Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Breakfast with the Beekeeper - January 6 2018


2nd year queen more likely to swarm. Good queen, build on her to generaqueens. Spotty brood, lots drones, may be replace.
Good food source, lotta beese, queen failing, more drones than workers, they will swarm.
First of march here is, swarm time. Continuous queen reading, need 5. Can do with 2 need lot of nurse bee.double up brood with the 15 days old nurse bees. 2-3 hives enough to replace and add splits. Take advantagef warm season on first of march for swarm conditions. Need many frames of bees
Get ready by feeding. Mid jznuzru add new box. Feed 1 to 1, lighter surip stimuates rearing. Feed pollen as necessary.
A strong hive will raise a strong queen.
Methods
1. Tony prefers, queenless cell starter, strong, but sense queen is gone. Stops the swarm impulse.and emergency impulse.

Make a swarms mbox, add 4-5 inches separated by screen to bottom of nuc box Upper has pollen, honey and drawn comb.fill full of bees. After 24 hours they know they are wireless. This is to start your cells. Then out back in queenright box. They will start queen cell on the eggs in frame.
2. Queenright, Feed early, put nurse bees up top and queen down below. Can't have too many nurse bees. In bottom, lots of bees and brood frames and they will build cuz they are in emergency mode.


Different techniques to get cells startef.

Miller method.
Take box put in a frame with drawn foundation with notches on it. You'll put this into the box with lots nurse bees.  They'll start filling in comb. Usually this will be drone. When queen lays eggs pull it drawn out cut along the edges to find new eggs  from what she built. Smash out cells so they don't build queen cells next to each other. Date it after 2 or 3 days so you know when she was laying in New cells. Swarm cells will be on the perrifery where they normally want. No grafting.
Note: Eggs and larva susceptible to uv lught. Work quickly in shade. Wrap in damp towel take inside to work. Put this into starter box.

Put a blank new foundation frame for them to draw out.

Hopkins method: he  will lay a newly drawn out foundationn frame and place face down on queenless box.

On a new frame put 1" strips of foundation with eggs in it., adhere with wax, put in box, they weill draw it out. Eggs facing down. Mash down so eggs aren't side by side. The put in finishing box.

Rule of thumb: start queens on Valentine's day. But can be earlier. Need drones to mate.
Key: drones in purple eye stage, they will be ready when your queens are.

Micro raising method: susan drake.Start queenless with frame of honey, pollen, eggs, pack with nurse bees. See info on line. Cull extra cells you don't need. Tony said: Need 2k bee visits per queen cell, that's why you need so many.

Get your hives ready before you start.

Pollen on either side, then emerging larva frames, then honey, then empty with queen cell dram in middle.

Find the old queen, put her in box with frames of brood to keep her happy.

You can later combine and or equalize.

Raising a new queen can be used to break the varroa cycle cuz so many varroa are in b r old cells. Treat when you have no capped brood, oxalic or thymol will knock out uncapped brood. In th 1o day cycle while she's mating then 8 days later she's been laying and they start to cap. At 21 days, no capped brood then treat and it w I'll really knock it down. After honey. Harvest is a good t i me to raise new queen. In Mid or late june. Still have nectar and pollen, but if not feed. Also good time to split or increase

Drones must be flying. If pollen stops coming in for 2-3 days bees will eat drone larvae. Five days, the eill kick out the drones. So in June, raise queen, knock down varroa

Cloche board, bottom board with queen excluded, shuts off queen pheromones.  Set uo: brood box, clothe board
Turn brood box around 180 put 2nd box on top facing old way slide in divider  for 24 hours. Box on top is  where the starter frame is put. You can move honey, drawn comb, couple of blanks etc from bottom to top. Shake in bees from other box, without a queen. Afterb24 he put in the queen egg frame.

Put on 2nd deep by middle of month of January.

To set up s starter put 2 frames capped honey, two frames pollen, put queen in nyc box. Put a frame of young brood between pollen, then near emerging in this starter box and lots of nurse. Then go through both boxes for the best frames. Capped frames, ready to emerge, and frames with youngest brood, no eggs in this, eggs can go into queen vacation nuc.

Now ready to construct starter. Shake in as many bees as possible close up for 24 hours. Or put in clothe board. Then,  put in Miller method egg frame. Check after 24-36 hours and should see queen cells being build. No queen cells? The queen may still be in there. Or may be a new small queen You didn't see.  You can put queen from vacation nuc back into the other  brood box box.

Don't let either of  them be too weak. Use drawn comb so laying begins immediately.

Miller frame can produce 10 queen cells. At 10 days after they start, cut around with a cell sharp knife to move a cell to another bix. Or put it in a cell protector. From day 10 on they are sturdier and able to move. Don't let them chill. You can candle the cell in protector to see hiw they are moving if your keeping the for a later nyc.  There's a queen rearing chart on our site from OSU. Plug in dated to know each stage. 12 hours makes all the difference.
Queenless for 24 hours best for introducing cell, for live  virgin queen, leave 72 hours for better acceptance.

Be ruthless. Don't baby weak hive or mutt queen. Raise a new queen.

Drone comb will be built on damaged comb. Use green foundation to see it easier and put between edge and food source, not in center.

Evaluate your local queens

Tony Tricks: queen excluder on bottom of box, shake out all bees into box. All will pass through, but queen will be on the excluder

Opposite way, put excluder in between two boxes, shake off all bees, put top back on upper has brood, nurse bees and others will move up leaving queen on bottom. Takes about an hour. Shake all bees off of top. Great way to harvest nurse bees.

Leave 180 rotated box turned around.

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