Author Topic: Summer check in  (Read 2729 times)

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Offline Zweefer

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Summer check in
« on: June 22, 2021, 07:19:37 am »
Yesterday was the first day of summer, although you wouldn’t know it here (temps in the 50’s F).

I just thought I’d stop and ask how are everyone’s bees doing?

Mine are finally starting to draw comb again after a drought of three weeks was broken last weekend.   I was getting nervous not having them progress in terms of extra storage or construction for a while.
I started 30 queen cells via the Nicot system over the weekend as well, hoping to be able to transfer them out in two weeks to the mating nucs I’ve built for them.  This will be my first attempt at queen rearing, so wish me luck!


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Keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
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Offline The15thMember

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Re: Summer check in
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2021, 09:59:35 am »
I just harvested my first honey this week.  We had a crazy huge blackberry/black raspberry bloom, and I pulled my first super of that honey.  It's the earliest I've ever harvested. 

5 of my 8 hives are plugging along nicely.  We are in a little bit of a dearth right now before sourwood starts.  Not enough to cause a panic, but enough that no one is drawing comb.  Well actually that's not true, 1 hive, and only 1, seems to have found something that's keeping them drawing and bringing in some nectar, which none of the other hives have found.  This is intriguing to me; I wonder why this hive was able to find something the others didn't.  Flew farther?  Less picky?  Who knows. 

Of the 3 hives that are struggling, one was a late split whose queen didn't return from a mating flight, so I'm in the middle of a second queen rearing cycle in that hive.  The other two hives are a split pair, the mother queen and the daughter.  The parent hive grew nicely, so I split them in late April or early May.  For some reason the mother queen's hive didn't grow after that, and she was barely laying, so I culled her recently and they are raising a queen from a frame of my best queen's eggs.  The daughter queen seemed to be doing well, but recently her brood pattern has started to look a little spotty and their mite load was way up, so she's on the hot seat to turn things around.  I'll see how she looks this week.  Maybe I'll do a round of German varroa trapping with her as an experiment. 
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led.  And through the air, I am she that walks unseen.

Offline Zweefer

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Re: Summer check in
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2021, 10:47:00 pm »
Glad to hear things are mostly going well - the German trapping method you speak of - is that drone removal? I’d be interested to learn a bit more…


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Keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.
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Offline The15thMember

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Re: Summer check in
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2021, 11:14:00 pm »
Glad to hear things are mostly going well - the German trapping method you speak of - is that drone removal? I’d be interested to learn a bit more…


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No it's not actually.  Although I do that sometimes too.  Just don't have any need for the guys as the summer wears on, and they make good fishing bait and chicken food, and if I get some mites along the way, so much the better for it. 

There are several different ways to go about the German method, but the way I do it is I trap the queen on two frames and let the hive complete one brood cycle.  Then on the next brood cycle, the queen will only lay on those two frames, which means all the mites will have to go into those frames to reproduce.  Once those cells are capped, you take out those two frames and freeze them, thus trapping and removing a big number of the mites in the hive.  Release the queen and they are back in business.  I did the method in conjunction with some splits this year, "caging" the old queen in the QXs when I moved her over to the new hive, and it seems to have worked well to keep mite numbers down thus far.  The thing I'm trying to work out is the timing of the treatment in the fall.  The sourwood flow butts right up against fall treatment time for me, making it tight timing to get treatments done early enough to have healthy bees to raise winter bees, so I'm still working out the kinks with it, but I feel it's promising so far.   
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led.  And through the air, I am she that walks unseen.

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Summer check in
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2021, 09:33:35 am »
The15thMember, The German method of varroa trapping sounds similar to using a frame of drone comb. Do you use divider boards to keep her on two frames? Does that cause the rest of the colony to react oddly without having access to the queen and her pheromones?  Does this have an impact on the cluster size going into winter?

We have had an unusual spring nectar flow.  A severe deep freeze in February and then another freeze at the end of March affected the fruit tree blooms.  No peaches for us this year!  A cool wet spring resulted in a trickle of a nectar flow.  I have heard from others that the bees were back filling the brood nest even with supers on.  My bees did the same. We are still shuffling frames around so the queen has room to lay.  In the last two weeks we are starting to see supers starting to fill.  We got a good shower this morning and that should have a positive affect on White Dutch Clover and other forbs.  Our nectar flow usually ends at the beginning of July.

Offline The15thMember

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Re: Summer check in
« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2021, 11:07:33 am »
The15thMember, The German method of varroa trapping sounds similar to using a frame of drone comb. Do you use divider boards to keep her on two frames? Does that cause the rest of the colony to react oddly without having access to the queen and her pheromones?  Does this have an impact on the cluster size going into winter?
I don't use divider boards, although I do need to get my hands on some of those for other purposes.  I actually bought a big pack of plastic QXs from Mann Lake and cut them into pieces, including vertical ones with little tabs that sit on the frame rests.  That way the colony still has access to the queen.  I did have one colony undergoing the treatment this spring supersede, but that was a older queen anyway, so I'm not sure if the treatment was just the last straw for her.  The other question is one of many things I have yet to determine, but I aim to try to answer some of them in the coming months.  I did do this treatment on some hives last fall, but one year is not enough of a sample size for me to feel confident in it yet.  I'm planning on treating some of my hives with FormicPro and doing this trapping method on the others so I can compare them. 

A severe deep freeze in February and then another freeze at the end of March affected the fruit tree blooms.  No peaches for us this year! 
   
NOOOOOO!!!  :'(   
I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led.  And through the air, I am she that walks unseen.
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