
jan2000
Midnite Bee-Beekeeper's: Jan2000
ARTICLES
January 2000
January Projects
I can hear some beeHAVERS saying or thinking " George, are you nuts? It is
winter and cold and my bees have no thoughts of spring and nectar gathering
yet!" Then there are some beekeepers that are too lazy to think about any bee
work in January or even February, and their bees might be dead and they don't
know that. So what has to be done in January? INSPECT YOUR BEES!
There is going to be 1 or 2 days that the early afternoon temperature is going
to get..up to 50 degrees or above and sunny. TAKE OFF FROM WORK and inspect
your bees. "Inspect" means OPENING UP THE HIVE and looking in the center of
the brood chamber for BROOD, or the queen, FOOD, DISEASE and adult bee popu!ation,
large or small?
The two most important things you want to find out are: Is the queen alive,
and does the colony have plenty of food. Year after year, I have had people
tell me that they "knew" their bees were alive because they saw bees flying
in and out of their colony on warm days, but there were no bees there when they
finally opened on a warm April weekend.
What they saw flying in and out on warm days in January and February were ROBBER
bees, because their bees were DEAD. Unless you have X-RAY eyes, your bees can
NOT be inspected by observing them from the outside of their colony.
Brood rearing normally starts in January in our Maryland area in spite of
night temperatures below freezing or even down near zero. Raising brood requires
a tremendous amount of food, and more bees in Maryland starve to death in late
February and March than any other month.
Hence, carefully check the colony's food supply when you open it in January
and feed 1:1 sugar syrup if needed. GET THE QUEEN LAYING!
With our Maryland nectar flow primarily yielding in late April and all of May,
you MUST realize that the bees that are going to gather this nectar have to
emerged from their wax cell by about April I Oth, which means that the queen
had to lay the their egg about March 20th. Don't lose sight of the fact that
there has to be a lot of bees around in early March to warm- the brood nest
and feed the brood. One MUST realize that if you are going to get a big crop
from our very early nectar yield in Maryland, the queen has to be laying pretty
well in February and March.
Queens are stimulated to lay eggs by the collection of pollen and nectar. 1:1
sugar syrup is artificial nectar, or a substitute for real nectar. If you deem
yourself a skilled beekeeper, have a YOUNG queen in the colony, always AHEAD
of your bees, and skilled in swarm prevention, then do as I do and start feeding
1:1 sugar syrup in late January or early February.
However, in any event, get your queen going by starting 1:1 feeding in March.
REVERSING: It is well known and almost totally accepted that Reversing of brood
chambers is one of the most helpful of swarm prevention techniques; and if your
bees swarm in April or early May in Maryland, you have basically lost your honey
crop for an entire year.
However, many, many people seem to have lots of problems figuring out just
how to reverse, when, and how often; so I am going to try to explain it in writing
(it is easy if we were inspecting one of my colonies together and then I could
show you and explain as we did it) It has been well proven that one of the strongest
reasons for swarming is CONGESTION IN THE BROOD CHAMBER - Note, I said BROOD
chamber, and nothing about super space.
Let me stop here and make you think. It is late January, February, or March,
the weather is cold or chilly, but the brood must be kept at 91-96 degrees to
stay alive, bees like to keep nectar close to the brood for easier feeding,
so the, brood area is highly congested with lots of"nurse bees feeding brood
and warming the brood nest.
Meanwhile, the old foragers are bringing in needed pollen from skunk cabbage,
maples, and alders. If there is no 1:1 syrup, but just honey, bees have to fly
out and find water to dilute the honey to nectar consistency for brood food.This
whole scene is just a mess of congestion, which is the number ONE cause of swarming.
Back in November, the worker bees began storing honey near the top of the colony
and driving the queen down to the bottom hive body for any brood laying that
she might do; and hence initial clustering of the bees as the weather moved
down into the 40's or 30's was around the queen on the frames of the lowest
hive body.
Just imagine a cluster of packed bees about the size of a basketball or soccer
ball enveloping most of frames #5 & #6, some of frames #4 & #7, and smaller
portions of frames #3 & #8. As the winter progresses, the bees slowly move UP
(not sideways) and by January, they have consumed most of the stores in the
lower frames and are now starting to eat the stores in the frames of the top
hive body (regardless of whether you are using 2 deep bodies for brood chambers
or 3 Illinois Bodies (like I use) for brood chambers. It is Nature's Way or
Bee Behavior that bees like to move UPWARDS, and more or less have to be FORCED
DOWNWARDS.
Hence, when the space in the upper frames is filled up with brood or honey,
even though there is plenty of empty space in lower frames, the bees and particularly
the queen resist moving their brood rearing to the lower frames. Hence, the
worker bees either stop the queen from egg laying, or even prepare to swarm.
Therefore, it becomes the BEEKEEPER'S task to reposition the frames so that
there is always empty laying space ABOVE where the queen is laying. However,
the position of the frames that contain brood is VITALLY IMPORTANT before you
start REpositioning those frames. To aid you in trying to picture brood location
in a colony, I want you to think of a big round CLOCK in the place of All (either
2 or 3) of Frames #5, where the number 12 is close to the inner cover and the
number 6 is close to bottom board.
