Pawtuckaway Beekeepers Association

Transcription

1 Pawtuckaway Beekeepers Association Monthly Newsletter September 2014 September! Harvest Time. I can smell the honey. Dear PBA Members, Finally, now that we are all thinking Fall, we get a few days of Summer! But don t be deceived, the season has followed normal timing and we are just on the heels of a nectar dearth. You may have noticed a lack of nectar or honey in some of your hives, and that is normal for this time of year. We are headed into another nectar flow, with purple loosestrife, goldenrod, Japanese knotweed (bamboo), buckwheat, aster and some other late-summer blooms appearing. There are many of these in full bloom now and covered with our honeybees. If you are like me, you have added feeders to some of the lesser hives to aid in the rearing of the winter-bee brood, and an extra super to strong hives to put up the fall honey harvest. With the arrival of the late-summer nectar flow, keep in mind that the last thing you want now is a swarm. You may want to check the hive for space around the brood chamber and make sure to give the queen the space she needs to lay brood while the foragers have space to put up that last good nectar flow in preparation for winter. You can accomplish this by checker boarding honey supers above. Checker boarding is when you place empty-comb frames between full frames around the edges of the the honey supers. This may mean that you get to pull some honey frames and harvest the honey! Also, common wisdom on the Beekeepers calendar would tell us to put mouse guards on our hives at the beginning of September. This is not to be confused with entrance reducers. You need metal guards to cover the entrance and keep mice from trying to find a warm winter home in one of your beehives. Our next regularly scheduled monthly meeting will be on September 15, at the Masonic Lodge, in Candia. 79pm. Summer stories, fall preparations, recap of this year s projects and progress. We are also planning a BIG RAFFLE! We have extra equipment that we ve collected from various locations as well as wax products, comb foundation, hive tools, frames, smoker, gloves, frame feeders, one piece plastic med. Frames, honey, comb honey, jam made with honey, etc. I invite you to participate by bringing bee novelties, new or used, beeswax, candles, stickers, honey, etc. Many of our beekeepers will have no honey harvest this year bring a bottle of your own honey to raffle! We will set up raffle tables with these items and each item will have a separate raffle hat for tickets. We will make this a large part of our time together and just enjoy the fruit of our membership and cooperative club spirit. All proceeds will go to PBA club development, projects and 2015 Bee School. It is that time of the year when we begin to think about PBA Board elections for We will discuss this on Monday, but please be thinking of how you might be able to get more involved in our great association next year. We have lots of ideas and many opportunities. We need you! I m sure there s more, but we ll save it for the meeting. See you all soon! Jeremy Everson 2014 PBA President

2 PBA GIANT FALL RAFFLE Monday, September 15 Lets share the bounty of our harvests. Bring honey (many beekeepers have none to harvest this fall), canning, jams, jellies, pickles or whatever you have in abundance to share. Also any gently used bee items you no longer need or want. We will put it all together for a giant raffle. Secretary s report August 24, 2014 PBA Summer picnic. There was discussion about many bee topics: Cut comb honey: before packaging place in freezer to kill wax moth larvae. If comb honey is packaged in honey there is no need to freeze. Can you go into winter with a honey super on for the winter? Yes. Keep on the honey super and add to your 2 deeps. Don t put on a queen excluder. Use a honey super. A queen will not cross the honey super Always have 2 empty supers on top of you hives during a nectar flow. Bees move nectar from to frame. About pollen patties: are the bees eating this to feed their babies and themselves or are they dumping it outside? If the pollen on your frames is the same color as your pollen patty they are storing it. If pollen appears multicolored in your frames, they are gathering it from an assortment of flowers. More nutrition in this. Beekeeping words of wisdom from Ben: Beekeeping is 90% commonsense. If you try to lift a hive and its light as a feather, feed it. If you can barely lift it, you don t have to feed. There are 2 kinds of beekeepers. Those with sore backs and those who are going to get sore backs. What should be done for winter prep: mite control and bee nutrition. Ben did a very thorough hive inspection in Guy Lessards hive with the assistance of Jeremy Everson. Ben used a check off list as he went through the hive. This check off list is a project he has been working on and hopes to have it ready for distribution soon. One of our PBA members donated a table full of plants to be given away at the picnic. Thank you Jan Litvin for your generous gift. Thank you Guy and Dee Lessard for hosting our picnic and thank you to the cooks and everyone who contributed delicious side dishes.

3 Calendar September 15, 2014 PBA monthly meeting Masonic Lodge Candia, NH 7-9 pm October 20, 2014 PBA monthly meeting Masonic Lodge Candia, NH 7-9 pm October 25, NHBA Fall Meeting Hellenic Center Dover, NH (See attached flyer) Treasurer s report May August 2014 Ordinary Income/Expense Income Meeting Raffle- May Meeting Raffle- June Membership dues Total Income Expense Bank Service Charges 9.00 Meeting Supplies Musterfield Donation Bee Schoo- beehive Guest Speaker- Auburn Fire Dept Total expense Net Ordinary Income (195.28) Beginning Balance: 5/1/14 7, Ending Balance: 8/31/14 7, Change in cash balance: (195.28) Respectfully Submitted, Moe Lheureux, Jr, Treasurer

