Current Beekeeping Activities by sassafrasbefarm

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beekeeping, beekeeping chores, chores, equipment, fall management, winter management

Feeding the bees pollen substitute

Some things don’t change much year to year in beekeeping. At least not the chores. There is some comfort in the routine. This year is much like last. Building boxes, cleaning frames, painting and maintenance. And building bees for the spring. ~sassafrasbeefarm

This time of year can be as busy for the beekeeper as the spring nectar flow period. But now it’s all about preparation. My experience, since beginning this beekeeping journey, is that there is never enough time during the nectar flow. In fact, time becomes precious even before the nectar flow with the need to rotate hive bodies or employ other swarm reducing measures, placement of swarm traps, movement of hives to out yards, making splits, and lots of last minute surprises.

So, here are few pictures of what I occupy myself with during this so called off season:

Order queen pen and my favorite markers to write on the hives.

Making sugar cakes for the tops of the hives.

Adding extra wax to plastic frames.

Collecting and bagging pine straw for my smoker.

 

Building boxes, bottom boards, and tops.

Adding some color to the entrance reducers.

Painting entrances to the queen mating nucs

This is Advantech – a new material that resists weathering.

Painting everything. Three coats!

Joy! I found three 50 pound sacks of sugar I had forgotten!

 

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Over Wintering Nucs- A Better Way by Michael Palmer

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beekeeping, nucleus hives, winter beekeeing, winter management

I used to buy bees, lots and lots of bees; singles from South Carolina, nuclei from Florida and frames of brood from New York. I used to buy queens, lots and lots of queens; queens from Georgia, queens from Texas and queens from California. Every year it was the same. Pick up the pieces of my apiary in the Spring, send a big check to southern queen breeders, split up my best colonies, and hope I made enough of a honey crop to pay the bills. Some years I did, some years I did not.

Read full article here: Over Wintering Nucs- A Better Way — BEEKeeping: Your First Three Years

Deafening Silence by Misty Meadows Homestead

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assessment, beekeeping, colony assessment, colony loss, deadouts, hive assessment, winter bee losses

So your bees died over winter. This blog post by Misty Meadows Homestead shows how we can grow as beekeepers using our deductive skills to learn and improve. Thanks for sharing your loss with us so that we too learn.

When you love someone, you are never really prepared to lose them. When my beekeeping, gardener Grandfather passed, he had end-stage renal failure and we had 5 years to prepare – it wasn’t enough. Last winter, when my 14-year old cat passed, she had been telling us for weeks that her time was coming to an end – it wasn’t enough.

No matter how prepared we ‘think’ we are, when it happens, we realize we didn’t have enough time to prepare ourselves.

Wednesday we had a little bit of warm weather – about 55º and decided it was a good time to inspect our 4 hives.  We stood in the bee yard, observing the colonies for quite some time.

continued via link below:

Read the entire blog post at: Homestead Buzz – Deafening Silence — Misty Meadows Homestead & more!

Clustering, Torpor, and Trehalose

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beekeeping, torpor, winter in the bee yard

There is no good reason to open your hive during periods of extreme cold. None. Even if you suspect they have died, for whatever reason, opening the hive can typically wait.

Honey bees will form a protective spherical cluster and shiver, the outermost bees rotating with the inner bees, to warm themselves. The bees shiver to generate heat and the outer bees form an insulative layer. Being cold blooded, all bees exhibit some degree of slowing down when they are unable to warm themselves sufficiently. As the temperature continues to drop a protective physiological mechanism called torpor begins: a semi-hibernation, reaction to the cold, that reduces their metabolism and allows them to conserve energy and survive by significantly slowing down their physiological processes. Dependent on cluster size this may affect a larger percentage of the bees surrounding the core of the cluster. The role of the beekeeper is to allow the colony to conserve what heat is available by not opening the hive. In a case where it is known the colony is running out of food wait until the hive and bees have warmed enough to move about and only then briefly open the hive enough to insert frames of honey or other food. During extended periods of cold weather it may take a few days for the bees to warm up and begin to move about freely.

Honey bees’ ability to survive winter temperatures is related to both the formation of a winter cluster as well as physiological mechanisms. Another physiological mechanism involves a sugar within honey bee hemolymph called trehalose. Monosaccharides in honey bee diets are fructose and glucose but the most common circulating sugar in hemolymph is trehalose which is a disaccharide consisting of two glucose molecules. Trehalose acts as a protection to cells by preventing the crystallization of cell membranes and enables the bees to come very close to freezing yet recover without ill effects after warming.

Popcorn Bees

Tags

humor, pollen substitute, popcorn bees

Yesterday some of my colonies were flying – some seem more cold tolerant than others and fly when the temps get to the upper 40s. Anyway, there was a fair number of bees hitting the dry pollen substitute from about noon to 4pm. I went out to do some work just before dark and while out decided to replenish the pollen feeders. I found a couple dozen bees inside that had missed the last opportunity to return to their hives and were in a state of torpor inside the feeders. Wanting to refill the feeders I dumped them and the leftover pollen substitute onto a baking pan before refilling the feeders. My thinking was I’d place them somewhere protected until it warmed up today. Most of the bees looked like popcorn after I dumped them – covered with pollen sub.

So after I refilled the feeders and placed them back on their poles I went to retrieve the baking pans to separate the pollen sub from the bees. They were gone. Everything was gone.

Then I spotted the culprit slinking off. My dog Buster had eaten the pollen sub and the bees. I wonder if he found them tasty? He’s still here his morning and seems no worse for it.