Feb 8 2019 hive check

Today's goal was to add a second brood box with 10 Foundation frames to each of the three strong boxes. I pulled drawn comb some with honey from the lower boxes put it in the center of the upper boxes and swapped out those frames. I did not break up The Brood nest with checkerboarding. There are two other boxes that don't have the second brood box on yet I'm still making those up. I did pull one frame of honey and left it to be robbed out because the southeast Hive had no drawn comb that was empty. Oh wait two days and then take that frame of open foundation come and put it back in the Southeast hive.

Breakfast with the Beekeeper -February 2, 2019

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Tony Hogg, Full Moon Apiary

Breakfast with the beekeeper February 2, 2019
Cold and rainy Saturday. Been this way for a while. Gotta work the bees when you can find time to work the bees. Update: Lawrence Cutts was head of apiary inspection, knows more than any of us together, has been ill. He’s in and out of rehab at this point. If you have the chance to talk to him, take the time.
Solutions for sudden bee kill and reduced population. Options: neighbor sprayed something that could have killed them. Was it lack of sun? Did they get chilled, there was plenty of stores and  then suddenly reduction. She noticed that there were withered wings on a few bees. Could it bee mite load? From one weak to the next it happened. Was it sublimination that was too strong? Best thing to do is check for mites and see what the load is. Any time you do a treatment, check before and after, but if only once, check after. Don’t’ assume that treatment was effective. This time of year the mites are in the cells and they will experience a growth spurt just as the bees do.
Hives will collapse quickly if the mite load is too high, especially if bees are weak and the weather turns cold and the hive gets chilled, there could be a kill off. Solution: check your mite load. Especially check if the queen is still laying
.Tony: some times the just up and die.
If a hive gets robbed, and collapses, know that the mites were spread all around to the other hives that the robber came from. If you don’t have enough to do an alcohol roll, then do sugar shake. Sugar shake will get you in the ball park of what your mite load is.
Of interest: Permaculture class on the Great Southern Swine, for forest raised pigs next weekend. The APA Bee Course is 2/23 8am-4pm, lots of hands on at the Wakulla Ag Office. Nucs will probably about $150-160 for nucs. Price is $65includes lunch. 2//1/2019 is the next APA meeting.
What to see this time of year:
Seeking food sources, water to make bee bread. Highs are getting lighters and nectar and hone is going down but the pollen is going up. Drones are coming on, and in the warmer part of January, you might have seen some drones. The worst of the cold will pass soon.
What to be doing:
Fee the bees so you can have them build up. Feed 1:1 so they will draw foundation. Check the laying patterns, to see how the queen. 1:1 will encourage the queen to lay and to build more wax. The heavier they  syrup, the more work they will do to store it. So fee 1:1 to have them build. Tony is feeding both community and individual hives. Pound of sugar and a pint of water = 1:1. Put back in any previous drawn comb for your foundation so they will use it, unless they don’t like it.
Check laying patterns to evaluate the queens. A crappy queen today, she’ll be worse in a month. If the pattern is good, keep her. If not, plan to replace her. They don’t improve with age. Don’t replace her until there are all the resources they need. If you don’t it now, they won’t make a good queen. If you’ve got two boxes and the bottom is empty, reverse them.
Queens, Mark ‘em as you see ‘em, so you know the year. 2018 color is white     2019 is  green    . Carry marker and a catcher and then you  will find her when the bees are full. Put elastic on the back of the smoker to mark her. Put it in your yard bee kit.
Get your equipment ready NOW. All your frames and boxes. Rotate out all the old stuff.
What do you do when the shoulder splits off the frame. Put it to the outside of the box, so they will clean it out. Let them fill it with n nectar and then when the brood is out you can take the frame and let them rob it out.
Queens will swarm in the spring. The older the queen the more likely she will swarm. Once the queen cells are pupating they are very easy to damage. Don’t turn it upside down. You could have a good cell but jiggle it too much or they get chilled and she’s not going to be a good queen.
