The Bee Line. Tim Ives' Tim Ives' Roosevelt Rd.

Transcription

1 The Bee Line Creating good and healthy beekeeping throughout MICHIANA PUBLISHED BY MICHIANA BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION Our Saturday, June 16 meeting at Tim Ives' bee yard will run from 9 a. m. to noon. Bring any bee protection you need and a lawn chair. Tim Ives' JUNE 2012 MBA CONTACTS PRESIDENT Bob Baughman bob.deb.baughman@sbcglobal.net Tim Ives' Roosevelt Rd. VICE PRESIDENT AND RECORDING SECRETARY Tim Ives liquidgold2009@embarqmail.com TREASURER Tim lives at S.R. 23 right across S.R. 23 from where Roosevelt Rd. dead ends David Emerson into 23. There are two driveways, take the one on the right. You can get there from emerson3434@msn.com the U.S. 20 By-pass or on Roosevelt Rd. He is 5 miles north east of North Liberty. You can prepare yourself somewhat for this meeting by Googling Michiana EDITOR Beekeepers Association. Click on the facebook entry and you will get pictures of Henry Harris Tim's exploits and hives and advice plus comments by others Last month's auction meeting at Norman Lehman's was a huge success. There is henry4744@frontier.com no report in this issue but we hope to have some in the July issue. We do want to thank Norman and his family, friends and relatives and the many members of the MICHIANA Beekeepers Association who made the whole event work well Meeting Schedule GPS Saturday, July 21, Carol Shaw's, Granger 41o 44' N Saturday, August 18, Danny Slabaugh's, Nappanee 41o 27' N Saturday, September 15, Warsaw 41o 14' N Saturday, October 27, Nelson's Port-a-Pit, Wakarusa 41o 31' N 1.1huj 1. 86o04' W 85o 57' W 85o 51' W 86o 00' W

2 Wandering with an Old Timer by Henry Harris June: a line from one of the songs of my youth "she's come undone" pretty well describes the weather anymore. When our girls were young and going to church camp each Summer we quickly found out that the 2nd week of June was cold and rainy, not what kids go to camp for. Neither was it what the beekeeper was looking for. Black Locust had finished in May and the sweet clovers were coming on. Then right in the middle of it all was plopped down a week or ten days of cold and rain. The bees had been building up fast and begun to draw comb on our new foundation. Suddenly they had to turn up the furnace and burn up some of the honey they had stored but more distressingly they began to chew holes in the as yet untouched foundation. This was not quite back to the time before color was invented but not long afterward and there were no plastic foundations. So needing wax to cap brood cells and make burr comb in and around the brood nest to control temperatures better, the bees began tearing tiny bits of wax out of the newly installed and wired wax foundation, usually along the wires and where the foundation attaches to the frame. One tiny little bite (squeaky little voice here to emphasize the miniscule amount of the bite) at a time the bees can leave some frames almost completely empty of wax and others with large gaping holes. Plastic foundation eliminates this problem. Do not confuse DURAGILT with plastic foundation. DURAGILT has a plastic core that is covered with bees wax which is then impressed with the shape of brood cells. In times described above bees will strip the wax off the plastic to use elsewhere. Because the plastic core of DURAGILT is not impressed with the cell shape bees seem unable to rebuild comb on the plastic. They will readily bridge out from the bare plastic and build combs a bee space away but not on it. Come the 3rd or 4th week of June the bees would build those holes full of drone sized cells. Dr. C. C. Miller, , was a large comb honey producer near Chicago, wrote articles for the bee magazines, tried and evaluated everything anyone had to suggest in the way of bee equipment or management, and was very widely respected. Dr. Miller called drone cells 'honey cells' and loved to see the bees produce them because it meant more honey and less wax in the comb honey. But in the brood nest (somber, minor music) it means combs that are difficult to get out without rolling and killing bees, maybe even your queen, and squashing the drone brood and nearby worker brood. Adjoining frames will not be fully drawn because the drone cells protrude into their space. The drone brood in the upper of the two pictures at right will cause what you see in the lower picture. The foundation is only 1/8 or less from the top cappings while the comb on the under side is normal depth or more. I recently saw capped honey in cells less than 1/16 deep on foundation because of comb built out too far next to it. 2.

