Hive check

[kevin-sarah]

I checked my hives in detail today. I went into winter with 13 hives and lost 2. One hive was totally dead and another had only a small cluster of bees and I couldn't find a queen so I added them to another colony. Looked like they kicked a late swarm and didn't get a new queen. 

This was by far the best over winter rate since I'm keeping bee's. Last spring I came out of winter with 5 colony's and I didn't buy any southern queens. I just made splits throughout the summer and let them raise their own queens  ( I did get 2 queens from the queen project last summer and they both made it through winter). Other years I bought packages and southern queen's, wonder if not doing that last year helped me, but one year isn't enough to draw hard conclusions off of. 

The 11 that are alive are all doing good. The only odd thing I noticed was one colony has a very strong population but I couldn't find any brood, I added a frame of brood from one of the really strong colony's. All the other colony's had a decent amout of brood, some had 3 and 4 frames of brood and a number already had quite a bit of drone brood. I saw a fair bit of nectar, not sure where they are getting that from, and also lots of fresh pollen. Most of the hives still had lots of capped honey from last fall so I uncapped 2 to 4 frames per colony, it was a lot of work but I figured it is easier than feeding them sugar water, and hopefully it will keep them raising brood even if it gets cooler agian. I ran out of time and there was one colony I didn't check on but 2 weeks ago it was doing good and had a good bit of activity today.

Has anyone else gone through there hive extensively? If so what are you finding?

Kevin

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[CHARLES SCHROECK]

Kevin,

Congratulation on great survival rate.   I lost 5 out of 9.  The survivors look great.  Your splitting your survivors from last year might have been a factor in your success this year.

I would watch for queen cells in the strong hive with drone brood.  They might swarm early this year because of the early spring.

It sounds like one of your hives recently became queenless.  The frame of brood might let them raise a new queen but it might be too early in the season for mating because of the lack of drones this early.  Maybe the early spring will help.  The brood can't hurt.

I am not clear why you uncapped the honey for the bees.  They uncap it themselves when they need it.  The cappings help preserve the honey to keep it from absorbing moisture.  Probably no harm done - they will either use it or re-cap it.

Best wishes for another successful year,

Charlie Schroeck

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From: nw...@googlegroups.com <nw...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kevin-sarah <kevin...@juno.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 8:43 PM
To: nw...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [nwpba] Hive check

 

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[kevin-sarah]

Charlie, 

I don't know that I have solid proof that uncapping honey is a good thing but soon after I started keeping bee's I was talking with a beekeeper and he was saying that once nectar and pollen start coming in the bee's basically quit using capped honey, even if there is a cold snap and they need it. I don't know if this is true, but I've always liked the results, in that it gets rid of old honey. My over winter honey tends to be late goldenrod and aster which granulatats and can't be spun out very well. I've never had them recap or move it else were in the hive. So far the bee's have always cleaned out the frames  and the queen moves onto the frames and she can fill the frames up in a clean even pattern and not have over winter honey breaking things up and using up cells that could be used for raising brood.

I'm planning  to keep my strongest colony's under control for a while by taking brood from them and adding to smaller  colony's. And then make a bunch of nucs the first of May. That strategy normally works for me and is how I went from 5 to 13 colony's last year. In early years I would buy queens for my nucs but I'm going to let them raise their own queens agian this year. But we all know that plans don't always hold very well in bee keeping😊

I'm not looking to have more than 10 production colony's and don't need the nucs, so I'm still toying with some ideas on how to get the bee's to make honey without swarming. I've got a book called 'Honey In The Comb' that has a fairly got method, at least on paper. But I'm not sure I have the time to get to inventive.......

Kevin 

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[CHARLES SCHROECK]

Kevin,

I like the idea of encouraging the bees to use and clean out the old granulating honey.  

When I recover honey from dead-outs, I uncap it and extract it if there is some liquid.  I then use the uncapped frames with new bees.  They quickly clean out the granulated honey. 

I would expect the bees will uncap honey as they need it if there is a halt in the spring nectar flow.  They probably do leave the old honey capped once they get fresh coming in.  I can see where that might be a disadvantage if it is left on for the next winter.  All of my survivors from this year have a lot of last years honey.  If it is not used then it will be even worse for next year.  Your idea of uncapping sound like it might be another factor in helping them survive the following year since they would have used the old honey and had fresh for the next year.  I can see where it would also provide additional space for brood rearing as they clean it out.

For many years, I wintered my hive with just a hive body and one shallow super.  They did very well but that left them a little light in the spring.  In recent years I have wintered with hive body and two shallow supers.  That leaves them some old honey that could be granulated by spring.  I have had dead-out with the dead cluster surrounded by sugared honey.  Maybe my old way had some merit because there was less sugared honey for the next year.

Thanks for your reply.  It gives us something to think about.

Charlie Schroeck

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From: nw...@googlegroups.com <nw...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of kevin-sarah <kevin...@juno.com>

Sent: Monday, March 28, 2016 2:08 PM
To: nw...@googlegroups.com