Look at Randy Oliver’s easy modified swarm method and queen rearing:
1. Take three boxes all the same size. Deep or mediums. Have double brood box boing, with lots of brood. Find the queen. Carry a nuc box, so you can put her separate and cover her up. You know where she is. Go through the hive, find your resources, food, frames etc. In the 3rd box, you’ll have four frames, good of pollen and just hatching larvae put in middle, on the outside, put in open nectar and drawn comb.  In the other box you’ll put in a couple frames of brood and item e open nectar and drawn comb. In the bottom box, put her in the bottom box with capped brood and drawn comb. Put queen excluded, put the 5 frame box on top of that and either a cloth board or solid bottom board and put on top, then put your 4 frame of brood, bottom, shake in the nurse bees from another hive., then drop in a frame  brood later that day 6hours. In 24 hours, they will be pulling out queen cells,  After 24 hours, take the frame from the top into the bottom so you have 10 frames in bottom. And now you have a queen right finishing box. Come back in 10 days and you’ll have queen cells. Tony will post it so it’s easy to raise queens. When you’re done, put it to the side. Use the queen cells where ever you want. If you want to later, you can split that and the box won’t swarm. This is an easy system to raise queen right out of the box.
They are easy to make, you need, good bees, lots of bees and lots of resources. (Look at previous year’s advice). Look at gentle nature and good honey storage.
Swarm prevention:
Make sure you’ve given them adequate room so they don’t swarm early. You can cage the queen if you want her to stop laying for a while, but will cut down on egg production.
Split hives, if you have an old queen, she still may swarm. Tony used to make splits into 5 frame nucs, but now just into 10 frames, but that’s cuz he has 3 deeps and he has lots of resources. Equalize the two brood boxes, put in a queen excluder and then requeen the one that doesn’t have a queen, you can split.
If you kill a queen out of the box, and the hive is weak, they won’t be able to make a good hive. 16 days to a queen, 21 days to worker, 24 for done, so count your days. Make a queen in another strong box (see Jaime Oliver mating box in this entry). In 3 weeks (16 days, maturation, maiden flight, laying begins) you’ll have a useful queen.
Equalize your 2 boxes about 3 days before you make split. Find the queen, put a queen excluder between the two boxes, on 3rd day if you’ve got eggs, you’ve got the box with the queen. If there are no eggs, give it a queen cell. Take the queen out (option 1), then after 24 hours, put a queen cell in each (check weather so shell have a good flight. If it’s going to get cold, put cell into the middle of the brood cluster so she’ll stay warm. Leave box queen less for 24 hours.  If you’re raising more queens, you have a better chance for if one queen emerges early and kills the other cells in her box.  If a queen is not mated, she’ll be laying drone eggs.
Tony will cells queen cells, a week ahead notice is what he needs – He pulls queen cells within 24 hours of the queen emerging. So make sure the old queen is out and they box is queenless. Put it quickly into the hive. From the grafting time, with 24 hours you’ll know if they are taking, that 10 days out from her emerging (graft, development time, clearly a queen cell etc.)
Thomas County is starting a bee farm at a school.`
Watch for Drones:
You’ll find drone brood between frames and on damages  frames. Look into the busted cells and see if there are mites on the drones. You won’t need to test, if you see mites on the brood, ,but doesn’t means you can’t test. Mites in one hive, you’ve got mites in every hive.
Tony uses drone foundation so there will be lots of drones because he’s raising queens. You can also pull out a lot of the frames full of drone broods and freeze the frame to kill the mites. Tony puts the drone foundation next to the edge of the brood pattern. Damages comb will be where they will build drone foundation or drone frames and get 5K drone cells, quickly. He’ll pull out those drone frames later in the summer or they will fill it with nectar, if that’s a problem, pull it and let them rob it out. Drone comb will only have drone eggs in it. When you used drone foundation, they will pull out the larger cell. Tony puts in in all his cells so that he’ll have thousands of drones.  Queen can mate with 15-20 drones. Best to saturate the area with drones if you want to improve the
Check and treat for mites: If you don’t’ control now, it will only get worse. You need to set a base line with your first test in spring so you’ll have an idea. If you treated in Nov, Dec. you need to test again in the spring (February) so you can confirm the (2 mites in your sample is too much, treat again).
Good treatment options this time of year:
 Api life var (21 days option, 3x once per week). Michelle uses hold it in place with thumbtack.
