the Ommatidia Sept. 2013 The monthly newsletter of the Mecklenburg County Beekeepers Association President s Buzz by George McAllister Last month I wrote about the conditions outside the four hives I weighed each night and the resulting changes in hive weight. This month I will focus on what was going inside each hive throughout the summer and how the changes in hive conditions may have impacted their weight. In past newsletters I have referred to my favorite beekeeping quote made by Dr. Hachiro Shimanuki, the retired research leader at the USDA Honey Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. He also co-wrote the current 911 page edition of The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture. Dr. Shimanuki s quote about what it takes to be successful in beekeeping says If you produce the right number of bees that are of the right age and in the right condition, and are in the right place at the right time, you will be successful. Of the four conditions Dr. Shimanuki mentions, having the right number of bees that are of the right age were the two variables I found the hardest to manage. In the right condition, the third factor, is a little tough to monitor but manageable. All four hives entered the spring with low varroa mite counts. As the summer progressed, the hives that experienced queen losses interrupted the varroa mite life cycle which kept mite levels down. Since my hives are about12 feet off the ground I have almost no small hive beetles. I doubt I have seen more than 5 beetles all year long. The fourth factor of being in the right place at the right time was not an issue since all four hives are in the same location. You will see when you read about what happened to each hive during the nectar flow, having the right number and age of bees was not easy to do. It takes 21 days for a worker bee to emerge from its cell and foraging begins around day 22 (plus/minus 4 days). Therefore roughly 43 days after an egg is laid, the worker bee starts bringing in nectar. Once a bee starts foraging its remaining lifespan is only 2 to 3 weeks. In the summertime a worker bee s lifespan is around 6 weeks so replacement bees are constantly needed. The bees in queenless hives may start foraging a few days sooner. However, a significant number of forager bees will stop foraging and assume the tasks of taking care of the remaining brood when the shortage of nurse bees becomes apparent. This year our nectar flow started on April 8 and ended on June 28. All the bees that came from eggs laid after May 15 missed the nectar flow completely. If a bee was able to forage for 3 weeks during the nectar flow before dying it would need to emerge from an egg laid before April 26. I removed my honey supers on Thursday, July 25 and extracted the honey the following Saturday, July 27. Hive #1 Hive one, my least productive hive, started the season with a year old queen, one deep brood box and a medium box with honey left over from the winter. When I extracted, this hive only produced 7.9 pounds of honey; the smallest amount of all four hives. Around the first part of May I discovered the queen was not laying many eggs, the brood pattern on each frame was small and few frames had brood. I also noticed the queen only had one wing. I left the queen in the hive until I could Making Mead 101 with Bryan Fisher of the Cabarrus County Beekeepers. Bryan has been making mead with his honey for quite some time and takes pride in his crowd-pleasing honey wine. Join us and learn how you, too, can make your very own mead. It s a subject that is simple and difficult to master all at the same time. Kind of like beekeeping. The meeting is next Thursday, 7 p.m., Sept.19, at Mouzon United Methodist Church, 3100 Selwyn Avenue, Charlotte.
It s that Time by Libby Mack September is time to start seriously preparing for winter. You ve knocked down the varroa mites and provided each hive a young healthy queen; these are prerequisites for raising healthy winter bees. The next thing needed by winter bees is lots of pollen. Depending on where your hives are, they may bring in enough fresh pollen on their own from goldenrod, asters and sunflowers. If not you should offer prepared pollen substitutes or pollen patties. Pollen substitute / supplement products must be kept frozen to maintain freshness. Be careful, though, because small hive beetles love pollen patties, so give the hive only as much as the colony can finish in a few days and keep a close eye on them. Time is running short to draw out new frames, so cull the last few dark or damaged frames and replace them with fresh foundation, continuing to feed light syrup to stimulate the wax production. Finally do a preliminary check for winter honey stores. By Halloween each colony should have at least 50 pounds of capped honey for winter food. It s easiest for the bees to process syrup into capped stores while the weather is warm and the population is large. We are now an authorized dealer for Brushy Mountain Bee Farm! Want to avoid shipping charges? Tired of taking a 3-hour round trip to the mountains to pick up equipment and supplies? Convenient delivery schedules with no additional charge to you! For more information contact: Randall York (704) 517-6190 cloisterhoney@cloisterhoney.com Place your order through us!!!
