Beekeepers Friend

I went to the apiaries in north Escambia County, FL this morning. I was early for the appointment with the news paper photographer. I decided to number all the honey supers in 4 of my apiaries saving the largest one in the area where the photographer was to meet me at. I found a deadout in the second apiary. It was the only hive there. I decided to leave it there for now and pick it up when I pulled honey in that area.

I waited for about 30 minutes for the photographer. When he got there, we went to the apiary and started the shoot. He knew nothing about bees so I had to explain what I was doing and why.

He took lots of pictures and several of the queen in one colony. He took notes and asked lots of questions. It was an enjoyable time even when he was stung on the finger. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours. By the time we left the bees behind, I was ready to go home and rest. I have had news people interview me before and it always left me drained.

I am home now and rested. Tomorrow I will take my grandkids to the zoo and be real tired when it is over. Gotta have some recreation. 🙂

I need to requeen all my hives not because I signed a piece of paper promising that I would implement Best Management Practices (BMP), but because I have never requeened in the Fall. I read that Fall queens will lay eggs longer because they are new queens and they haven’t learned to shut down as soon as the Spring queens at this time of the year. That means that the Fall queens will have more bees going into the Winter and the colony will be stronger going into the Spring.

BMP means that one should requeen at least once a year to keep the colony strong. An older queen sometimes did not mate with enough drones to keep her in sperm for a longer period and she would be prone to lay more drones than worker bees. A new young queen would more fertile and be prone to lay more worker bees.

IPM means controlling the mites and hive beetles to a tolerable threshold level by using legal chemicals or using non chemicals such as powdered sugar to dust the bees to remove the Varroa Mites.

Without checking the colonies to see which hive needed queens, I ordered enough queens to place one in each colony that I have. I also ordered extra bees for a couple of beekeepers to help keep the cost down by ordering bulk. They also would help with the shipping cost.

The bees arrived Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning I delivered the beekeepers their orders and I planned to introduce my queens Friday. However, the local news paper called and wanted to do a photo shoot with me working my bees and they wanted to do it on Friday. If you ever have reporters follow you around, you will find out that they want you to pose or show your bees in a certain way for pictures or video and that takes time. You really cannot work on a schedule that way. I have other obligations during some days of the week and I have scheduled things to work smoothly for myself and the other obligations. I didn’t have a schedule for the reporters and photographers, so I had to change things around to meet the needs of the day.

One of the beekeepers called and said that he needed to order more queens as another beekeeper decided that re queening would be good for his bees too. I lucked out by selling my queens to them. Now I am not pressed for time to use my queens. I will just order at another time when it will fit my schedule better. Now I can really concentrate on the reporters then get some other needed work done before I dedicate time for the queens.

In this business, you have to be flexible. Nothing is set in stone except when working with queen cells. When using queen cells, you are governed by time. When the cells are ready to hatch, they do it in a timed fashion. Usually when you order queen cells, you only have one to two day in which to install them as they are ready to hatch and hatch they will. If you haven’t installed them when they hatch then the queens will try to kill each other and that is not a pretty sight. Especially when you pay good money for them. I’ll explain the use of queen cells in a later post.

Don’t forget to read. If you haven’t subscribed to the American Bee Journal or Bee Culture, then consider doing that now. There is a lot of good information about keeping bees, research, and general information to be had in these magazines. Enjoy your bees.

Tuesday, I went to a new beekeeper to check his bees and he asked me to help pull his honey and to extract. I got there about 8:45 am and we proceeded to check his bees. The last time I checked them, colony #1 was strong and have a very good brood pattern. Colony #2 didn’t have any eggs nor brood. We took two frames of brood from the strong colony and placed them in the brood less hive. I didn’t see the queen and we would wait for a week and check again. I really thought that we would have to combine the two together and make one hive.

Well, one thing let to another and it was three weeks before we got back to the apiary. That was Tuesday. I was amazed that there were eggs and sealed brood. Still couldn’t find the queen. It may be that she is a small queen and that would make it difficult to find her since she would be about the same size of worker bees. Anyway, there was brood. They have not made an abundance of honey, but they were working on it.

The strong colony had two and a half Illinois supers of honey so we left the half super on and pulled the two full supers. Since this young beekeeper doesn’t have any extraction equipment yet, I was going to use my two frame extractor. The only trouble was, my extractor has not been used in over four years and was sitting outside in the weather and had been corroded to the point of seizing up and was inoperable.