 Apiguard – 28 day treatment cycle
 Hopguard – 20 days treatment cycle (approved with honey supers in place)
 Formic acid – 20 day treatment cycle ( may be early, use later in spring) also approved with super in place
 Apivar and Apistand – 42 day treat cycle a minimum (maybe 56 days) so not good in spring
 Oxalic acid sublimation – need to go through 21 days cycle  1xper week, 3 treatments
Check your timing and plan accordingly.
Which treatments are better for Queen rearing: Don’t be treating when you are raising queens, no matter what you use. Many of these (especially the oils) are fungicide, so maybe use a probiotic afterward to help with the gut flora.
Oxalic Acid, may or may not effect the gut flora. For the dribble method, it will upset their gut, but sublimation (vapor) is not known.
Equipment:
Check your frames, your boxes, take the time to get ready. If they are bad shape now, they will fall apart on you this season. Don’t pry from the end. Rotate your frames out. The wax is constantly soaking up all the chemicals e bees come in contact with. Put the date on so you know when to take them out.
If you are putting in foundation, not comb, you need good nectar source. If they are building fast it will be nice, if slow it will be hit and miss. Coat with wax may help, add a little cocoanut oil 5%-10% and make a wax crayon and rub this on the frames and that will encourage them. If you don’t put the cocoanut oil in it’s a bit too hard to work. Put in a toilet paper roll with one sealed end and you’ve got a crayon.
Brood pattern check:
If queen is not laying good now, she won’t have a good pattern in season. It should be that lovely brown slightly dimpled rug, no space or opened comb. Can you find your queen? Can you find larvae? What about brood?
Do you have 20# of honey or nectar at any given time so that when crummy weather won’t cause them to starve, especially if the population is big, and you get 3 days of bad weather and they stave. Over feed them. You can’t overfeed them, but they can run out of stores quickly. They will start tearing out brood once they get stressed. And, once they are stressed, it takes a while, like us, to calm them down. You should have one to two frames of pollen. You can feed pollen patties, they will quick taking dry pollen in December, but once the mustard and the other comes available, they will stop taking. If they need it they will eat it, if not, they will ignore it, don’t leave it in there because it will feed the beetles.
Looking ahead:
Don’t’ graft befor3e valentines Day, sometimes it can be earlier, depending on drones, but early drones, even when you see them may not be the best. The wise man waits. Or raising quines in the hives. March 1 is swarm season. That’s the natural progression. The queens are going to emerge soon if you started in Mid Feb.
When dewberries start to bloom, put on a super. If bees are building white wax on the lid or frames, put on a super.
Citrus blooms the middle of March.
Spraying – for citrus greening, or for mosquitos. Call the Leon County mosquito control so they won’t spray in your area. There is no currently aerial spraying in Leon currently.
Housekeeping:
Clean a few frames each time and it will keep things cleaner. You can use frame spacers in the drawn comb honey super so you’ve got deeper honey and more honey in a frame, it makes it easier to uncap, but the amount in a small bee yard is not significate increase in the honey production.
Why Tony doesn’t use screen bottoms: Was introduced as a varroa mite treatment, but varroa reproduces 12 months out of the year, so that’s not really a helpful thing. In the north you can get a broodless time which means varroa can’t reproduced, here you get a little reduction but not a lot. If you have a screened bottom board you’ve got to close off the screen bottom to keep them effective. Down here the humidity is so high it’s like having the windows open in the house and they are slower to cap honey on a solid board.
UF Apiary says it is OK to use pressure treated as bottom board if you’ve allowed it to weather a bit and is not wet from the treatment.
Tony’s going to try dipping his wooden ware in hot paraffin to help preserve it. Just painted woodenware does not last more than 3 years. Tony has used copper napthanate (out off Memphis or Stalling in T’ville) and mmix it with diesel?? For 5 gallons which you have to dilute, and then let the wood after it has been soaked for 24 hours and then let them dry for 6 months. You’ve got to build the units before you soak them. There is a water based wood preservative to help them last longer.
Spotty laying pattern:
1> Starting to fail
2> Not well mated in the first place
3> High inbreeding coeffient, and the eggs are not viable
4> Nosema will contribute
5> High mite load because of the poop in the bottom of the cells and the nurse bees are pulling them out.’
Your going to get a lot of holes, you want just a few holes, consider replacing when the hive is stronger. If 15% or higher, you should replace. Breed out of the good queens. Tony replaces her every year.