National Honey Show 2020
The National Honey Show is a world renown show in the UK that is offering free online attendance this year. It’s a great opportunity to see science, techniques, and more about beekeeping! October 22-24th.
September Meeting Moved to Zoom
Members: I was just informed today by the county health department the meeting room is closed through December due to Covid. This month’s meeting will tonight, 9/29, will be moved to zoom at 6:30 pm. The Password for the meeting is 838422. Please install zoom on your computer or phone prior to the meeting:
September Meeting tuesday 9/29
Don’t forget this Tuesday is the last of the month. We’ll be meeting in person at the Flathead County Health Department 6:30 – 8:30 (socialize at 6pm). We’ll also be streaming to the Flathead Valley Beekeepers Association Facebook page. Bring masks!
We’ll discuss winterizing setups and winter feeding and welcome some new members from the Beginning Beekeeping class at FVCC!
Online Seminar on Honey Bee Viruses 9/16 12:30 pm
The following seminar takes place in the UK, so this would be 12:30 – 1:30 pm on September 16th for us Mountain Time zone folks. Cost is just under $4 to register.
September To-Do’s
We did not have an August meeting this year so I thought it important to list your action items for right now.
Verify you have a laying queen – We have several members discovering they lost their queen recently. We are just hitting a point where drones will be kicked out of the hives and so waiting for a virgin to mate will be very risky. If you have a strong hive you want to stay independent, you’ll want to order an emergency queen or reach out to Angela for one.
Lift your Hives – Tip up from the back. A double deep should way over 100 pounds going in to the winter. A single hive over 50 pounds. If they are underweight, start feeding them right now with 2:1 Sugar to Water ratio. Add a tablespoon per gallon of citrus juice to keep it acidic and slow down bacterial/fungal growth in the feed. Bees will not take syrup below 55 degrees so now is the time to feed, don’t wait till October!
Keep Robber Guards On – Especially if your hive is smaller in population or if you are feeding them in the hive. Bees will lose a lot of winter stores to robbers.
Address Mites – If treating for mites is part of your management strategy, there’s still time to do a mite count and see if you need to treat. Remember, all vaporizing is very dangerous and requires special vapor blocking masks. Remember to use this resource to help direct you: Honey Bee Health Varroa Tool
September Meeting – Tuesday, September 29th 6:30 at the Flathead County Health Department Floor #2. We will stream on Facebook also.
Volunteers Needed for August Apiary Tour
Members, As mentioned last month at our meeting, we will not be having a traditional meeting at the health department or online this Tuesday, but will instead be visiting volunteers’ apiary or apiaries. Who would like to volunteer their bee yard and give us a tour with a possible inspection? This Sat 8/29 is nice weather for visiting mid-morning and day. Let us know and I’ll organize a Parade of Hives.
Beginning Beekeeping Class at FVCC September 2020
Angela Tollerson will be teaching a beginning beekeeping course for non-credit continuing education in September. You can register and get more details at the FVCC website here.
August To Dos
For those of you that didn’t catch our July meeting, I wanted to cover a few things you should be looking at right now. Feel free to reach out if you need any help or mentoring with these issues below! 406-871-6551
- Mites – If part of your beekeeping management includes mite treatments, now is the time to addressing them. Why? Because the eggs being laid right now will become your winter bees. They are susceptible to parasitism in the larval and pupal stages right now. If you treat for mites, do your mite counts now (sugar rolls, bottom board drops, or alcohol wash) and treat if you are over the 3% threshold.
- Which Treatment should you use? Please review this pdf at Honey Bee Health Coalition to pick which strategy you want to use. There is also a Varroa management tool link from the Montana Agriculture department here. If you want to speak to an expert in person, Alyssa at the MT state agriculture office 406-444-3790 has visited us before to talk about bee diseases and will be happy to assist.
- Do I have to Treat for mites? No, many beekeepers practice a form of beekeeping called “Darwinian” beekeeping that favors strains fit enough to survive the mites on their own by developing coping skills for mites. It does mean, however, you could lose your money investment on the bees if you purchased them. So most people who practice treatment free catch bees and make splits from their survivors each spring to be sustainable. So please keep this in mind when making your decisions whether or not to treat for mites. Watch this series of 4 videos presented at the National Honey Show to see the scientific communities approaches natural mite resistance.
- Safety – Please be aware that vaporizing acids is extremely dangerous, for you and for the bees. A special face mask that keeps dangerous vapors from being inhaled must be worn when you are using a vaporizer. You can click on the link above to see one option from BetterBee. Also, please be aware there are recorded risks to bees and the queen when introducing these chemicals into the hive. They are insecticides, bees are insects. They are susceptible to them and the chemical should NOT be repeated frequently, despite what many backyard beekeepers do and suggest. You risk killing your colony trying to kill the mites. Please follow the guidelines on the products and in the Bee Health Coalition guide linked above.