3 We are not worried about too many drones. Every healthy hive will have about 20% of its brood combs in drone cells. The bees will raise the drones they feel comfortable with and the rest of the drone comb will sit empty or be filled with honey until it is needed. The number of drones a colony will tolerate changes with the season and a colony's perception of its need to replace its queen. Only a colony with an unhealthy queen or queenless will raise drones out of proportion with their need or even their ability to feed and care for them. We are talking about disruptions in the brood nest that make working in the hive more difficult and may require you to have more brood combs to make up for the smaller area available to raise workers on each comb. The comb at right is about 90% full of brood because the cells are worker size and the colony is working hard to grow. While the comb below has nearly 100% worker size cells it contains less than 50% brood. It presents the look of a colony that is "honey bound". A honey bound colony is producing more honey than it has room to store. The bees will build burr comb in every conceivable place and then they will put honey in brood cells as the new bees hatch out crowding the queen into a smaller and smaller space. The overall population will suffer three weeks later when fewer and fewer workers emerge. The real danger is that the colony will swarm regardless of the time of year. I have been on 'light duty' for the last part of the winter and spring and I am still off work on sick leave from minor surgeries. No sympathy cards or flowers please, it has been a nice 'vacation'. I just mention it here to establish it as my excuse for not taking care of my bees properly. Dave Emerson and Bob Baughman have pitched in and helped with supering and checking for swarm cells and making splits. All that to say that I have not done some things I would have with my hives, not wanting to burden my friends too much, and I have not checked in the hives as often as I would have either. So one of my colonies swarmed. In spite of spending a lot of time sitting in the glider watching the bees or crawling on the ground pulling weeds near the hives I did not see them go. And I did not see any tell tale reduction in activity at the hive entrance. That failure to see any reduction in activity I attribute to the very early spring and strong build up the colonies made aided by not putting the Queen Excluders (QE) in the right place so the queens had much more room to lay eggs in. The colony populations have been huge from the start and I supered in late March/early April. When I looked in the hives recently I found activity in the supers and some honey but not enough. My wife keeps saying we need to let some of Not wanting to burden Dave in April with my tedious queen finding to put the QEs in the middle of the brood nest I just did what I am always telling you not to our swarms escape to repopulate the woods. do, I put the queen excluders on top of the four winter brood boxes and supered

4 over them and let it go. Bad move. I have known from very early in my beekeeping that that was a bad move. Sure enough the queen excluders became 'honey excluders'. Oh, some of the bees did go up through the QEs and put some honey in the supers but not very many bees went up and not much honey was put in the supers. Under the QEs I found three of the four winter boxes packed with honey. No need to feed those bees for the winter, the silver lining. I moved the QEs down onto the second brood box and put two of the honey filled brood boxes over the honey supers. As bees need the space for brood they will move the honey in the second brood box up into the honey supers, thank you very much. In the bottom box the outer frames were also full of honey and the center core of frames looked like the frame at the left top of the previous column except there was no brood in them. There were the remnants of queen cells on the frames and the center of the core frames was dry. Bees leave these cells dry when they anticipate a queen laying eggs in them. In this picture there is open honey in the upper right corner, there are eggs in the center and the cells on each side and below the eggs are dry. I found no eggs or larvae so the queen stopped laying eggs 21 to 24 days before, in early May. It looked like a colony waiting for its new queen to begin laying eggs. Just in case, however, I put a frame with eggs and larvae in the middle of the core so that if there was not a queen coming along the bees could use these new eggs and larvae to start another queen. Even if they have no queen and fumble the ball and do not start another queen the eggs and larvae will keep them from sliding into the laying worker pit for a while. 'Eggs and Larvae' Like I mentioned last year when I had trouble with colonies developing laying workers, a frame of eggs and larvae will keep a queenless colony from developing laying workers. The youngest larvae give off a strong pheromone that prevents worker ovaries from developing. The larvae in the 'eggs and larvae' frame start the control and as the eggs hatch the new larvae keep the control going. After six or seven days another frame of eggs and larvae need to be added because as the larvae age the pheromone decreases and the control of the workers lessons.1 Bearding is something that is commonly seen in hot weather. It is NOT a sign the colony is going to swarm. It is just too hot inside the hive to accommodate all of the bees. 1 For a scientific explanation see A CLLOSER LOOK by Clarence Collison and Audrey Sheridan in the June 2012 Bee Culture. 3.

5 Bearding can be light or severe depending on the temperature and humidity and the population of bees and the size of the hive. Bees wax melts at 140o. But it gets soft at a much lower temperature. Fanning and evaporating water inside the hive is the bees primary defense against overheating but will not always keep the temperature in a safe range. When it gets too hot for fanning and evaporation to keep the inside below the wax softening point bees will sit out on the front of the hive or under the landing board to keep their body heat from adding to the problem. Adding another super may or may not help. Extra space will provide the bees with more area to spread water out and to fan from but do not count on it solving the entire problem. Sometimes providing more ventilation will help. Tip the outer cover up and stagger supers to provide places to expel hot air and draw in less hot air. Here you can see the dark box has been pushed back just enough to allow bees to fan air from between the top bar ends. Screened bottom boards and wide open entrances also help with ventilation. It is best not to disturb a colony that is bearding. Opening the hive excites the bees and raises their temperature even more. While Bob and Dave and I were going through the "wrong QE" colonies in the picture Dave mentioned not seeing any Small Hive Beetles (SHB). I have no doubt there were some SHB there but with the hives painted a nasty, light green and sitting in full sun it was probably to hot in the hive for the heat sensitive SHB to feel comfortable. Varroa is also heat sensitive so both of these pests will suffer when it is hot enough to make bees beard their hives. At last year's banquet Dr. Joe Latshaw advised starting nucs in July to take through the winter to replace hives that may suffer and die from heavy mite loads rather than using chemicals which we find not only poison and kill mites but our bees also in the long run. Starting nucs provides a break in brood rearing that also stops the rearing of mites. Nucs will start out with a very low mite load that will

