover with the gate UNDER the bottom honey super you want to get the bees out of. This stack may be 3 honey super high. Leave for 2-3 days. As the bees walk around inside the hive they inadvertently go through the gate and cannot get back into the honey super. Check to make sure all the bees are out of the honey supers before removing them. This could take a week.

To speed this process up you can use several varieties of "skunk oil". The "fume board" is a telescoping cover with felt on the underside. Put a few drops of the "Bee Go", "Honey-B- Gone", "Bee Dun" on the fume board. Remove the inner cover and place the fume board above the top bars. These chemicals are very heat sensitive and you can use too much really easily. This will cause your honey to take on the "skunk oil" flavor. I do not recommend using this stuff.

I use the cyclone technique. You might get stung a little (or more) but usually not too much. You need two extra telescoping covers for every 7 honey supers. I remove the honey super(s) and set them on edge, frame top bars running up and down on the closed up hive next to the one I am robbing. There might be 3 supers. Close up hive one and set the supers on edge back on it. Remove the supers from hive two setting them on hive one. #1 is pretty crowded. Go through the entire apiary doing the all the hives. It helps to have an assistant! Now I fire up my hurricane powered leaf blower. Blowing mostly through the top bars I blow the bees off and out of the super. My assistant is holding and turning the super and brushing with the "bee brush" to keep the bees from landing back on the honey super. This might take 5 minutes per super. In the back of my truck (wagon or garden tractor trailer) I have a telescoping cover set up side down. As I carry the super to the truck I move it around instead of carrying it gingerly. This will discourage of a lot of bees from landing on it. By the time I get to the truck 50' away from the hive most all the bees have gone home. Set the super in the upside down cover and place the other spare telescoping cover on it right side up so the bees cannot get into it. The six remaining bee will eventually move up to the top cover. Repeat this until all supers moved to you truck (etc.). Don't pile the supers too tall or they will tip over while moving to you honey house (garage) where your extractor is. Very few bees will make it to your house and those mostly will go home when you move the supers inside. Place plastic sheeting on the floor where you will stack your supers. Honey will dissolve concrete in 24 hours. (No Lie)! Place the top telescoping cover on the floor upside down. Move the supers indoors and top off with what was the bottom telescoping cover. Now no scout bees can get into you stack.

Storing supers with honey: It took you all day to get the honey supers into your garage and you are too tired to extract or you need to take them over to your buddy's house and use his extractor. Right next to your stack of supers place a room sized dehumidifier. Cover your stack with a very large plastic sheet even covering the dehumidifier. This will create a less humid dome to keep ambient air moisture from getting into you honey. The bees kept the humidity in the hive down. Now, honey can draw moisture from the air through the wax cappings. You want to reduce this as much as possible but don't wait too long to extract.

Extracting/storing: Follow normal procedures learned from a more experienced beekeeper to decap and extract the honey. I like to filter my honey right out of the extractor. I use the double (200 and 500 mesh screens) to separate wax particles and bee antennae from the honey. You really don't have to filter again before bottling.

I use a 5 gallon plastic bucket with the set of screens in the top under the extractor outlet. You must watch the 5 gal. catch bucket. You can only put 3-4 gal. into it or you will fill to the bottom of the screens . I have 3 set ups. When one 5 gal. full to 3 ½ gal. I close the exit valve on the extractor and move the full buck to the side and place an empty set up with duplicate screens under the valve, open it and away you go. The first buck will drain down and you can move the screens to a new 5 gal. bucket. Empty the first bucket into a smaller plastic bucket or just leave it at 3 ½ gal. and put the sealed lid on it. A gallon of honey weight 12 lbs. Hence, a full 5 gal. bucket weighs 60 lbs. Now stack 3 buckets on top of each other and the last one up is heavy. Cover your bucket stack with the plastic sheet you used on the honey supers and place the dehumidifier next the stack until you bottle the honey. Even a good bucket seal can leak air in.

Bottling/storing: As "a side line beekeeper", you want to bottle your honey fairly quickly. You do not want the honey to crystalize in the 5 gal. bucket. Bottle the honey in the final container or glass quart jars while the room temperature is pretty warm. The honey flows better. Using glass as a final or interim storage container allows you to remelt it, if it crystalizes . You don't have to worry about ambient air moisture now. You can rebottle from the quarts later if you require squeeze bottles, etc. I don't talk about stainless steal holding tanks here because those who use them have graduated to more sophisticated procedures.

Cappings and meade: When you uncapped your honey frames you might have had a lot of wax and honey in the uncapping tank or bucket. You can strain the honey off the cappings. This will take a few days to drip down. That honey can be strained and bottled. There is still honey on your wax. Rinse the cappings with the amount of water specified in your meade recipe. Strain the wax cappings off and you are ready to make honey wine (meade).

The wax cappings are now ready to melt in a double boiler and stored until you make candles or soap. Follow the melting procedures found in "how to process wax".

MITES: Hit the varroa mites hard as soon as the honey supers are removed. It does not have to be the next day but quite soon. The bees have been without mite treatment for several months. If you do a mite count you will probably find they are at the level to treat. Almost any treatment is acceptable. I would not use one of the jelly type treatments. They are heat sensitive. If the ambient daily temperature is above 85^o you could over do the treatment. Oxalic acid fumigation is not temperature sensitive. I will try beer patties this year after an initial fumigation treatment before mid August.

My fall starts in August. My tasks will be requeening, food stuff build up (honey and Goldenrod Pollen, and to maintain large populations and heavy egg laying.

I think fall queen winter over better than 2 year old queens. Your task is to find a good queen breeder by talking to more experienced beekeepers.

Fat healthy bees in very high populated colonies is the main goal to overwintering a hive. Low mite count, lots of healthy food stored in hive, and a large number of young bees going into Thanksgiving weekend are my objectives.

Swarms and splits: The natural tendency after nectar flow is for the colony to split (swarm) to preserve the species. You have lots of food, lots of brood, lots of adult bees in the excellent colony you have just pulled through the summer. They want to swarm.

Do swarm management! Reduce the number of bees in the colony with a split. If you do this in early August they can grow their own queen. Pulling some frames off the "parent" hive will create more room for the mature queen to keep laying eggs creating more young bees going into the winter. Placing frames requiring comb to be pulled will keep the bees busy and they may not think about swarming. This all requires you to inspect the hives and determine the condition of the queen. Is she still robust and you want to keep her through the winter or replace her?

Preparing for winter: Is the population health? Do you need to feed? Go into winter with extra hives or large nucs. These are you summer and fall splits. The survivor hives will be your next year bees. You can sell or give away any you don't need next spring. We need overwintered bees to get an early start next spring. Winter over hives will collect spring honey starting in March. We used to shoot for 1^st of June to have populations large enough to collect extra honey for us. The past several years the flowers have come 4-6 weeks earlier. When the packages come the first of April, there is not enough time for them to grow large enough to put up extra honey this year. It takes all the bees just to feed the growing colony population. Hence, no extra for honey supers. I am going to try and move bee package delivery up to mid March, not the first of April. There will be temperature concerns for the three day delivery period. However, once the bee packages are place in the hive they can withstand any "bad" weather we have. It is that delivery and settling in period to be concerned with. Mid March is traditionally somewhat warm. Then the end of March through April until 15 May we can have a killer frost for a few days. So I am betting on Mid March as warm enough.