4 NH Beekeepers Association Fall Meeting Registration Form October 25, am to 3 pm Hosted by Seacoast Beekeepers Location Hellenic Center Long Hill Rd Dover, NH Speakers: Dewey Caron Topic in progress Sandra Rehan Topic in progress Honey tasting contest Pre registration required for meal Deadline for meal registration: 10/4/14 Name(s) Street or PO Box Town State Zip Phone #Attending $20 each # Attending no $10 each Not a paid up member for 2014? Please include your membership form and fee. See membership details at Membetship: Individual $15 Family $20 Please make checks out to: NHBA Mail to: Heather Achilles PO Box 250 Gilmanton, NH 03237

5 September hive management Queens sometimes become honey bound late August, early September. Consider checking that out. If this is your problem an easy fix is to remove a frame or two of honey and extract it. Return these frames back into your top box and preferably into the middle of the box. This will allow the bees to go back for any fall flows and the queen can get back to laying. We all need lots of fall bees to go into the winter. Brood laid in Aug., Sept., and Oct. will be the blanket of bees your queens rely on and needs to survive the winter. The more she has the better. Read more... MAARE Fall Management Guide: page Mite treatment update Sept from Scientific Beekeeping by Randy Oliver at Below is my unauthorized duplicated excerpt from the above webpage Note: I do not recommend treatment-free beekeeping for beginners. Control varroa, or colonies will generally die an ugly and unnecessary death from the varroa/virus complex. Once you ve mastered keeping colonies alive and healthy for at least three years, then you can experiment with going without mite treatments (don t expect most commercial bee stocks to survive without treatment you will likely have better luck with VSH, Russian, or feral survivors). There are several easy-to-use and effective natural mite treatments on the market that will not contaminate your combs or honey. I recommend mite testing in early spring, before supering, again in early August, and in late September (Northern Calif). KAREN EATON

6 The best test is an alcohol or detergent wash of a level half cup of bees (~320 bees), or the sugar shake (seehttp://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-part-11-mite-monitoring-methods/) ***** Update Sept 2014: Due to their huge variability, any single stickyboard count is nearly meaningless. The best assessment by far is by alcohol wash or sugar shake of 1/2 cup (about 315) bees. I m currently collecting data to see whether it s better to take the sample from the broodnest or honey frames (higher counts on brood frames, but perhaps more consistent from honey frames). At less than 2 mites per 100 bees (6 in an alcohol wash), virus transmission by mites is not a major issue. At 5 per 100 (16 in a wash), some viruses begin to go epidemic. At 15/100, colonies generally start to go into a death spiral. The most important time to sample is between August 15 and the onset of winter. ***** We have very good success with Apiguard gel (thymol) or MAQS (formic acid). I also recommend a 3.5% oxalic acid dribble (applied accurately) before Christmas (Northern Calif). I ve detailed your seasonal choices for mite treatments below.

7 Notes: All miticides are poisons, but some are safer than others to both the bees and to humans. The natural treatments are all part of our normal diet, and most are naturally found in the hive at low concentrations. I do not hesitate to use them, since the benefit of controlling varroa far outweighs any health concerns to the bees or their keeper. That said, the natural treatments are all stressful to the colony, so application instructions must be carefully followed. Proactive treatment allows you to use lower (and less stressful) doses.

8 Thymol: Natural and safe (25 g of Apiguard gel contains the same amount of thymol as does 1 lb of fresh thyme herb). Thymol is the only consistently effective essential oil found to date (actually a crystal at room temperature). I suggest wearing disposable gloves. We ve used Apiguard successfully from 55 F to 95 F, applying 25 g on an index card laid across the center of the top bars between the brood chambers (application without the card can result in excessive colony disturbance) We adjust the dose according to cluster size and temperature the proper dose will cause the removal of a handful of pupae onto the bottom board by the next morning (the colony will remove them from the hive soon afterward). I do not recommend applying under the lid, especially in hot weather. Repeat in a week to 10 days if mite count is not reduced adequately. I have some concern about the high residue levels sometimes reported. Do not apply if honey supers are on. Oxalic dribble: Natural and safe (the amount used is equivalent to that in a 3½-oz serving of spinach). This product is available at any hardware store as Wood Bleach. Follow the mixing directions at as there is only a small margin of safety to the bees. The oxalic syrup is very safe to handle, but care should be taken not to splash it into your eyes. The treatment is by far most effective if the colony is broodless. Best use is for a single application in November, or earlier if the colony has shut down broodrearing. You can also apply in summer 3 applications, a week apart. Excellent for cleaning up nucs in the spring Formic acid: Natural and pretty safe, depending upon how you handle it (definitely wear nitrile gloves; the respirator is probably unnecessary). The three main advantages of formic are that it effectively kills mites, is already a natural component of honey, and that it leaves zero residues in the hive. The problem is that the liquid form is somewhat dangerous to handle, and getting an appropriate release of vapors is tricky. The product Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) is the most user friendly Works best in doubles without supers. A single-strip treatment gives decent mite knock back. A half strip works for singles with at least 5 frames of bees. Applied in doubles at full dose (two strips) in summer, we lose about 1 queen out of 25. Mite kill may not be consistent, so check back.