Beekeepers Friend

This is just a reminder to all Florida Beekeepers. Please contact your state bee inspector to get your bees inspected and registered.  Besides of being a Florida State law, it is for your benefit. It will help the state to keep records on the number of registered colonies in the state and to help the inspector to warn you of possible American Foulbrood. This is a very contagious bee virus that will kill your bees and possibly the whole apiary.

I borrowed this information from an email sent by Doc Bullard, Pensacola, FL. It is information that all Florida beekeepers should be doing. Signing up with the state apiary inspectors section is strictly voluntarily.

Folks,

BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR MAINTAINING EUROPEAN HONEY BEE COLONIES

1. This is a voluntary program designed to minimize the threat of Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) in Florida and to dilute any feral AHB populations that may become established in Florida as our gentle managed colonies are our best line of defense against AHB.

2. Beekeepers participating in this program must sign a compliance agreement with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

3. Beekeepers will maintain a valid registration with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services/Division of Plant Industry (FDACS/DPI), and be current with any and all special inspection fees.

4. A Florida apiary may be deemed as EHB (European Honey Bee) with a minimum 10% random survey of colonies using the FABIS (Fast African Bee Identification System) and/or the computer-assisted morphometric procedure, ie. universal system for the detection of Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) (USDA-ID), or other approved methods by FDACS on a yearly basis or as requested.

5. Honey bee colony divisions or splits should be queened with production queens or queen cells from EHB breeder queens following Florida’s Best Management Practices.

6. Florida beekeepers are discouraged from collecting swarms that cannot be immediately re-queened from EHB queen producers.

7. Florida Beekeepers should practice good swarm prevention techniques to prevent an abundance of virgin queens and their ready mating with available AHB drones that carry the defensive trait.

8. Maintain all EHB colonies in a strong, healthy, populous condition to discourage usurpation (take over) swarms of AHB.

9. Do not allow any weak or empty colonies to exist in an Apiary, as they may be attractive to AHB swarms.

10. Recommend re-queening with European stock every six months unless using marked or clipped queens
and having in possession a bill of sale from a EHB Queen Producer.

11. Immediately re-queen with a European Queen if previously installed clipped or marked queen is found missing.

12. Maintain one European drone source colony (250 square inches of drone comb) for every 10 colonies in order to reduce supercedure queens mating with AHB drones.

13. To protect public safety and reduce beekeeping liability do not site apiaries in proximity of tethered or confined animals, students, the elderly, general public, drivers on public roadways, or visitors where this may have a higher likelihood of occurring.

14. Treat all honey bees with respect.

Bee Safe,

Doc
Pensacola, Fl

Think about it and see if you are not already using some of the principals. Check you honey supers regularly to make sure the bees have some place to put honey other than in the brood area. My bees are working hard and fast.

Splitting is a possibility at this time also. Keeps them from swarming and will increase your count. Have a nice day today.

I did get to check my last hive. I went with the expectation of splitting and adding a deep super so the bees could pull out more deep comb for the next split.  However, when I got there and looked at the hive, I found out that I had left a deep honey super on and it was full. I am not strong enough to pick up a 10 frame deep of honey and I didn’t have another deep to put the honey in so I just added a deep on top of that.

I will have to get someone to go with me to help pull the deep so I can extract the honey. I really do need to split the hive as there are way too many bees in the hive. This is the hive that I split and then it  swarmed three times in two weeks. Don’t know how that happened, but I got one of them and I had someone else get the other two. All four (one split and three swarms) survived. However, this was back in April of 2008.

I will just have to start doing better and follow my own advice and instructions. You know, it is easier to see someone else’s problems and solutions than it is to see one’s own. I can tell you what to do all day long and still not take my own advice.  For the next 3 days, I am tied up with two different fairs. After that, I will be attempting to do what I need to do to get my own house in order.

I even started this post last week and forgot to finish it. I am in the process if getting materials together to make some screened bottom boards and tops for both 10 frames hives and 5 frame nucs. My aim is to make splits into nuc boxes and let the bees grow into two story nucs then put them into either full deeps or just split them again and double my nucs until I have enough bees to finish the year out. Then next Spring, I will split and start over again.

Do you have a plan? You need one. What are you trying to accomplish this year? Make lots of honey? Make lots of bees? Why? f0r sale, for increases? You need a plan. Remember, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. (This is a quote from someone that is way smarter than I.