6 remain low until the following year without any sort of treatment. Start the nuc with a purchased, mated, queen, a queen cell or let them raise their own. Regardless of which of these you choose to use your nuc should contain: 1. A frame of eggs and larvae. If you are introducing a mated queen she should be placed with this frame so the nurse bees on the eggs and larvae will also care for her. A ripe queen cell should be attached to this frame for the same reason. If the bees are going to raise their own queen they will do it on this frame. 2. A frame of capped brood. This should be the oldest capped brood you can find, where bees are starting to emerge or will very soon. These bees will see that the colony grows while it is waiting for the matted queen to get up to speed or while their new queen is developing. 3. A frame of pollen. This frame should be on one side of the eggs and larvae and the capped brood on the other side. Randy Oliver said that bees are made of protein. Both royal jelly and brood food require young bees to eat pollen so do not short the nuc. You can also add a pollen supplement. A study recently showed that colonies fed pollen or a supplement produced heavier, healthier and longer living bees. 4. Two frames of open honey. Open honey is more quickly and easily used by nurse bees. Capped honey will frequently just sit there capped while the small field force struggles to bring in nectar to keep the nuc going. If you can keep the nuc supplied with frames of open honey there will be no need to feed sugar syrup. If you are going to raise your own queens there are a number of fairly simple ways to do it. I usually set up the nuc as in steps 1-4 and let the bees do the rest. Many years back a guest speaker showed us the following method of producing many queens in one colony. Pick a frame of eggs and larvae and put Q-Tips or something else of cell size in the openings of cells with eggs or larvae in cells right next to eggs. These will be one day old or less and the ideal age to become queens. Leave space between the cells you pick, even more than in the picture because you will need to cut these queen cells

7 out when they are capped. The next step is to sprinkle powdered sugar liberally over the frame. This will kill the larvae that were not chosen and direct the attention of the bees to the ones that were protected. Remove the Q-Tips and turn the frame over to get rid of the loose powdered sugar. Lay the frame with the dusted side down on the top bars of a strong hives brood nest. Put 1" blocks under the corners of the frame to hold it up and provide room for the queen cells to be drawn down but not attached to the frames below. In the picture you can see the beekeeper has made a 2" deep framework to hold the covers up from the frame. The ends of this framework will need to be 3/8'" thick or less to allow for the frame lugs. Put your covers on and let the bees go to work. In the picture at left the frame has been raised a little to show that there are queen cells hanging down from it. If the larvae are chosen carefully to all be one day old the queen cells should all be at the same stage of development. Queens are supposed to emerge on the 16th day but nothing is quite so positive with bees. The cells should be carefully cut out of the comb on the 14 th day and put into prepared nucs. The cutting out is fairly easy if you have used plain beeswax foundation but if you try this with plastic foundation you will need to be more careful. A very thin, flexible bladed knife can be used to cut right next to the foundation. Pressed against the foundation so the tip bends flat to cut away as much of the cell as possible. Handle queen cells gently. After cutting from the frame keep it pointed down in its natural position. The cell can then be fastened to the eggs and larvae frame by pushing tooth picks into the comb to wedge the queen cell between. A method of getting colonies or nucs to start queen cells from your chosen larvae was shown to me by Bob Baughman recently. Find a place where eggs and larvae meet. Royal This is where the youngest Jelly larvae will be. In this picture there are eggs in all of the cells at the edge of the hive tool

8 except for the one pointed at by the arrow. The eggs around this larva will be hatching soon. Lay the edge of the hive tool along the bottom edges of the cells and press in towards the foundation at the same time you are pulling the hive tool towards the bottom of the frame. This breaks the bottom wall of the cells down and leaves an open space for the queen cell to be turned into and does not touch or harm the eggs or larva. This is not a good picture but you can see three places on this come where the hive tool pressing method was used. Back in Dr. C. C. Miller's time it was known that a cell with the bottom wall broken out will cause the bees to raise the occupant as a queen. Do this in two or three places then put the frame back in the nuc next to the pollen frame and let the bees raise the queens. In my area the summer honey flow usually ends around the last week of July or the first week of August so I plan to take my honey off during that two week period before the bees get nasty and protective and to keep them from eating up all the honey. With that in mind all workers that emerge after about the week of June will have little or nothing to do in the way of foraging and will just sit around and eat honey. So nucing your hives now is not a bad thing to do. The nurse bees in the hive will have less brood to care for and therefore will become foragers early and increase you field force through July. Along with nucing your hives if you put the queen excluder over the bottom box and put all of the open brood you can find below the QE with the queen you will help limit this 'welfare' bee production. The Elkhart County 4-H Fair is in July. You can enter liquid honey, comb honey, chunk honey, creamed honey and flavored creamed honey. All of these require a small sample for the judge to taste. Under Honey-Baked items you can enter breads, cakes, cookies (6), and other than above. 51% of sweetener must be honey. For full instructions go to 4hfair.org /4-h.htm, in the HOME block go to Open Class (on the right end) then click Home and Family Arts Rules Booklet for a pdf download.