Presidents
Bees-ness Buzz from the Hive David McNeely
Well the
honey flow is in and I hope everyone had a good flow and lots of
honey. I know I was sold out in a week and still have people asking
if I have honey. Remember to get your hives ready for the fall flow.
We’ve been having some good rain lately, which is good for the
bees, but if you have a dry spell, remember your ladies need water.
So have some for them to have access to.
I have
had some tell me that they have lost hives to wax moths. I have lost
one also. As we know a strong hive will control the wax moths. There
are ways to help control for wax moths. One is not to use a top
entrance, when a cold snap happens and the bees go down, this allows
the moths to enter and lay eggs. Another is to ensure you have a
proper fitting top cover. If lose, this provides an entrance for the
moths. Prevention is our first line of defense. There are other
things that can be done. If anyone has any questions, please ask.
For the
first year beekeepers, remember you can still call the mentor for
advice. You will still need to get the bees through this year and
into next.
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Beekeeping
Chores
August
and September:
First
and foremost check food stores in each of your hives. Early honey
stores may be quickly exhausted, therefore colony inspections are
crucial. One day your colony may be the strongest and the next week
wiped out due to starvation. If your bees need food now feed with 2:1
sugar syrup solution. However, if they have enough stores but will
need supplemental feeding before winter arrives, wait to feed until
the end of September with a 2:1 sugar syrup solution. You don’t
want to stimulate the queen to begin excessive egg-laying with winter
just around the corner. Remember, single hive bodied colonies will
need 35 -40 pounds of honey to last the winter.
Another
task to undertake at this time is to monitor your colonies’ Varroa
mite levels. Not only has your bee population grown over the spring
and summer months, but your pest population may have grown along with
it.
If your
colony has more than 60 mites on a sticky board inserted for 24
hours, it is time to treat. Remember …. Always rotate your
treatments. If you used CheckMite last time, treat with Apistan this
time. You also have a third option available, Api Life Var This
product uses essential oils as its active ingredient and has shown
significant success.
Resolve
any queen problems you have. Weak or old queens result in small
non-viable colonies which rarely survive the winter. If colonies are
weak, combine with other weak colonies or add to existing strong
ones.
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Honey Lemon
Fruit Dressing
Use over fresh fruit
Ingredient
¼ cup grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons raw honey
¾ cup plain yogurt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
¼ teaspoon salt
Directions Yields: ¾ cup
In small bowl, whisk together lemon
zest, lemon juice and honey. Add remaining ingredients and whisk
until well combined. Drizzle over fresh fruit.
Using
Essential Oils for Honey Bee Mite Control
West
Virginia University Extensive Service
Research has shown several
essential oils can either kill, or adversely affect varroa mites.
Essential Oils have Two Modes of
Action:
Toxicity by direct contact:
When
varroa mites contact essential oils such as wintergreen, patchouli,
tea tree oil rosemary, peppermint or spearmint mixed into oil or
grease, they are killed on contact… usually within a few minutes.
Impaired reproduction via feeding
syrups containing essential oils:
When
varroa mites feed on larvae that contain oils, their reproduction is
interrupted. If the oil is strong enough, the females are unable to
lay eggs. If the oils are in lower concentration, eggs are laid, but
development of immature mites is delayed; young mites do not reach
maturity before the bees emerge from the cell; consequently, the
immature mites die.
Involvement
of Essential Oils in Impaired Reproduction of Varroa Mites: Syrup
containing the essential oil is fed at the hive entrance or in the
brood nest. Many bees
feed
on the syrup and pass the essential oils around by trophalaxis (adult
bees sharing their food reserves). The syrup and essential oil is
ingested by nurse bees and enter the communal food in the crop and
passes into the milk glands. When the nurse bees feed larvae, the
essential oils are in the bee milk and communal food and are ingested
by the larvae. Thus, when female varroa mites feed on treated larvae
or larval food at the bottom of the cell, they ingest the essential
oils which adversely affect their reproduction. The probable
mechanism is interference with enzymes in the complex gestation
(especially in the production of nutrients and new proteins) of the
oocyte and embryo-larva of the varroa mite.
Feeding
of sugar syrup with essential oil at the entrance, or in the brood
nest, places the essential oils into the food chain and prevents
oviposition by female mites or retards the development of immature
mites in capped larval/pupal cells.
Syrup: 25 drops of wintergreen or
spearmint is added to one pint of honey (or two cups sugar) in a
quart jar; hot water is added to fill jar. We found that more of the
essential oil goes into solution in honey than in sugar syrup; there
may be a natural emulsifier in honey that helps essential oils to
stay in solution. When making sugar syrup, we found that we must add
the oil to the granulated sugar then add the very warm water (not
too hot or else the oil will evaporate). Feed the bees as much as
they will take. We have had good results with wintergreen,
spearmint, rosemary and peppermint oils. We plan to conduct
experiments this fall and winter combining the essential oils with
fumadil in syrup to see if the treatments are compatible.
Problem:
oils mix poorly with water; we have had some reports of a few bees
being killed when they feed on the last dregs of the syrup.
