Saturday November 6, 2004
An email from our local bee club, The Tidewater Beekeepers Association reveals they have a new web page. On there is a link to a most interesting story on Varroa control. The USDA has done research on a natural Varroa mite control agent. I figured it was only a matter of time.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Bright sunny day, temperature 75 deg F, wind light out of the northeast. This is my kind of day to fool around in the bees. A quick trip to Pungo for what I call the "Fall Visit"
What's this? The beginning of the asters while the Goldenrod still hasn't finished. There's still quite a bit of Goldenrod budding and the Asters usually last until well after first frost. Sometimes until mid December. Those are Goldenrod buds on the upper left.
This shows one of the reasons I like Henley's Farm. This is five acres of Goldenrod and Asters in bloom overgrown between rows of blackberries. Not to speak of the various ditch banks and hedgerows in bloom.
This is where the saying "busy as a bee" comes from. The bee yard was a virtual roar of activity, with the usual smell of Goldenrod and Aster. Some newcomers to the trade think they have a disease, but after you've been at it awhile it's the smell of the little ladies preparing for winter. By the way, this flow is one of the reasons why I put off exams 'till now, hot weather is the other. Bees during a flow are as agreeable as they will ever be, and during the hot sultry summer they can be mean as snakes. A lot about beekeeping is in the timing.
The colony tops will be changed out before really cold weather for my usual two piece ventilated model. I've found these one piece "migratory" style covers are fine in the summer but around here in early spring they literally drip moisture on the bees.
When you don't check to see your colonies are queenright right after the honey flow, you may find some of these when you go back in the fall. Nasty devils to be sure, with a smell all their own. I admit I was remiss in not checking the queens after the honey flow, but even if you find the queenless colonies, all the successful methods of fixing the situation I know of require several trips to the bee yard. That's 20 miles round trip folks. And besides the expense end of it, All those methods require exchanging combs and since I've had foulbrood in the past, I don't think that's such a good idea.
I lost one out of eight colonies at the yard which I don't think was bad.
Before closing the colonies, I applied a plain grease patty to each for tracheal mite prevention. I haven't seen a sign of tracheal mite since I've kept grease patties on the colonies year round.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Saw the first of the Goldenrod starting to bloom on a roadside in Pungo. That means I'll see it here in a week or two. I haven't looked in on the bees in quite a while as the weather has been hot and there hasn't been a flow. I'll most likely check on them this weekend to determine the general condition.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
The fall flow around here is usually signaled by the start of the Sumac flow which started yesterday here at the house. My yard at home is usually a week or two behind the yard at Henley's. After Sumac, a break, then the Goldenrod, last the Asters.
The two pitifully small swarms in the back here at the house have filled out completely on a half gallon of syrup per week and will be able to participate in whatever fall flow develops.
Friday, June 18, 2004
Well the supers are finally in the honey house. The weather didn't cooperate the last couple of weekends, so after checking the weather forecast I took annual leave from the job and went out at eight thirty hoping to beat the worst of the heat. If I live to be a hundred I think I never shall figure these bees out. The colonies housed in one and a half stories just packed the upper half of the brood nest with honey and contracted the brood area to the lowest super. They didn't put anything above the excluder, except for one colony. As far as the heat goes, on the way back to the house the weatherman said the heat index was one hundred and four!
Monday May 31, 2004
Some of the newer folks in the bee club from time to time ask me when I take the honey off the bees. I've just about always taken the honey off at the end of the spring flow. How do I tell? Like this morning I went to Henley's farm and the bees were hanging' out. That is, all over the front of the strong colonies. They weren't out working. That's the sign I go by. If the bees aren't working and the weather's good it's about over. I'll most likely go Saturday and take the honey off, that is if it doesn't rain all week. A lot of rain will raise the moisture content of the honey.
Thursday April 22, 2004
So the swarms were early this year. I got a call from "Winkie" Henley last Friday night to say there was a swarm on the ground at the vegetable stand. Saturday it was off to the stand swarm bucket and empty hive body in hand. Sure enough at 7:00 am they were on the ground but were all knotted up in tall grass so the only hope was to leave the empty hive body with the entrance touching the swarm a hope for the best. When I left the bees had started to enter the hive. I returned at 1:00 to find the swarm gone. Then Winkie told me of the "huge" swarm he saw earlier in the week at the farm. It's my belief the anytime you have a spell of cold wet weather this time of the year the strong colonies will swarm within two days of the weather breaking. And so it was again this year. And yes, all my supers went on April 3.
