Dadant – Free Shipping
Just got off the phone with Mark in the Dadant Chatham branch and he advised that they will be offering free shipping from Nov 28 to Dec 12 this year. It’s a great opportunity to pick up any gear for the 2012 season.
Just got off the phone with Mark in the Dadant Chatham branch and he advised that they will be offering free shipping from Nov 28 to Dec 12 this year. It’s a great opportunity to pick up any gear for the 2012 season.
With the warm weather in Richmond, Va. this past weekend (it was 69 when I checked on the hive called Westover), I went around to pull some of the last remaining extra supers that I had on hives. I also took a peak at any hives that didn’t feel heavy. My goal was to simply go down to the brood nest and pull one or two frames in the center of the hives to check on the brood nest. To be honest, I had just gotten through doing a lot of reading on American Foulbrood (AFB)… For those who have not delved into it much, this disease has one really nasty effect – you can actually lose an entire apiary if it takes hold of just one hive.
Effectively, the spores spread into the honey. So, when the hive finally weakens to the point where it is robbed, the other bees in your yard take the tainted honey back to their hives and the infection starts all over again. To be fair, the State Apiarist has told me multiple times this year that AFB has been almost non-existent in Virginia this year. But, all I had to do was read up on it during a quiet moment one weekend and it’s been bugging me ever since (is that hive just light or is it really suffering from AFB? Will I end up losing the whole apiary if I don’t check now?!) At any rate, I went into a few hives for the last time (I have said this so many times that I’m probably the only one that really believes it at this point) until January.
The very first hive that I went into had next to no brood. Here we go, I figured. I found the queen and she looked great. The honey stores were fine and the colony was strong in numbers. No signs of deformed wings or anything weird. Basically, except for the lack of brood, everything looked great. At this point, I was actually irritated (what the heck?! these guys were fine 3 or 4 weeks ago! tons of brood! now, she just decides to fail on me?!) On to the next apiary with a weak hive, still cogitating on what I should do about this hive. New apiary, new hive – again, no brood!!!! Now I am starting to freak out. Then, I remember (I am getting old…hell, I am old) that it’s late November! We’ve had a couple of nights below freezing…the day length is shortening quickly…EQUALS the queen stops laying!
Heh. The weather was so warm that I really had pushed it from my mind that we were well into the Bee’s Winter. But, to squash any possible nagging doubts in the days/weeks ahead, I broke down all of the hives in that apiary (5 in total). Every one the same – always no eggs (well, if they were there, I missed them) along with either no capped brood or just a handful. My queens are taking their well-deserved vacation! They won’t start up again until the days start getting longer again, probably in January.
The real key to this is that I now realize that I do not think that I have ever been into the brood nest of one of my hives in late November, so I have never seen this before. Of course, I could be crying the blues come Jan/Feb if all of these hives do have a serious problem, but I am pretty comfortable that everything is good to go. Regardless, this little surprise has me determined to go into a brood nest in January. I sort of went into one last January, when I was trying to save the Albo hive (which did survive, but I whacked the queen in April) and slid the frames to the middle of the hive, pulling one of the outside frames before I did so. I look forward to seeing what they are doing.
IMPORTANT: I do NOT recommend that anyone reading this blog actually break open the brood nest at any time after October 15 and before March 1, especially not in January or February. When I do it, it will be on a strong hive that I can stand to lose if something goes wrong. But, I am confident (or is that foolish) that I can do it if I get a day in the 50’s (we always do) in Jan.
The Virginia State Beekeepers Association had another great Fall meeting a few weeks ago, focusing on Honey Bee nutrition. The keynote speaker, Dave Mendes (President of the American Beekeepers Federation), focused on protein feeding. To his operation (of many thousands of hives that he trucks to California (Almonds) and the northern states (Blueberries & Cranberries)), feeding protein at the right time makes all the difference. His mantra is ‘good food + clean comb + good genetics = success’. I have long been a proponent of clean comb and good genetics, but have not focused much on nutrition. It has always been my belief that bees with good genetics will find the right food, unless the beekeeper takes it all (which I don’t.) But, I am starting to rethink this idea.
For a couple of years now, a successful beekeeper in Buckingham county that I collaborate with, has been talking up nutrition, specifically in the Fall (which was the theme of a couple of talks at the VSBA meeting.) I have always been reluctant to experiment with this, ONLY because of the SHB. I had found out early on that pollen patties in my hives in August meant SHB problems. But, Dave had an answer for that – you put your feed mix (he called it protein feed, as opposed to pollen feeding) into a wax paper bag with a single slit in it – giving the bees an easy area to defend. He also stressed that you only wanted to give them what they could eat in a couple of days. These two items have me thinking that next Fall I will give protein feeding another shot, in a hive or two. We’ll see how it works.
It only makes sense that giving the bees a source of quality protein at this time (early August for me) would be beneficial. In early August, they are raising the bees that will eventually raise the bees that go into Winter, or what I call the ‘fat bees.’ This is a critical time for all beehives, so a little extra quality feed can help. Dave Mendes recommended the publication ‘Fat Bees Skinny Bees’ by Doug Somerville (sp?), as this seemed to be the basis of his methods.
Another really interesting talk focused on Nosema ceranae. The researcher had found that it appears that this newest Nosema has been around longer then we had thought. In addition, it is starting to look like it is displacing Nosema apis. It’s hard to say whether this is a good thing or not. Regardless, we are seeing an increased presence of this virus, so they are watching it closely.
There was another great talk on feeding, by a fellow along the VA/NC line who focuses on selling bees and queens. He mirrored much of what Dave said, but was even more adamant about the early Fall feeding. He had found that feeding at this time was much better for the bees then any type of feeding in the Spring (syrup or protein) or even feeding during the Winter months. The bottom line was that he found that his bees came out of Winter much healthier with a focused, late Fall feeding. He also noted that the presence of Drones, Drone larva and Drone eggs was a big determinate for feeding protein at other times of the year. Bees with weak protein stores or sources would eat the Drone larva first, then the Drone eggs, for protein. A lack of both of these, in a Spring/Summer hive, was a sign that the quality of the pollen coming in was poor.
There were many other good tidbits of knowledge, but those are the ones that hit home the most for me at this stage. I want to start looking at Fall nutrition. We’ll see where it takes me!