- Honey Harvest – If you are doing mite treatments, since most require the removal of honey first it’s a good time to go ahead and harvest the supers over your hives. You can put the extracted super back on your hives for the bees to continue to build in. Here are some great videos of how to harvest honey from the University of Guelph.
- Do not harvest open nectar unless you have tested it and the moisture is under 18%. Capped honey only. A small amount of open nectar on the frame is ok
- Do not harvest honey from your brood chambers. The bees will need that for the winter.
- Your bees will need 90 pounds of honey going in to winter if you are running double deep brood chambers. If your brood chambers feel light and the bees have most of their honey up in the supers, harvesting all that honey could be detrimental to them. They uncap and “move” the honey down in to the brood chamber in the fall. Keep that in mind when harvesting.
- If you don’t have an extractor, you can do crush comb honey instead. Here’s a simple video. While she was crushing wild comb, you can do the same process by scraping down to the foundation of your frames using a spatula or wide putty knife.
- Robbing – We are entering the time when desperate wasps and other honey bees may try to rob from your hives, decimating them. You can help this by:
- Reduce the entrance down to the smallest size, possibly even block with a rock to only the width of 2 bees at a time
- Purchase or build a simple robber guard. (And the most fast, cheap version can be viewed here) Yes, your own bees may be confused when they first come back from foraging of how to get in the maze. They will figure it out eventually. Robber guards create a maze that only the bees that live there know how to traverse.
- In extreme robbing events, throw a soaking wet sheet over the hive so it drapes towards the ground for the day. Remove when the robbers leave.
- August Heat – Please do not ventilate or prop up anything on your hive thinking you are helping your bees with the heat. They have intricate thermodynamic skills by fanning at the entrance to maintain the exact 94 degrees inside the hive. Opening things up inhibits this circulation they create and makes more work for them, not less. If you truly want to help them out in this heat, here are the two things you can do:
- Shade – you can place something like a piece of plywood over the hives to create afternoon shade if they don’t have any
- Water – make sure ample water source is close by (under 1/4 of a mile). The “dirtier” the more they seem to like it. They use water to cool down the brood and the honey in the hive by placing water on the comb and fanning to evaporate the heat away.
Why Is My New Hive Swarming?
It’s been reported by a handful of people in our county and a bit south of us that their new colony they just installed from a Nuc this year swarmed! I witnessed myself a healthy hive with what seemed like plenty of room building a swarm queen cell in one of our club member’s apiary. So why could this be happening? A few thoughts:
Making room for your Colony– The usual process for a new hive is that when 7-8 frames are fully drawn out with comb and packed with either nectar or brood, it’s time to add a second box above them. But one does not simply put a box above them with 10 empty frames with only foundation. You must encourage the bees to move up into the box and acknowledge the space, or they will still think they are running out of space and need to swarm. How do you encourage them to move? By using the Pyramid Technique of moving frames from the bottom box. Here is a link describing this method in detail at Honey Bee Suite.
Comb is better than Foundation – Anytime you have empty drawn comb from previous years always use it. The bees won’t see an empty box as more room. Because they can’t store nectar in it and the queen can’t lay in it. So even with space, they will still swarm. If you don’t have drawn comb to give them, you should keep feeding the bees 1:1 sugar water. The only time you’ll stop feeding for a starter colony is if they stop taking the sugar water and its just molding, or if you’ve reached the desired number of boxes for brood and now you are ready to put on Honey Supers. We don’t want sugar water honey. Blech!
Assess the Colony Health – Believe it or not, bees will misread the queues from its state of health and think they need to swarm when actually, something is wrong with the hive. The queen could be failing and not laying enough healthy brood to keep up brood pheromones. They could be starving because of excessive rain or excessive dearth of good nectar. They could be agitated because they are being harassed by wildlife causing them to want to leave (abscond) rather than a multiplication swarm. Ask your mentor or reach out to Angela or Ingvar for help assessing a colony when you find Queen cells to understand if it’s a supersedure or a swarm about to happen.
Do a Pre-emptive Split – If you find true swarm cells you can manufacture a swarm-like split that pacifies the bees need to swarm. This type of split can be seen in detail here called the Pagden Method
Have a Swarm Trap on your property or get help from a club member – You can keep an empty deep box on your property with attractant in it so if your bees swarm, they will go to your own box. If your bees swarm and are hanging on a limb and you need help retrieving them, send an email to [email protected] and she’ll get a club member out there to help you!
June 2020 Meeting at the Health Department
Our usual spot is on schedule to meet in person! See event details here: https://flatheadvalleybeekeepers.club/events/june-meeting-in-person/