Installing your Bees

Beekeepers are beginning to install their bee packages. Here are videos that will explain a package and go over the steps of installing your packages.  This can be an exciting experience and knowing what to do before installing your packages will prepare you for the task at hand. We want you to feel comfortable while installing your package.

About a Package

Installing a Package

Be prepared before you go to your hive to install your package. Ensure you have all the tools you need and are dressed appropriately for your comfort level. With your hive setup and painted, ensure that you have:

Hive tool

Spray bottle with a sugar water mixture (temperature permitting)
Rubber Bands
Feed and Feeder
Protective Clothing

Installing your bees can be a thrill and during the activity certain steps must be carried out. Remember that the cork must be removed from the candy end. Removing the cork from the non-candy end will release the queen prematurely and your colony will not have accepted her yet.

Non-Candy End

Cork Removed from Candy End

Once your bees have been installed, a feeder must be applied. Depending on the weather and temperatures outside, using an entrance feeder or a division board feeder are most common. The feed must be easily accessible by your colony and checked on regularly. The colony is not yet established and will not be able to forage for pollen or nectar. Keep the feeder on until your bees are able to sustain themselves (even then, having a feeder on for that rainy day is recommended).  If temperatures do not drop below freezing, a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water is an acceptable feed. The sugar water mixture will help stimulate colony growth. If colder weather is forcasted, feed with fondant or other semi-moist, hard feed.

Cold Weather Suggestions

We had our first Bee Pick Up Day at the Bee Farm. We know everyone that came to pick up their bees were worried about the colder temperatures and what to do about installing their packages.
 

Bee Packages

Ideally, a package of bees should not remain in the package for more than 4-5 days. Keep in mind that the bees will have been in the package for about a day before they were picked up at the Bee Farm.

Package Installation

If your weather is forecasted to be:

(a) Cold (highs of 45° or less) for more than 4-5 days, it will be best to install the bees.

(b) Cold, but forecasted for just a day or two, keep the bees in a cool dark place, such as a garage. Be sure to lightly mist the bees with sugar water twice a day. If you see increased bee mortality in the bottom of the package, install the package.

When installing bees in cold weather, be careful not to excessively wet them down with sugar water. It is best to shake the bees from the package so that they can cluster around the queen to keep her warm. The passive method of installation is not suggested as the bees may cluster in the package rather than round the queen.

 In cold weather the bees will cluster and may not be able to access a feeder. Your colony will need a feed that can be easily accessed. If temperature reach below freezing, liquid feed will crystallize and bees can not    obtain the food source. It is best to use a semi-moist, hard feed that can be close to the cluster. Here are some different ways:

(a) If you have some drawn comb with honey from another hive, certainly that can be used by hanging a few of the frames in the middle of the hive with the installed package

(b) If you have drawn comb which doesn’t have honey, you can lay the frame flat and sprinkle sugar into the cells until they are full. Mist the sugar just a little so it gets sticky and doesn’t fall out when you stand the frame up. Now do the other side. Frames loaded with sugar can be hung in the hive and used for food by the bees.

Fondant Frame

Fondant on Frames

(c) If you don’t have any drawn comb, you can apply a fondant to the top bars, or better, use the Fondant Feeder. The bees can cluster around the fondant and use it as a food source.

Winter Prep

It has come to that time of the year where beekeepers are either antsy to make sure their bees will survive the winter months or relieved that not much is needed to be done during the winter. Either way, hives need to be prepared for the winter months. Feeders should still be on the hives and your mite treatment should be finalized. Appropriate feed for the hives would be a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water or corn syrup. Feeding bees is how you have strong colonies. Having feed for your colony will stimulate brood production and allows beekeepers to supply bee nutrition.

Hive Top Feeder

Now is the time to get into your hives and check the honey stores and the brood. The queen's laying will reduce but the brood chamber should include 3 or 4 frames of brood in fall. If you are not seeing the proper amount of brood, stimulate your queen laying with feed and bee nutrition. When checking, determine the strength of your colony by counting the spaces between frames that are full (not half full) with bees. Strong hives should have at least 10 frames of bees where as weaker colonies will have fewer than 7 full frames of bees. Weaker colonies need to be combined with other hives.

Frames of Bees

Before the winter months are upon us, we want to rearrange our hives so that the brood is on the bottom and  honey and pollen are on top. The queen should move down into the bottom super and once temperatures decrease, beekeepers should resist the urge to check on their bees.  Now, start planning for next year!