I called a friend and he let us use his two frame extractor. Not having had the opportunity to use this extractor, we didn’t have all the pieces. His was set up to use a drain tube instead of a gate valve. Since we didn’t know to look for the tube, we had to jury rig using a paper plate, which didn’t work, and a funnel with 2 paper clips and 2 rubber bands. After a spill or two, we finally extracted about 4 1/2 gallons of honey. That is about 54 lbs. by weight. My young friend was very happy. This is his first honey from his own hive of bees.

I tried to get to the rest of my apiaries, but something kept coming up and preventing me from doing my work. Any excuse to keep from going to the field. That is my biggest problem. I have to get back into the habit of working my bees. If you want to make a go of beekeeping, then you must be a self starter and make yourself “want to”. Bees can pay for themselves if you work your bees as a business. You already know that they are livestock and must be taken care of. If you had horses in a stable in an out laying area, then you would check on them regularly to make sure they had food and water and to make sure that the bears and such had not gotten into them. Bees are to be cared for in the same manner.

I am in the process of cleaning up my back yard so I can start cleaning some supers. I need to have as many supers as I have working hives so when I go to collect the honey, I can put an empty super on the hives I take honey off of so the bees will have a place to hang out in, instead of thinking about swarming because they have no room. When I go to collect the honey, it would be a good time to check the condition of the boxes and bees. That way when I do order my queens, I will know just how many I need to buy and what wooden ware I need to replace.

Don’t let the need for something to be the deciding factor to get you in gear to get that equipment ready. Get the equipment ready and waiting for the time when you do need it. Start now!

One thing that the rains have taught me is – If you have a canopy that you use for a honey booth, do not use it for anything else, including leaving it up in your back yard. I was using my 10′ x 10′ canopy to shade my work area that I designated for cleaning my hive boxes. I just put it up and was getting ready to start my cleanup when the rains came and I forgot about it long enough for the rain water to stretch the top and get heavy enough to punch a hole in the top center. That allowed the water to collect even more weight and collapse the whole frame. Here is what it looks like now.

Now I have to buy another canopy for my festivals. But now I have some experience as to what not to do.

I have finished numbering my hives with the number 18. That is the grand total of my colonies. I am planning to split next spring so I can start expanding again.

Now is the time for me to start making plans to procure queens for the fall re-queening. This will be sometime in the month of September.

I have mentioned that I wanted to re queen this month. The reason was to have the new queen lay bunches and bunches of fall eggs so the bees would be very strong and young going into Winter. That would equal out to be a very strong overwintering colony. However, that ain’t gonna happen. My queen supplier said that in order to make queens, the bees needed pollen. His was not bringing in any and now he has to feed pollen substitute just to try to save his bee through Winter.

I may try to get some out of GA. They will cost more, but if I can get them, I will be better off. If Fred Rossman doesn’t have any, then I will just have to wait until spring.

I checked my apiaries in the northern part of the county and I found one that was queen-less. They are putting honey in all the cells and by the time I get back to them, most of the bees will have died. There are enough bees at this time to try to combine with another colony if I can get back soon, otherwise, I will just have to collect the honey in the late fall and clean the hive boxes for next year’s splits. Of all the hives I did check, I can pull another super of honey off each of them. The rest of the bees are in the two counties east of me. Those I will try to check this weekend.

Read some more books and plan to visit some of the workshops within a couple hundred miles. You can find out how some of the other beekeepers operate.

This is a repeat, but I have had several people ask me to remind all my readers.

The next Florida State Beekeepers Association workshop will be October 30, 31, Nov 1, 2008. That is the last weekend of the month. Will be held in Gainesville, FL at:

Florida Farm Bureau Group

www.ffbic.com
5700 SW 34th St, Gainesville –

. You do not need to be a member of the Florida State Beekeepers Association to attend.

At the same time and place, the Master Beekeepers Program and Bee College will be held for those who have or want to keep bees.

October 30, 2008
Florida Farm Bureau
Federation, 5700 SW 34th Street
Gainesville, Florida

The University of Florida Master Beekeeper Program (UFMBP) announces a new opportunity for Florida Beekeepers to achieve the rank of Apprentice Beekeeper. On, October 30, 2008, the day before the FSBA Annual Convention, we will host training and examinations for only the Apprentice Beekeeper Level.

Now is the time to make plans to attend. Contact Mike O’Malley at [email protected] .

Even though Murphy’s Law caught me, it was for the best. When I got to the mechanic’s, my battery was the culprit. But while I was there I told them to just check for anything else that might be bad. My distributor and rotor were burnt, and I was told that if I had gotten put into the country, I would in all probability have been stranded. I guess that instead of Murphy’s Law messing me up, it was God taking care of me.