replace her. Unfortunately it took me several weeks to get another queen so the hive s population started to decline. The new queen started laying eggs the first week of June so none of new queen s offspring was able to partake in the flow. Bees from eggs laid after May 15 missed the nectar flow entirely. As a result this hive continued to lose weight over the summer never to regain its peak weight from mid-april. Hive #3 Hive three, my next least productive hive, started the season with a year old queen, one deep brood box and a medium box with honey left over from the winter. When I extracted, this hive produced 33.2 pounds of honey. On March 9 I accidently smashed the queen as I was picking up a frame. I have never killed a queen removing a frame. I guess there is a first time for everything. It took several weeks to get a queen and when I did get a queen the hive rejected her. On April 7 I introduced a swarm into the hive. Two weeks after introducing the swarm I was not able to locate the queen nor did I see any eggs. I immediately put a queen cell in the hive and the first week of May I started seeing eggs. The hive was without a laying queen for roughly 8 weeks. However, adding the swarm increased the number of bees in the hive enabling the hive to bring in nectar. During the end of May and beginning of June the hive gradually lost weigh as the original bees in the hive and the bees from the swarm began dying. The replacement bees from the new queen did not start emerging until the end of May. The bees from the new queen started foraging the first half of June and were able to take advantage of the second major nectar flow which lasted from June 16 until June 29. Hive #4 Hive four, my third least productive hive, started the season with a year old queen, two deep brood boxes and a medium box with honey left over from the winter. When I extracted, this hive produced 37.9 pounds of honey. This was only 14.2% more honey than what hive #3 produced. On April 14 the hive swarmed resulting in a drop in weight of 7.1 pounds. Unfortunately a few days before they swarmed I gave half the queen cells in the hive to another hive needing a queen. I left the hive alone for 2 weeks to acclimate after swarming only to find the hive was unable to raise another queen. The first week of May I introduced a new queen but the hive rejected her. The bee population started dropping until I introduced a 5.4 pound swarm into the hive on May 25. The hive had been without a queen for 6 weeks. Adding the swarm increased the number of bees in the hive enabling the hive to bring in nectar. Since the queen President s Buzz ( cont d from p1 ) from the swarm started laying the last few days of May, none of her offspring participated in the nectar flow. Hive #2 Hive two was the most productive hive with 145.7 pounds of honey extracted. This hive started the season with a year old queen, two deep brood boxes and a medium box with honey left over from the winter. Throughout the summer the queen produced a strong brood pattern covering 6-8 frames in each brood box. The hive had more bees in it than the other hives. There was no interruption in egg laying since the original queen lasted the entire season. As I reflect on the performance of all my hives, having a productive queen without an interruption in egg laying appears to be vitally important to honey production. In addition, when I consider the hives that were not part of this daily weighing process, my greatest honey producers were also those hives with a productive queen and no interruption in egg laying. Another interesting observation was the difference between cumulative weight gain from March 24 to July 25 and the amount of honey extracted. The cumulative weight gain for hives 1, 3 and 4 were higher or roughly equal to the amount of honey extracted which seems logical. However, hive 4 only had a cumulative weight gain of 22.4 pounds yet 37.9 pounds of honey was extracted. After examining the frames of honey I discovered several of the frames contained honey left over from last year. I probably extracted last year s honey from all four hives but it was more noticeable in hive 4. Next year I hope to learn even more about the relationship between external and internal influences on a colony and the resulting honey yield. Have fun with the bees, ~ George
Photo-journal: Hiving a feral colony Our own Bill Kenney shows us his recent adventure. Way to go, Bill!!
Local member Marilyn Starkey sure knows how to dress up a bee yard. Marilyn went all-out giving her bees truly identifable hives. It s always a good idea to mark or decorate your hives differently from one to another to minimize bees drifting from one hive to another. This is especially important for weaker colonies. Marilyn definitely gave her bees a wing up or two. Dandelion Bee Supply For all your beekeeping needs! Woodenware Fondant / Sugar syrup Protective clothing and tools Package Bees Custom woodenware available upon request Concord, NC Contact: 704-796-2972 / bees@carolinanc.com
Did You Know...? Bees are the only insect in the world that make food that people can eat Honey contains all of the substances needed to sustain life, including enzymes, water, minerals and vitamins Eating honey can help you smarter! It is the only food to contain pinocembrin that is an antioxidant that improves brain function One bee will only make 1/12 of a teaspoon on honey in its entire life A colony of bees can contain between 20,000 and 60,000 bees, but only one queen bee A bee s wings beat 190 times a second, that s 11,400 times a minute! Worker bees, who are all female, are the only ones who will attack you, and only if they feel threatened It has been estimated that it would take 1,100 bee stings to produce enough venom to be fatal Each colony smells different to bees, this is so they can tell where they live! It would take 1,100 bees to make 1kg of honey and they would have to visit 4 million flowers President - George McAllister, (704) 579-1169, meckbees@yahoo.com Vice President - Tom Davidson, (704) 906-8776, tom@tsbeeshoney.com Treasurer - Libby Mack, (704) 358-8075, mack.bees@gmail.com Membership Secretary - Sam Bomar, (704) 608-7582, sam@theiag.com Chaplain - Jimmy Odom, 704-408-2726 jimmy.odom@gmail.com Webmaster - Kevin Freeman, 704-525- f 3128, meckbees@gmail.com MCBA Newsletter 7623 Glencannon Dr. Charlotte, NC 28227