Check us out: www.BrushyMountainBeeFarm.com

Harvesting the Sweet Rewards

Beekeepers enjoy taking advantage of the fact that the honey bee will store more honey than the colony will need. A typical hive will store a surplus of 60 to 80 pounds of honey. Beekeepers set their goals on extracting this honey and filtering it into bottles.

•  Hives entering their second (or later) year should undergo spring treatment before the honey harvest. Certain treatments would not affect the purity of the honey, but the use of harsh chemical treatments will contaminate the honey supers. In either case, treatments should cease during the honey harvest.
•  Beekeepers want to ensure that their hive is well maintained and offer feed for their bees as a reliable source of food to collect for the colony. Having a feeder on during the honey harvest will allow for the bees to store sugar water instead of honey. This does not affect the harvest from being edible but will give the honey an influential sugar water flavor. Beekeepers want to harvest honey instead of sugar, therefore remove the feeder while honey supers are on the hive.
• Preliminary steps need to be taken to ensure that the queen does not enter the honey super and begin to lay eggs. A queen laying eggs in the honey super will limit the amount of space to store honey and will pollute the honey with larva upon extracting. Adding a queen excluder will guarantee that she will not enter the honey super.

Photo By: The Sacred Bee's Blog

Worker bees will be able to go up into the honey supers and store nectar that is being foraged from flowers. The queen excluder will prevent the queen from entering the supers but will allow workers to easily move up. The key step in harvesting honey from your hive is to clear out the honey supers. Every beekeeper will have their own method to clearing out the honey super and some are easier than others.

• Using a bee brush to brush off every frame is time consuming and will leave your bees irritated and ready to sting.
  
  
•  An escape screen is an easy way to harvest that will ensure that once your bees have left the honey supers, they are challenged to get back into it.
  
  
•  Using a fume pad and a Natural Honey Harvester will quickly force your bees to vacate without contaminating your honey.

After harvesting frames from the honey super, take the frames into the extracting room and begin to uncap each frame. There are multiple methods in uncapping frames: Sideline Uncapper, Cold Knife, Hot Knife, or an Uncapping Fork are some methods for beekeepers to use. Here are some videos on these uncapping methods.

Spring Treatment

During the winter months, beekeepers expect their bees to be clustered in the center of the hive and production of brood to have ceased. This winter seemed to be an exception with such mild temperatures. Hives were able to raise brood and replenish their losses before spring arrived. Beekeepers experienced early swarming and stronger colonies that required splits.

Every hive needs a thorough inspection to ensure that the mite population is not overwhelming, diseases are not found, and there is a strong population in your colony. During this thorough inspection, some things to check for:

1.  Diseases (American foulbrood, European foulbrood, Chalk brood, Stone brood). If diseases are found, contact you state inspector.
2.  Check brood pattern and population of your hive. There should be several frames nearly filled with brood and your frames covered with bees in the top hive bodies.
3.  Pest control. Most pest can be seen by the naked eye during inspection but to get an accurate count, further testing needs to be completed.

Varroa Mite  Photo By: Barbara Locke

Checking For Mites

Varroa Mites can greatly weaken a colony by creating open wounds on the bee, leaving the bee more prone to infection. Mite control is an essential process that needs to be treated on a regular basis. With a mild winter and continuous production of brood, the mite population will grow faster and be larger and the colony will need to be treated. There are several ways to check for mites within your colony. The Varroa Mite is the most predominant mite that create open wounds on the bee, leaving the bee more prone to infection, as well as vector (transferring) viruses, which compromise the health of the bees and the entire colony.

Sugar Shake. Place a few table spoons of powdered sugar in a mason jar (replace the lid with #8 hardware cloth) along with roughly ½ cup of bees (around 300 bees) and gently "slosh" them around, ensuring they are fully coated. The sugar will dislodge the mites, allowing them to fall through the hardware cloth onto a clean surface. Count the mites that are dislodged from the bees; if the mite count exceeds 3, treatment is recommended.

Corex Sheet. This is a sheet which slides under a screened bottom board. Spray the corex sheet with a cooking oil so when the mites fall from the hive they stick to the sheet and can then be counted. Insert the sheet for 3 days and then remove it to count the mites. Once you have a total, divide it by 3 to get the average mite drop in a 24 hour period ; if the mite count exceeds 10, treatment is recommended.