Grease patties: are made with four
cups of granulated sugar, two cups of vegetable shortening (Crisco)
and one of the following: 21cc of wintergreen, tea tree oil, or
patchouli oil or 11.5 cc of each of any two oils. This rate is ¼
oz. of essential oils per pound of sugar and grease. Mix thoroughly
(wear gloves or use a mixer or large spoon, as wintergreen oil in
such concentrations may be toxic to the skin)
Several beekeepers have stated that
they used powdered or confectioner’s sugar in place of granular
sugar, or even replaced sugar with honey; some have also added canola
oil to the patties to make them softer and easier to apply with an
ice cream scoop. The bees take these softer patties more rapidly and,
if made with honey, the essential oils may enter into the food chain
of the bee larvae and thus impair development of the varroa mites.
Be certain that the grease patties you
make or buy contain plenty of grease or vegetable oil. It is the free
oil or grease that appears to suffocate tracheal mites and probably
also, varroa mites. We believe that this physical suffocating
function is enhanced or synergized by the essential oils.
I am very interested in trying
essential oils on Sasserfrass Hill and hope this information will be
helpful to all. If you would like to read the entire article please
go to:
http/www.wvu.edu/~agexten/ipm/insects/pollinat/varroa/varroa2.htm
This informative article was
submitted by Candace Zukas. Thank you Candace!
Mr. Charlie Says…..
August - September 2010
With
the temperature reaching three digits it is hard to think about fall
being just around the corner. Autumn and fall chores will be here
before we know it.
I
am battling the small hive beetles. I kill from 10 to 40 per day in
each hive. All I can say is thank goodness it was the small hive
beetle that came into Charleston in 1996 and not the large hive
beetle, or our beekeeping would be even more precarious. Thank
goodness for the plastic Mr. Charlie has been putting on the top of
his hives for the last ten years. Without it I don’t think I would
have any hives left. I get some satisfaction from smashing those
nasty little pests. I love to see the bees pick the beetles up and
take them out of the hive as soon as they are squished and she can
get a grip on them.
Mr.
Charlie and I continue to pull queen cells every ten days.… Now,
that is a hot job! I can see why many people say it was much too
hard and much too hot to dress out in bee suit, gloves and veil. With
the humidity and the heat I sometimes wonder if we will live to tell
the story. But, you must continue to pull queen cells or your bees
will swarm.
“The
Country Girls”, as I call our fourteen new colonies, are much too
aggressive, even for Mr. Charlie, to work without dressing out. We
had to smoke these bees just to feed them in the spring. These were
the most aggressive bees Mr. Charlie has ever had to deal with. I was
ready to re-queen back in the spring after a few bees followed me
back to the truck, a good 200 yards and flew into my face as soon as
I took off my veil…. I thought we must have had a few African bees
in the packages!!! I like my bees on the gentle easy going side.
We
are going to try a new approach to re-queening this season. Mr.
Charlie is going to purchase queens that are five or six days away
from hatching. This will be the first time he has re-queened with
pupating queens. We are both interested and excited to see the
outcome. The queens we have been getting from Wilbank’s Apiaries
are artificially inseminated. We lost many queens this spring and we
were wondering if allowing the queens to mate themselves may be a
better way to go. Mr. Charlie also purchased an incubator to keep the
queens safe and in a controlled environment, so he can take his time
going through each hive without rushing. We hope this will give the
new queens time to mate and build up for the fall honey flow and be
strong going into the winter.
Mr.
Charlie says… We learn wisdom from failure as well as from success.
We often discover what will work, by finding out what will not work;
and he who has never made a mistake has never made a discovery.
If
anyone is interested in getting queen cells let Mr. Charlie know and
he will be happy to add to his order.
We
are anxious to see what the fall season brings.
Deborah
Sasser
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One more meeting in our area
you may want to check out:
August
2 – 6th
Eastern Apicultural Society Annual Conference in
Boone,
NC. For more details: www.easternapiculture.org
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Bee
Culture Announces 2011 Calendar Theme
“Show
me your Bee yard” is the theme for the 2011 Bee Culture
Calendar.
The
yearly project generates more than a 1000 entries from all over
the globe. The winning entrants will have their photos published
in the 2011 Calendar.
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Please
send any comments or suggestions for the website to:
Jon
Hill - Webmaster
aikenbeekeeper@gmail.com
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If
you would like to help with articles, photos, fun facts, etc. for the
newsletter. You
can e-mail your contribution to Deborah Sasser
dsasser3@comcast.net
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What’s a bee’s favorite flower?
bee- gonias!
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We
had a first at Sasserfrass Hill Bee Farms this week. We had about
seventy homeschooled kids come to learn about the bees and how
important they are to our environment. Mr. Charlie and I talked to
the kids for about twenty minutes and they were attentive and curious
to learn. It was a great experience and we have had several more
groups expressing interest in visiting also. We hope we sparked their
interest and will have several future beekeepers for our efforts.
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Please
come chat with fellow beekeepers at our next meeting,
August
24, 2010 at 7pm
There
is always something to learn as we share our knowledge.
I
look forward to seeing everyone at our next meeting.
Deborah
Sasser – Secretary – Aiken Beekeepers Association
Try
to stay Cool !