Have a great weekend!

Instead of going to my last hive and splitting, adding honey supers and maybe put on another brood box just because, I went to my young friends, Matt and Rashell’s house to see what could be done about a swarm of bees that elected to leave after they split the hive a week prior.

When Matt called and told me that the swarm went up about 30 feet onto a limb in an Oak tree, I told him to get a wooden spoon and beat the top of an empty hive. When I got there, he was using a hive tool. He said the cluster was not as large as it was when he called me. I got a wood limb about 2″ in diameter & about 18-20″ long and started beating on the empty hive. After a while, the bees were seen going up to the swarm cluster and down to the colony that they left in the first place.

This is the first time I tried to “call” the bees down using this old tecknic. Some of the old timers swear by this method. About 20 minutes or so later, the cluster was gone from the limb. We didn’t see a swarm leaving the area and there were three sets of eyes watching. I assume that they came back to the house they left and started to work. I had Matt add another super to both his hives as there was no more room for more nectar in the supers. He has an ideal place for bees where he is at. He will have to extract in about 2-3 weeks just so he will have more supers available for more nectar.

Back to the beating of the box….I don’t know if the beating was what called the bees back or if this was a mating swarm that was as large as a primary one or not. Whatever the reason, the bees are back and I will have to do this again several more times before I am convinced it works. I’ll keep you posted.

Get ready, the bees are working and they will not stop until the flow is over. HAPPY HONEY COLLECTING!

For all ya’ll that do things in a timely manor, this is not for you. But for all ya’ll others, this is something to read and rejoice with me about. I have now joined the ranks of beekeepers that gets things done.

Remember I have been telling you to get your equipment ready and in shape so you can just pick up and go at a moments notice. Well…I did it finally. Last week I went to a young couple to take some bees off their hands. I just picked up two nucs, with frames, bottom boards, top boards and went. Didn’t even have to look and look.

Wednesday, I got a call to capture a swarm. I just picked up a brood box, bottom board, and top board and went. (Frames were already in the BB. When I got to the site, my friend, Roy, met me there and since I didn’t have drawn out comb, he loaned me a nuc box with five frames of comb.

The ideal scenario is to have a frame of brood in the box when putting the swarm in. The swarm will immediately start caring for the babies as if they belonged to them. Even if some of the bees don’t want to accept the box you give them, the nurse bees will not leave the babies. That will entice the other bees to set up housekeeping. 

In my case, since I didn’t have a frame of brood, brood-comb  is the next best thing. If bees used the comb for babies, then it is “good enough for us”. I set the swarm box up in my back yard with all the others and left them for 24 hours before I did anything. Today I got three empty nucs and and a deep super, put on my armor (bee suit), veil, smoker, and hive tool and commenced to put second stories on the three nucs and one full hive.

The way I did it is simple and also lets the bees know that a new cavity has been added to their homes. I pulled a frame of brood up into the second story into the center slot and replaced it with a foundation frame. The bees on the frames I pulled up will let the others know there is another room available. Since all my colonies are in the process of making babies, this was my best bet. If I was just putting on a honey super, then I would put a frame of honey in the new super in the center and score the top of the capped honey so it would drip down and the bees would then follow the honey to see why it started to run. They would repair the caps and start drawing out wax for more honey.

The reason I used deep nucs is that is all I have, except for one honey super for a nuc. I don’t use nucs for honey. I use them to make babies and when I get eight frames of babies and two frames of honey, then I put everything into a 10 frame brood box, unless I decide to split them and start a new set of colonies. That’s another story.

The reason I used a brood box for the ten frame colony is because I want the bees to draw out some more comb for later splits and swarms. Wet comb is a great enticer to stay for a new swarm also.

I still have to super one more colony and that will be tomorrow. I will probably put two honey supers on that one since I don’t get to visit it as often as I would like.  I am not putting Queen excluders on as I am wanting bees at this point. I plan to make several splits this year to expand my colony count.

Now remember, I leave a honey super on the hive year round. Only in the first honey collection do I use that super. However, since I am wanting bees this year, I will probably not get too much honey this year as I am having the bees to draw out foundation and putting up enough honey for Winter.

Now I will be making plans to build some screened bottom boards to replace some that have deteriorated and at the same time make some more top boards. My nucs have no screened bottom boards at this time so I will probably make some screens for them too.

