Spring! Time for supers? Time for bait hives? Still looking for a nuc?

[Patrick Laslett]

Hi All,

We have had several warm sunny days here in the East, and I think in many parts of the country too. I know some beekeepers have taken the chance of the warm weather to do their first full inspections. And some have been in touch offering overwintered nucs.

There are new offers in Essex (Billericay) and Northamptonshire (Kettering) Scotland (Lockerbie) . They join the existing offers in Sussex, Somerset, Kent, Cheshire, Liverpool, North Wales, and Hampshire.

If you are a beekeeper with spare hives, now would be a good time to get them out and dust them off. Setting up your spare hives as bait hives can be a very effective way of increasing your stock of bees.

What do you do with the hives of colonies lost in the winter? Boxes that still have frames of stores and supers with honey in them. I guess it depends what kind of beekeeper you are. Some will be happy to shake out the dead bees and then leave the hive setup to attract a swarm. Others will want to burn everything and start from scratch. (Burning everything would be extreme and is only required when colonies are found to be suffering from American Foul Brood). 

If you want to take the middle path, the box, floor, and crown board could be scorched with a blow torch. That would clean those up. However, from a disease point of view, there would be little point in doing that if you put the same frames back in the box. The frames need to have the wax (and stores) removed before they are scraped clean and boiled in water with soda crystals added. They only need to boil for a few minutes. Having said that, scorched supers (with drawn out frames) are much nicer to use after cleaning especially once they get old.  

The bees of course are very happy with old frames that still have stores in them. Indeed the bees will swarm into any space left for them. A box with only half the frames in would suit them fine. So the trick is to set everything up with a full complement of frames and not to leave empty boxes or roofs around that the bees could swarm into. Bait hive management!

Happy beekeeping.

Yours,

Patrick