Draw an imaginary line through the 3 & 9, and that indicate the space between
the bottom hive and the top hive if -2- you are using 2 deep bodies, or the
center of the middle body frames if you are using 3 Illinois bodies. It is most
important that you understand where this 3 to 9 imaginary line is for my written
explanation of REVERSING.
Upon examination, if about 80% of the brood is in UPPER frames and the remaining
20% brood, probably capped, is in the LOWER frames, REVERSE the positions of
the top body with the bottom body. You might have to do it again in just 7 days
or maybe not for 17 days depending on the weather, the age of the queen, the
size of the frame, the race of the bee, and a dozen other reasons. However,
you open the colony, examine the location of the brood as well as the empty
space, and decide whether to reverse bodies that day or wait 2-3 days.
Obviously the beeHAVER won't do as well as a knowledgeable beeKEEPER. I start
reversing in late January (late February might be best for most readers) and
continue it until the nectar flow is strong, usually about May 1st. I usually
make about 4 or 5 reversals of a colony in that period of late January to May;
but many beekeepers using 2 deep bodies as brood chambers get by with just 2
reversals.
However, since I don't want to contend with. any swarming problems, I might
reverse more often than someone else. Reversing too soon is the important danger
to the technique, because much of the new brood will be killed by being chilled
because it is away from the heat of the bee cluster.
Think of the imaginary clock: Brood is located in between the lines of 10 -
2 and 7 - 5, and you reverse the bodies. The frames with the brood up to 10-2
where the queen is laying is now in the bottom body and the bees are clustered
about her to keep her warm, but the frame with brood that was down to the 7-5
line is now in the upper body and that brood is close to the inner cover and
away from the cluster of bees, so it dies of chill. This mistake is referred
to as SPLITTING THE BROOD, and you should remember it.
Using the example just given, do not reverse until the brood is located between
lines of 11 - 1 and 8-4 or even better when all the brood is in an upper frame
and NO brood in the lower frame.
REVERSING is one of the most valuable techniques used in beekeeping not only
helping to prevent swarming, but to aid your bees in building a larger population
to enhance your honey yield. However, it is like learning to drive, it takes
practice; but I strongly urge everyone who really wants to find the real JOYS
OF BEEKEEPING to learn and perform the reversing procedure.
As you might remember, I will NOT be at our January meeting of MCBA as I will
be giving a workshop (in spite of my stroke damaged voice) at the annual meeting
of the American Beekeeping Federation in Fort Worth, Texas. Much more important,
I will be in close commune with the leading scientists, professional apiculturists,
queen breeders, equipment makers, and government officials of our entire "bee
world" of today for 5 days of learning, so that I can bring that knowledge back
home to Maryland and teach you the latest findings.
My bee partner, Master Beekeeper Ann Harman, will accompany me; and also be
part of a Honey Packing workshop in addition to getting me on and off the airplane,,
helping me walk when needed, etc. Master Beekeeper Bill Miller plus some of
our other Master Beekeepers will conduct the meeting. I have spent $120 to purchase
some slides about bee diseases that will be shown and discussed at the January
12th meeting plus I have asked Bill to demonstrate REVERSING as well as answer
questions.
Therefore, if you REALLY desire to be a BETTER BEEKEEPER than you are now,
temporarily forget my PINK PAGES and be at the meeting 7:30 sharp, and LEARN!
Our famous SHORT COURSE, the only one in the whole U. S. taught exclusively
by MASTER BEEKEEPERS witl meet on 5 or 6 consecutive Tuesday nights beginning
March 6th. On Saturday, April 6th, we will start two new colonies with packages,
one on 2 deep bodies with wax foundation and the other with 3 Illinois bodies
with plasticell foundation to allow all to compare the merits or demerits of
the differences.
I have ordered UNmarked queens, so"that you can watch how to we mark queens
and BLUE is the correct color for the year 2000. You will also see the PROPER
way to install package bees. These 2 new colonies will add to our existing colonies
in our club apiary, and I hope to have our Master Beekeepers plus myself work
with YOU on weekends this coming year so you can learn MORE and BETTER techniques,
plus helping me up when I fall. HaHa
In the February and March PINK PAGES, I will talk about SPLITTING COLONIES
either to increase numbers or to prevent swarming, and SUPERING, when, how many,
and the differences between using foundation and drawn comb.
Who knows, by the EAS meeting in Salisbury, Maryland from July 31 to August
4th, I may have more people ready to take the MASTER BEEKEEPER examinations
to add to our present NINE (which is already 7 more than any other bee club
in the world). You be in Salisbury to either take the tests yourself or cheer
for our members who become CERTIFIED. Before you ask, my voice is improving,
but not near as rapidly as I had hoped. But at least I am not dead, which the
doctors say is remarkable for having suffered 5 distinct strokes, the first
a minor one in 1990, followed by two major ones in 1996 and 1997, and 2 minor
ones in 1998. A friend of mine told me that the only reason that I am still
alive is "the Lord is not sure just what to do with me and the Devil is afraid
of me"; and I told my friend that the real reason that I am still alive is that
I haven't finished UPGRADING enough beeHAVERS into good beeKEEPERS yet so that
my Great Grandchildren won't become hungry due to lack of honey bee pollination.
George W. Imirie - Certified Master Beekeeper