Corex Sheet  Photo From: pollinatethis.org/beeblog

If this is your first year in beekeeping or you just purchased a NUC or a Package, and you received your bees from a reliable source, they would have already been treated for mites prior to your pickup. These colonies should not need to be treated until late summer/early fall.

Treatment

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods work with the behavior and biology of the target pest to aid in its control. Several methods that can control the mite population include:

• A screened bottom board which allow the mites to fall out of the hive
• Drone trapping/Varroa trapping using a Drone frame or Drone foundation
Remove frame after cells have been capped and freeze for 48 hours. Reinstall frames after thawing.

IPM methods often are not a sufficient form of control and more traditional methods need to be used. We, and many in the scientific community, strongly encourage the use of “soft chemicals”. These are naturally occurring products and many naturally existing in honey. The two most common are Api Life VAR and MiteAway Quick Strips. Api Life VAR is made with thymol, which is used in mouthwash, and other essential oils. Evaporative wafers are placed on the hive and the thymol vapor kills the varroa. MiteAway Quick Strips use food grade formic acid, which naturally occurs in honey.

Managing a Honey Bound Hive

During the course of keeping bees, one of the main attractions is the ability to harvest honey. What happens though, when your bees have filled all of your frames, in the brood chamber, with nectar and your queen has nowhere to lay?

Honey Capped Frame

This is a common occurrence to have your brood chamber become "honey bound" during the main nectar flow. A typical hive body will have a brood cluster in the middle and the outside frames will contain honey. A honey bound hive happens when brood begins to emerge, it is replaced with nectar. With a heavy nectar flow coming in, the space for your queen to lay will become overrun with nectar.

A queen that has no space to lay will cause complications within you hive. If you notice that your hive has or is becoming honey bound, increasing the area for brood is necessary. A queen that does not have the space to lay can lead into a swarm.

Emerging Worker Bee

To help manage a honey bound hive, add an additional brood chamber on top of your hive. Switch out your outside frames that are filled with honey ( in the honey bound body) with empty frames (in your new brood chamber). This will create room for your queen to be able to lay and grow your hive.

Checking back with your Colony

By now some of you have already installed your bee packages and are antsy to get back in there to check on them. Try to hold off for 4 to 5 days before you revisit your hive. This allotted time period will give your colony ample time to become use to the queen and release her on their own. Being a new colony that has not drawn out comb to store food, it is still necessary to check and make sure that your feeder is filled for their convenience ( this needs to be checked every other day without disturbing the hive).

Pulling Out Frames

As you get back into your hive to check your queen cage, try to notice how your colony is reacting and be prepared to check for laid eggs. This is still a weak colony and your outer frames might be bare with no drawn comb but as you move into the center of your hive you should notice frames in development. As you are removing the frames, be very cautious that the queen is not on the frame you are handling. Working your way from your outside frame, begin to check for nectar and laid eggs to make sure your colony is doing well and your queen is laying ( there is the possibility that you might see your queen). With everything checked out, remove the queen cage and reassemble you hive.

Your colony is doing well and you are on  your way to becoming a better beekeeper.

That would be a nice scenario to go through but because honey bees don't follow a text book, everyone's experience is going to be different. Some things to be cautious of as you go back into your hive:

Bees in Hive

1.  If you notice that your queen has not been released but yet your are still seeing eggs within your frame, there was a queen in your package other than the one in the queen cage. You do not know about the queen (not in the queen cage) that came with your package: how old she is, is she strong, or how she will do with your colony. From this point there are many options that you can attempt.

• Pinch off the queen that was not in the queen cage and let your colony accept the other
• Release the caged queen and let them find a victor (this is not reliable because the weaker queen could fight off the stronger which would not be good for your colony)
• Remove the queen cage a create and split from another colony or re queen a separate hive ( more advanced but would end up giving you two colonies)

The queen that with your colony now is a working laying queen. They have accepted her and if there are eggs it is best to leave her be. The best option would be to remove the queen cage and introduce it to a separate colony or create a split from a different hive.

Photo taken from Mark's Bee Blog 

2.  When checking your frame you begin to notice queen cells. This indicates that your colony finds your queen insufficient and are trying to replace her. This can happen when introducing a new queen to a new colony. Your queen is caged and is not laying which projects to your colony that she is weak and needs to be replaced. Once she is released and begins to lay, she will kill off the queen cells and everything goes back to normal. Simply remove the queen cells and check to make sure your queen is properly laying.