This gives you some tips on when to open your hive, what to look for and how to work with your bees -- how to get familiar with the calendar year when working with your bee hive so that you know what you are looking at
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Managing Bee Hives Throughout the Seasons
1. Week Three: Managing and Working
with the Bees
Dara K. Dimitrov
dkd4@waikato.ac.nz
2. When to look in the hive
You need to learn to inspect your hives REGULARLY but
the calendar year is important
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
3. Time of Day
Try to Open the hive in the middle of the day
If the weather is too cool – the bees will be agitated
If it is late in the day – it will be too cold
Or they have been annoyed too often
Bees can inherit defensive behavioural traits – species of bees
Stinging readily may mean you have to smoke them
4. What you are looking for in the
hive (Brood box)
The number of bees in the hives
What types of bees are there
If the bee numbers are low – the queen might be failing
The number of frames of brood
We can if there is continuity in the bee production
Eggs, larvae, capped brood
Honey stores?? - have the bees got food
Examine the brood – and the patterns
Looking for disease (we will cover this later)
5.
6. Spring – September to December
You will open the boxes more regularly as the weather
warms up
Health of the colony
Smell the hive box – Unpleasant smell?
Sound of the hive – loud and agitated – probably queen-less
The condition of its queen (looking for eggs – brood)
Varroa Mite Strips go in (and out before honey boxes go on)
This is the time to take corrective action if you think the hive has
problems
7.
8. Spring
The number of the bees increase quite quickly
The hive needs to have adequate food – if not naturally
– then you have to feed them (a bit on this later)
The hive will begin to build queen cells
This is the natural way that the hive will reproduce itself
Hive splitting can be done now – more successful than in
autumn
The Queen Excluder is VERY important
It is used to separate the brood from the honey boxes
The size allows the bees to pass but prevents the queen
and drones
9.
10. If there is a problem
can see it
--- You
Queen fails - No Queen --- no eggs or larvae
11. Hive has low bee numbers
Low Brood numbers - No brood – queen has failed or
died
Low honey – No honey –You can’t see any in the frames
No pollen?
The bees will be starving – and you will need to feed them
You may have to re-queen the hive if there is low brood
numbers (more on this next week)
12. Summer -- Dec to March
(Honey)
The bees basically take care of themselves – the less
you disturb them – the happier they are
Checking them regularly (every 2 weeks – weekly if you
think there is a problem)
Checking the honey flow – the bees shoot out of the
hive like they have been fired from a gun
There are flowers everywhere – blooms and trees
13.
14. Summer
Checking how much available space is in the hive
This is the time you begin to put honey supers on (the
honey boxes go on one at a time)
You entice the bees up into the honey supers by putting a
couple of frames of honey into the Honey super
Extra room stimulates the bees to store more honey
Remember the WEIGHT OF THE HIVE –
Full depth supers can weigh as much as 40 kilos
¾ depth supers can weigh as much as 25 kilos
15.
16. Honey Supers
Important to put the first one as soon as the bee
numbers build up
Put the second one on when the first one is half fill (put
a frame up in the second one to entice the bees up)
As you get higher – put the filled boxes at the top and
the empty boxes above the brood (easier for the bees to
get to the empty supers)
This is called Top Supering – you just keep adding
supers until the honey flow stops
You can begin to harvest the honey
17. Autumn – March - June
The peak of the honey flow has passed
Take the honey supers off but leave enough for over
wintering Varroa Mite strips go back in
Check the queen and the brood (eggs, larvae) – the
queen slows down the egg laying
Can split the hives now too
Reduce the entrance to the hive to keep the warmth in
Can put on extra hive protection (like carpet above the
hive matt) to give the hives extra warmth protection
18.
19. Winter – June – August (early
September)
The queen will slow right down on laying eggs
There is no food about for the bees so they usually
cluster in the hive
Basically a ball of bees in the middle of the hive (the size of
the ball depends on the number of bees in the hive)
The ball is heated to around 35 Celsius (no matter what the
temperature is outside the hive
The cluster is layers of bees lined up side by side which
creates a thermal barrier
The bees can still move about and eat a little honey
IF the cluster loses heat – the hive will die
20. If there are too few bees in the hive and the outer shell
of the cluster loses heat – the hive will die even if there
is honey in the hive
The bees can’t leave the cluster to go eat – there can be
several ‘shells’ of the cluster
Keeping the hive warm is paramount
Cluster can cover 8-9 frames on a strong hive
Very cold – cluster will be reduced to 2-3 frames
21. Never open the Hive
When it is raining, cold, or windy
WHY?
Chilled brood – the bee larvae and capped brood die
Dead bees still STINK
You have to remove the frames and clean out the hive box
The bees have to work harder to draw out the wax
The hive will become weak – and will probably die out over the
winter
22. Bee Temperatures
35 Celsius – is the optimum core temp in the hive
18 Celsius – the bees will begin to cluster
14 Celsius – the bees will become motionless in the
outer cluster shell – even though the bees inside the
cluster may still move about
23. Feeding the Hives (or they
starve)
This is the time of the year when the bees run out of
stored honey –
This can happening from mid – winter to early spring
The weather is too cold for the bees to break cluster
You feed the hives from inside the hive (dripping syrup into
the hive sometimes help if the hive is weak)
If the winter is very cold – your nucs will die off as they
can’t maintain cluster and feed (too few bees) ---you may
have to put them on top of a stronger hive to save them)
24. Feeding bees -
Pollen Patties – protein source for the bees (I make my
own up) – see hand-out
Sugar Syrup – you need sugar feeders –
Sugar Fondant – sets (so not syrup) – treat it like a
pattier