Wednesday March 17, 2004
Since the bees I moved to Henley's roadside stand were in single deep supers I decided to go down last Sunday and add a super to each of them. This would make them my more or less my standard one and a half stories tall. When I opened them SHAZZAM! they had really " blown up " and in fairly nasty weather to boot.
Down on the farm I just had to check on one colony to be sure it was queenright. You see I had put a dead out above the inner cover of a particularly large colony and it proved to be a mistake. During a cold snap several pounds of bees froze up top clustering on brood the queen had gone up there and laid. I was afraid the queen was among them. I lifted a frame down below and saw sealed brood near the top. Close call. I don't think I'll do that again. The only other time I stored equipment above the inner cover on a strong hive the queen just moved the whole colony up there.
Sunday March 7, 2004
Out to the bee yard at Henleys to check and make sure none of the colonies were making swarm preparations. We had a gorgeous week with highs reaching the upper seventies a couple of days.
Most of the colonies at Henleys yard are in two story hives with a deep super on the bottom and a shallow super on top. That makes it easy to examine them as I only have to tilt the shallow super forward and check the bottom bars of the upper frames for the beginning of queen cells. The were clean and I also noticed there were absolutely no drones yet. I've never had a colony swarm until there were drones about the yard.
Sunday February 29, 2004
As I expected last Monday it turned quite cold, lows in the twenties and highs in the forties until Saturday when it went to the sixties again. Today it was approaching seventy and the forecast for next week puts the highs in the sixties and seventies and lows in the forties and fifties. With an eye to the forecast I did the "switchamaroo" on the colonies in the back yard.
When I opened the colonies up both had brood and had advanced quite a bit since February seventh. Hard to believe given the weather, but I'm of the belief that the time of season more than the weather starts brood rearing in the early spring. Just like the tulip bulbs in the ground, the bees "know" what's coming.
Sunday February 22, 2004
Three days in a row where the daytime highs were in the sixties and sunny for the most part. What a relief. Good bee activity form both the colonies in the back yard. I was tempted to reverse the colony positions to boost the weaker one but I think it was more spring fever than the most appropriate thing to do given we most likely have quite a bit of bad weather still ahead. I think the worst of this winter is over.
Friday February 13, 2004
Another crummy week weather wise. Highs in the mid forties. Today is shaping up to be quite nice and from my records the Maples should start blooming, but the bloom is usually from one to one and a half weeks behind the bloom as close as the end of the road. I'm within a quarter mile of the ocean here at the house and the weather is quite different than it is just two miles inland.
Saturday February 7, 2004
Finally the deep freeze broke. Today the high was 52F.Yesterday was the first day out of the mid 40's yet. I began my spring medication ritual with Apistan and Terramycin patties. One of the two colonies I keep at the house was very weak but alive the other was quite strong. One of the colonies at Henley's was week, one was dead, two were medium and the rest looked great. Huge in fact.
There has been quite a debate about the use of Terramycin, especially in patty form, over the last few years concerning the possibility of creating an antibiotic resistant strain of foulbrood. I don't leave the patties on longer than 6 weeks, the same treatment interval as the Apistan. When I go back to take off the Apistan about April 1st supers go on, splits are made, and the Terramycin patties are replaced with plain grease patties.
Sunday January 11, 2004
The last couple of days have been extremely cold, highs in the twenties and lows in the teens, with snow to boot. After all the years I've been at this, I still believe the weather around here has a lot to do with the fact there are no commercial beekeepers in tidewater. I've opened colonies around this time in January and seen small patches of brood coming on. To think a few days ago it was seventy, I just know the bees had started to brood up. Bam back in the deep freeze! Dead bees because they were spread out over the brood, and now frozen brood.
Monday January 5, 2004
We've certainly had unseasonably warm weather for the last few days. I'm talking seventy degrees in January! I checked on the only two colonies I have here at the house yesterday. Most of the colonies are out at Henley's.
One colony looked very good and the other, well I don't think it will be with us come spring. Both colonies were about the same strength going into the winter and after all these years, I still can't account for the differences in performance between colonies. The colonies out back are in single deeps because they will be moved early in the spring to a strawberry field Mr Henley rents which is remote from his main farm. If he needs two I might have to split the stronger colony and add brood from one of the colonies on his farm. I've done that in the past and it worked out well.
To help the weak colony here at the house I'll probably switch the two colony's positions if the weak one is alive around the end of February when I'll be applying Apistan and Terra patties. I ordered the meds today from Walter T. Kelly over the web. I refreshed the plain grease patties on the colonies when I opened them.