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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Overwintering success: the one thing I do differently by Rusty

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beekeepers, beekeeping, fall management, summer management, winter management

I’m posting this now instead of winter as the title might suggest. Why? Because it pertains to what we should be doing now in preparation for winter. Rusty is correct in her assumptions. It’s what we do or don’t do that gets our bees through the winter. Enjoy!

It’s official: I overwintered all my colonies once again. In fact, in seven of the last ten years I managed to pull every single colony through the bleak northwest winter. Having said that, the questions I’m asked are always the same: “What mite meds do you use?” “How long do you feed?” “What is your winter configuration?” All these queries presume that there is some magic trick to overwintering. If you only buy the right stuff, you will have no more bee problems.

The questions remind me of photography. Every time someone takes a truly outstanding photograph, people ask, “What camera did you use?” as if the camera went out and took pictures by itself. The photographer wasn’t sitting in the mud, all scrunched down at bug level, sweltering in the sun, and not breathing lest he produce carbon dioxide. He didn’t take 853 shots and discard 852 of them. He didn’t spend the next three days charging all the batteries he drained that afternoon. And he didn’t drive 349 miles and burn untold gallons of fuel to get to the place with all the right bugs.

You need to do the work

Like good photographers, good beekeepers actually do the work. Overwintering a bunch of honey bees is an art form. To me, it is amazing that any bug—not in a state of diapause or quiescence—can actually make it through such a long period of incarceration. I think we should be more surprised by colonies that make it than by those that don’t.

But in deference to those who want to know how to overwinter, I had a long think over it. I know what has vastly increased my chances of overwintering—things like moisture quilts and no-cook candy boards. My system evolved over a number of years and weathered many naysayers. I read books and asked question of engineers and architects about how things work in enclosed spaces, things like airflow, ventilation, heat loss, and condensation. Then I asked questions of biologists about nutrition and entomologists about diseases and vectors.

Read the full article here:  Overwintering success: the one thing I do differently — Honey Bee Suite

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

Landi Simone – Reading the Frames

Tags

beekeeping, comb management, fall management, management, spring management, winter management

I found this interesting. She says many things that I say to new beekeepers – listen to and watch your bees. They’ll tell you when they’re not happy! The frame pictures are excellent and well worth a look at from a healthy honey bee perspective.

It’s quite long at 44 minutes, but worth a watch!

Source: Landi Simone – Reading the Frames

Preparing for Winter by Lazer Creek Apiary

Tags

beekeeping, fall management, management, seasons, winter management

It’s only 62 degrees this morning, but bees in the English hive are already out foraging.  It’s no wonder that these bees are well set up for the cold weather that is just around the corner;  of all our hives, they have the most honey stored.    This is our go-to hive for requeening because the colony has always been friendly, the queens have always been great producers, the bees are hygienic,  and the bees are the first out the door to forage.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have a hive that has no stored resources despite all the goldenrod that surrounds the apiary.   Our records show that they haven’t stored any resources since we brought them back from the sunflower patch — and they had nothing then.    If I’d been able to find the queen yesterday, I’d have combined them with another weak but productive hive.  Those guys have increased their numbers by a full frame of bees and they have nectar and bee bread stored.   I can’t risk combining them without eliminating the lazy-genetics queen, so they have two weeks to pick up their game!   We put a candy board on the hive yesterday (and reduced the entrance down to a single bee width), so maybe that will help them.   Maybe it will make them more dependent on us.

Read full article here: Preparing for Winter — Lazer Creek Apiary Blog