After getting the truck repaired, it had been raining and looked like more on the way, I decided to go home and try again another day. In the meantime, I did get my colony info sheets finished and will try to finish the numbering of the hives and start making plans to build some screen bottom boards.

Some people will say that the screened bottom boards are a waste of time and materials. I personally think that with the screens to let the debris fall to the ground, using the powdered sugar as a mite treatment, the mites will also fall to the ground and away from the bees. With the solid bottom, the mites just fall to the floor of the hive and jump onto any bee that just happens to be passing. That is not getting rid of them. Just moving them from bee to bee.

Anyway, it is supposed to rain tomorrow and be dry Friday. That is my target day to finish numbering the hives. I have eight more to go, unless, of course, I find more dead outs.

Have you thought about making yourself an observation hive? Think about it and go to the web to see if you can find a schematic for it. Or you can purchase one from most of the bee supply companies. The observation hive is great for school and public demonstrations, and is a drawing card for your honey booth.

I got up this morning and got my wife off to work. Things started down hill from there. It started raining, my Dodge Ram would not start, and I couldn’t go to the bee yards to finish marking the hives. I decided to get some honey gathered to restock my truck and wife’s car for possible sales to the public and couldn’t find the cases that I use for that purpose. I later found them in use in the back store room with honey already in them waiting for me to put them in the vehicles.

Then I decided to catch up on my bee journal and couldn’t find my notes. I was going to make new hive sheets for my workbook, but needed my notes for that. I found them tonight. They were hidden under some mail that I picked up Saturday and forgot to read. I didn’t get anything accomplished today. Tomorrow I will take the pickup to the mechanic’s to get it fixed. I need my wheels.

I will take my notes and make worksheets for my hives while I am waiting at the mechanic’s. The worksheets will be for each hive and they will tell a daily history of each colony. The sheets are loose leaf and will be placed in each apiary where the particular colony resides. When the colony is moved to another location, the corresponding sheet will be physically moved to that apiary section. Since the hives will have a number, I will not have to remember the location of that colony inside the apiary, I just have to look at the number and there it is. Simple, but I didn’t think of it until an old beekeeper who is retired from the bee business, told me his system. It does make sense.

Sometimes the best laid plans must be adjusted to the circumstances. Until next time, keep planning for the next step.

My friend, Don, and I went to the bee yards yesterday after stopping to eat breakfast and get some ice for the little cooler. It was hot but, the humidity was down, so it felt 10 degrees cooler than the 90+. I wish that I had taken a picture before we mowed and trimmed the worst of all my apiaries. Here is a picture after we finished cleaning up.

Of all of the hives in the yard, I have only 4 colonies left alive. And that includes the one I brought from home. I lost some because of starvation, and some from pests. The main cause of the pests moving in was because of the Varroa mites. Once the mites get stronger than the threshold ceiling, then the bees get weak from the mites sucking their blood. At this point, the bees are not able to combat or control the other pests, such as, the Greater Wax Moth and the Small Hive Beetle.

Three of the colonies are survivors. The fourth colony is cross-combed, meaning the frames did not have any foundation and the bees built their combs long ways through the width of the frames from one side of the brood box to the other, tying all the frames together. The only way to clean this up is to cut the comb between each frame so you can pull them out one by one. Then each frame has to be cleaned and foundation replaced. On that brood box, we put a new brood box then we wait till next Spring to work the hive. The queen will lays eggs until she has no more empty cells in the bottom box, then she moves up to the next level to continue laying eggs. After the brood has hatched, I will take the cross-combed box off the bottom and take it home to clean and render the wax.

The rest of the apiaries in the north part of the county were clean of grass and weeds around the hives, so we just continued numbering the hives in sequence until we got to the last hive. All the other colonies were strong and most are needing supers. That will take place this next week.

I only have three more apiaries to number and clean. Then I will be cleaning equipment until I either collect the extra honey to extract or spread around to the needy colonies getting them ready for the winter months. Remember, I leave one super of honey in a medium or Illinois box per colony. I feel that the bees know what kind of food they need for winter, so I will let them keep one super that they have earned and take the rest of the surplus honey for myself. This way I shouldn’t have to feed them unless the winter lasts longer that usual. From now on to the last of November, Goldenrod, Spanish Pepper, and cotton are the bulk of nectar producing plants.

Now I have to get my equipment ready to go to the rest of the apiaries and take notes,

Remember, your state bee inspector, or your local extention agent is there to help answer your questions. Use them!