Hive inspection and box reversal

[babsbag]

I hope you do well with them. I am going to treat for mites early and do the sugar roll frequently. If you ever get to where you are selling mite resistant queens I would be interested. I also want to stop any swarming.

Do you get the American Bee Journal? There is some really good information from Randy Oliver encouraging mite resistant local stock and the benefits thereof.

 

[soarwitheagles]

I hope you do well with them. I am going to treat for mites early and do the sugar roll frequently. If you ever get to where you are selling mite resistant queens I would be interested. I also want to stop any swarming.

Do you get the American Bee Journal? There is some really good information from Randy Oliver encouraging mite resistant local stock and the benefits thereof.

It is a good idea to be diligent and monitor the mite levels on a consistent basis babs. I would not recommend a mite treatment while the flow is this strong. Most beeks recommend waiting until end of summer or early fall.

On the other hand, if you nucs have no brood, then one treatment of OA would kill literally every mite in your hive.

I have not found even one mite in any of our hives this spring. We did a thorough treatment last fall, but also have queens that are laying bees that take care of mites fairly well. Still, every fall, I give mite treatments so our hives are free from mite problems all through the winter. I do my best to follow Randy Oliver's schedule.

BTW, Randy is on the cutting edge of mite treatments in many different ways.

Here is his latest research on a crazy good way to treat for mites with OA pads:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/2016-Beyond-Taktic-pdf.pdf

I will begin to sell queens in about 3-4 weeks. Presently have over 200 queen larvae/larvae growing like crazy. We will begin the nucs as soon as the ladies emerge and mate, and it will not be long. Yesterday we installed 9 queen cells into the cell building hives, tomorrow we should have another 20-30 to install. Can only leave them in 8 days before they emerge. We will have some queens emerging later next week and will place them in nucs, let them mate, then monitor their egg laying before selling them.

My friend and master beekeeper introduced mite resistant queens to our colonies last year. Our queens mate with local drones, so this gives us the best of both worlds...mite resistance and local bee genes that are empowered to resist local diseases.

Hope this helps!

 

[babsbag]

I want to requeen in July as I have last year's queens and I want to break the brood cycle too. Do you think you will have any that late or are you shooting for Spring only?

That is one of the articles I saw in American Bee Journal on mites, he has been doing a series on them. I plan on using those pads as they sound easy enough. Since these nucs came off the Almonds I am concerned about cross contamination of mites so I will be checking them early this time. It seems like with the OA pads temperature isn't going to be as critical so I can treat earlier if I need to.

I gave these hives stored pollen, lots of stored honey, and an empty brood chamber to move into if they want it. A lot of the frames were already drawn comb so that should help them a little. I went with three deeps and will be checking on them next week to see if there is any increase in brood. I will also put the supers on. I just want to keep them alive, honey is an added bonus. I will also be putting out wasp traps in hopes of catching queens.

 

[soarwitheagles]

Last year I discovered [the hard way] that raising queens in the summer can be quite challenging. Just so happened that last summer, when the queen mating flights began, we had a massive heatwave of 105F for nearly an entire week. That caused our success rate to plummet big time. I would rather not try to raise queens here in the summer again after that stunt.

Why not raise your own queens babs? If you do a walk away split it is super easy and you do not need to watch the clock and the calendar like a hawk as I must do at every critical step using the Nicot system...

Simply split your hive, face them toward each other, and walk away! Doesn't get much simpler than that. 28 days later you should have a new laying queen in your new hive. I kind a wish I had done that last summer instead of the Nicot system.

Using the Nicot system for me at this time is the right thing to do due to the good rain and the massive flow. If done successfully, we should have over 100 super healthy newly mated queens, and lots more nucs.

I will keep you posted on our progress.

Have a great day!!!

 

[babsbag]

I'm not sure that these hives will be strong enough to split this year, we will see. Doing a split that way wouldn't break the brood cycle either, plus my stock would be the same as it is now and I would like to try some mite resistant stock. I would hate to re-queen during a good nectar flow so I was waiting until the summer dearth. I will have to look online and see what I can find for queens. I usually just go pick up the Italian queens locally but hoping to try something different this year.

 

[Latestarter]

I believe if I remember correctly that doing a walk away split will indeed cause a brood break in the hive that doesn't keep the queen. Since they'll need to re-queen it will take time for her to emerge, orient, mate, then start laying again. If you check each hive about a week after the split you should see the old queen in one and a new (or more than one) queen cell in the one without the queen. If you have access to growing queens in cells, you could kill the old queen and graft the new cell into that hive and you'd essentially create a brood break in both hives. If you time it, you could then do a mite treatment while there is no brood before the new queens start laying.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Yay babs, so glad you have bees again!

I checked my #1 hive a week ago, and no queen. A good population of bees, but they somehow lost the queen. So they got a frame of eggs/brood from hive #2. I wanted to check this past week, to make sure they made queen cells, but the storm came in and I didn't have a chance! Hopefully, they are taking care of business.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Happy dance!

Hive #1 that was in need of a queen is now queenright! She must have not finished her hardening after last weeks inspection. (not a single egg last week) There were no queen cells off of the frame I put in last week and she is laying a nice pattern of eggs. I'll check again in a couple of weeks and see how it's going. I may not get any honey off of this hive, but at least it can thrive now. We will see how Hive #2 does for honey harvest - this will be the first year for it to produce.

Clover and locust are in bloom right now. The blackberries are budding nicely and should start opening in the next week or two. Catalpa's will be coming on soon too. Hive #3 is a dead out, so I can see about splitting later to avoid a swarm. (or catch a wild one)

 

[Happy Chooks]

Our main flow is ON!

The blackberries and catalpa are in full bloom now. Clover is still in bloom and the bees are also all over the Common Horehound. I have to get in and check on Hive #2 and make sure they aren't filling the boxes up to fast. And possibly add the super!

 

[Happy Chooks]

In just a few days, hive #2 has exploded in bees. They were starting to backfill, so I put the honey super on!

Hive #1 turned out to not be queenright, it's a laying worker situation. So I added a frame of open brood to the hive, with nurse bees. I'll do the same for the next 2 weeks until they make queen cells.