Practice Makes Perfect

An excellent point brought up at our Field Day....Practice "picking up your queen" with DRONES. Drones don't have a stinger - so you can handle them painlessly.

There may be a day when you need to handle your queen:

1. Putting her "away" for safe keeping while you're seriously messing with the hive.
2. Grabbing her and making sure she "goes in the right box" if you're splitting hives.
3. Grabbing her to "do away" with her

Queen Cells

My two backyard hives came through winter GANG BUSTERS this year. I noted a "slowing" of pollen the last couple of weeks...and last weekend's check confirms they're making queen cells - and LOTS of them! Swarm and Supercedure. Hive one was split last weekend. Hive two will be split as soon as I put together some empty frames (or I'm hoping to catch them if they swarm).

I opted to use an empty DEEP as my "nuc" for hive one's split. Yesterday, during the inspection of hive 3 (the new hive), I heard PIPING! (that's the newly emerged queen's "rally call") THAT WAS WAY COOL.

Here's a youtube link I found - where you can hear an example of PIPING. (looks like this guy was cutting queen cells out - there's a bunch of them in his box)

Thank you Jeff

A BIG THANKS to Jeff for letting us in his beeyard to explore and learn. This was our bee club "meeting" for the month - a FIELD day - and it was well received. We all got to see and compare the progress of newly installed packages, a queenless hive, a captured swarm hive, and last years overwintered hives. Jeff showed us his technique of POWDERED SUGARING a hive to check for mites. It was interesting the little WHITE bees emerging...and the change in the sound of the hive. Destroying drone brood was discussed - the freezing method, the cutting out method, etc - as a matter of mite control. Jeff briefly explained his technique of creating NUC hives as well.

THANKS Jeff!

To "queen exclude" or not

Queen excluders - AKA: honey excluders. As a "newbee" beekeeper, I bought into the queen excluder idea my first year. Well of course the thing that "NEVER HAPPENS" happened....my first year package bees swarmed. I thought I was keeping ahead of them - I felt they had plenty of space.....but apparently THEY THOUGHT this excluder was a ROOF overhead.

I don't use them anymore. Oh, but what about the queen laying eggs in your supers!??? It happens, but rarely and when it does it's a FEW. The queen doesn't like to travel over capped honey. This a simple check - make sure your frames in the top box, have honey on the tops (and the brood is below).

And so what??? if there are a couple of bees brought-up in the supers? by the time honey harvest rolls around - these bees will likely be hatched out....and the tendency of the workers is to keep that queen down in the deeps.

Of course this subject is a little different if we're talking about CUT COMB vs. extracted. The brood cells will be darkened and not real appealing to the consumer....

To me, the trade-off is a HANDFULL of "darkened/brood cells" or a hive BURSTING with workers and honey. (the excluder also slows the workers down in getting honey into the supers)

my opinion....Queen excluders = Honey excluders = Swarm inducers.

Keeping Ahead of the Hive

When do I stop feeding the bees? When they stop taking it. Take a look around you....are there flowers in bloom? flowering trees? dandelions? If there's other resources for them, it's time.

When is it time to SUPER? Remember the "feeling" of SPACE is very important - STAY AHEAD OF YOUR BEES.

If you haven't already - you should consider the spring time hive body switch - which will put the "empty" lighter frames on top (these are the frames they ate-up over the winter)

According to one beekeeper - give your hive bodies a "heft" test - lift....heavy? Is the hive BURSTING with bees? - top deep box frames covered with bees? ....SUPER

Tis the season - drones are "made" and hives are making queen cells....