Ok, that is enough for now. I can talk all day about what to do but like some of you, I have to have someone to push me to get me started “practicing what I am preaching”.

I wish you a very Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Since the last post, I have been sick, filed my Income Tax report, then lost  my computer keyboard, sent it back to supplier, bought another one, and hooked an old keyboard up temporarily. Just got new keyboard tonight and hooked it up. This is the second thing I have written.

I went to a young beekeeping couple last week and took some bees off their hands. They had too many bees so they wanted to split and didn’t want the increase. I now have two full colonies and two nucs.

It has rained most of the day here so sometime during this week I will be going into all my colonies to see what is going on and what they need to continue.

Spring has definitely sprung in North Florida. Get your gear ready because there are some swarming going on now as well as some splitting. Have a good season and maybe I’ll get into gear and actually say something that is of value in the near future.

Here it is–several days later and I still have not looked into my hives. I guess I will have to get a novice to come over and take care of that little problem for me. I seem to be better at telling someone else how to do something rather than doing it for myself. This could turn out to be an excellent training exercise for someone.

Do you know that now is the time to do some real beekeeping maintenance before the spring honey flow? While you are checking for honey/sugar syrup, pollen/pollen substitute, brood, disease, and pests, you can also be looking for messed up frames, wax, rotten wood, paint (or lack of), equipment that needs to be repaired/replaced, and making sure that all your supers are ready to pick up and put on hives without being repaired, painted, frames ready to put in said supers and all the equipment (hive tools, smokers [bellows]buckets for wax, porpolis, comb honey, etc] is sharp and in good repair.

Remember, the bees are afixin’ to go to work and you will be busy giving them room to work in and pulling honey, extracting same, bottling in clean jars that you have thoughtfully already cleaned and capped so dust would not get in while you waited for the honey to come in.

You really need to keep reading and attending your association meetings to keep up to date on the new developments and to ask questions for those answers that you really don’t know. There are special meetings coming up that you need to attend just for more information or clarification on something that you are not sure about.

I know that the Alabama workshop in Montgomery will take place this Saturday, February 4, 2012 at Auburn University.

Roger Bemis is hosting a Queen rearing class at his place near Robertsdale, AL. next Friday, February 11, 2012. For more information, call Roger at 251-213-0168.

The Tupelo Beekeepers Association is having a  Queen grafting class at Chipley, FL. Here is the flyer I received:

Here is the flyer for the queen grafting course we are offering.  If you were at the last meeting you probably got one of these.  There has been one minor change.  I have added my cell phone number.  If you can’t get me at my home number please call me on my cell phone.  I am not in the house much during the day.

Barbara Mumpower

Secretary/Treasurer

Tupelo Beekeepers Association

Tupelo Beekeepers Association’s

  Queen Grafting class

Where:   Laurence Cutts Place

How Much:  Registration: $25.00

How Many:  Limit 8 people per class.

When:  Classes start Wednesday, Feb 29, 2012, at 9.00 AM.

A class will be held each Wednesday thereafter as long as needed.

You must be pre-registered to attend.

Each student will receive a new Chinese grafting tool.

v Each student will get the cells they grafted and will be guaranteed at least 5 cells.

v Each student must pick up their cells Saturday, 10 days later, by 8 AM.

v Contact Barbara Mumpower @850-872-6107, cell 850-532-4619 or email tealpond@yahoo.com

Those attending must pre-register by filling in the form below and mailing it to: Barbara Mumpower 2813 East 11^th Street Panama City Florida 32401 along with registration fees and a phone number or Email address so I can let you know the date of your class. Detach here \I/

Queen Grafting Class

Make checks out to:

Tupelo Beekeepers Association

Name____________________________________

Phone Number________________ or Email_______________________

Number Attending _____________x $25 = __________ Amount enclosed

Please be sure to give me some way to contact you

Thank you

I will try to find some more for you to look into soon.

It’s raining here in Pensacola, FL. So I am going to enjoy my day off and hope you are enjoying all that all ya’ll are doing.

For a Master Beekeeper, I seem to be not the right one to say anything. I haven’t looked at my bees since last November.  But just looking out the back door, it seems that I only have one colony that is working. There should be two. I will be looking into my hives tomorrow afternoon. (Procrastination time was this Winter. I should have at least looked into the hives on a warm day in December and sometime in January.) Again, don’t do as I do, do as I say. hehe

I am getting some nuc boxes ready so I can split sometime this spring. I will be using plastic foundation with wax coating. I have found that using nuc boxes for splits works best for me. when the bees get crowded, I just put another nuc box on for the second story. Then when that box get full, I can either split the two boxes and put another box on top of  the new splits, or — I can automatically split again. Or, I can take the 10 frames and put them in a full hive box and have a working full colony.

I was asked the other day to tell what the newspaper method of combining two colonies. Here is an explanation and other methods of combining.

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/FloridaBeekeepers/message/4758

If any of you readers have questions about this presentation, then by all means, ask. I will have another post in a day or two telling you about my adventures in hive diving.

Happy New Year! I haven’t written anything since last year. Maybe this year, you and I will get a better grip on this bee thing——maybe. hehe.

Did you know that Bee Spring has sprung? Sure has, in South Florida.The bees are gearing up for the Orange Blossoms in February down in the Miami area. The queens are laying eggs as fast as they can to have the largest group of workers ready to get honey. The over-wintered workers are busy pulling in pollen from where ever  they can for the new larvae to munch on.

The Ocala/Orlando area is just about ready to spring out of Winter getting organized to do the same thing except maybe not as much Orange Blossoms as their southern neighbors.

North Florida is still about 3 to 7 weeks from springing out of Winter. But that doesn’t mean the beekeepers can go back into hibernation. We need to be checking the bees to see if they have enough honey or sugar syrup to last until the Spring honey flow that will start the last part of February and first part of March. Also check to be sure that the bees are pulling in pollen. If not, then you need to feed a pollen substitute.

For all you readers that have been following my mother-in-law, she is here in Pensacola with my wife and me. She is looking better than she has in some months. She is eating and exercising more and getting around a whole lot better. I think that now I can concentrate on working bees, writing for Beekeepersfriend, and attending more bee meetings.

I hope all yawl had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a new year in the bee yard, attending bee meetings, fairs, farmer’s markets, and spreading the word about bees in schools, civic meetings, and where ever there is someone willing to listen. Until the next time, clean out your smoker and make the necessary repairs to it, sharpen your hive tool, and check for holes in your veil.

Just for your information, I have not been able to post this month because of family illnesses. I am somewhat better but, my mother-in-law was in the hospital for about a week and my wife, Bettie, flew out to West Texas to be with her. Now they are on their way driving here to Pensacola by way of Texarkana and Memphis, Tn.

I have been by myself since Dec 1. Right now, I am suffering dizzy spells brought on by some of my new medications. I did drive over to the East side of Pensacola to help another new beekeeper check her bees and show how to make some sugar syrup. This is when I found out that when adding  water, instead of hot water, make sure it is a rolling boil. Otherwise the sugar will not melt and mix with the water.

We had hot water when we added it to a container of about 10 pounds of sugar and all it did was mix and stayed granulated. That was a disappointment to both of us. Made a mess in the feeder bucket.  That is what experimentation is all about. To find out what works and what doesn’t.

The formula that we were using was for 2:1, To make a sustaining syrup to keep the bees fed for the times they are out of food, you would fill the container up with sugar and then pour boiling water into the container with the sugar, stirring all the while to help the water to penetrate the sugar and to start the mixing process. Keep adding water and stirring until the water is half way up to the original mark. This will make a syrup of about the same weight as honey. This kind of syrup will give them the energy they need to generate heat and will sustain life until the next honey flow.

1:1 syrup. This is where you add sugar to the mark on the container,  then add boiling water, stirring and mixing as you go, until the water line is up to the same line as the sugar until the contents of the container is the consistency of thin syrup or similar to nectar. This is used for kick-starting the bees into making more brood for the spring honey flow.

At this time of the year, you need to be checking the weight of your hive bodies. If light, then it is time to feed your bees some sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). You should also check the pollen in your hive. Because the bees will need it when they start making babies in the early spring. That is what they feed the larvae 5 days after they are hatched. If there is no pollen, then the queen will not lay eggs and your colony will die.

My bees are still working the Spanish Needle in my front and back yard. However, there is not enough of the flowers to make a lot of nectar. They are putting the pollen up for the early spring baby boom.

I have done all I can to help my bees. It is up to them to carry on. So I wish all yawl a

***********************VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS******************

*********************************and a****************************

******************HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!*************