The Beekeepers Club Inc.

Beekeeping Tips and Tricks - to avoid the worst


1 - Tips for the Winter Season

Wintertime is not the time to open your hives. The bees now give you the time for building boxes, frames and other equipment and the time to expand your knowledge by reading.
Have the hives tilted forward so moisture can drain out of the front door.
Restrict entrance opening so bees can stay warm.

Resist opening the lid and have a look at your bees. The Nosema disease is deadly on stressed bees, so:
- Do not open hives till a warm day in spring.
- Do not shift bees.
- Do not feed sugar syrup, unless bees are starving or have plenty of pollen coming in.
- Most important - do not disturb clustered bees.

2 - Candy - Emergency Winter Feed for Bees (by Ian Brown)

Despite all effort having prepared your bees before the winter and if necessary having fed sugar syrup before the weather turned cold, it can give situations demanding a feed during winter. A smaller hive could have been robbed for example, leaving them without sufficient food to last through the winter. Opening a hive during the cold season to inspect the frames for food is definitely not an option; a weight check by lifting the hive gives a good indication whether there is enough food for the bees. To be able to assess whether a hive has sufficient food it helps to perform weight checks throughout the year to get a feel for a hive with and without sufficient food.

Feeding sugar syrup during winter is not recommendable as the bees are not very active during this time to store the syrup in the comb and support the ripening process and if they do the cold temperature keeps the evaporating water in the hive, which is not a good condition for the bees. A good alternative is to feed sugar candy as it does not contain much water for evaporation.

The following is a recipe for sugar candy which can be safely fed to the bees when they are not very active due to the cold weather conditions.

Required:
2.5 kg white sugar, 0.5 litre water, saucepan (4 litres), wooden spoon, some type of mould, e.g. baking tray(s) lined with baking paper.

Method:
Put water in saucepan on moderate heat and slowly add sugar, stirring constantly. When all the sugar is added, bring to a fairly vigorous boil, still stirring constantly, and adjusting the heat to avoid over boiling. After three minutes of vigorous boiling, put the pan in a bowl of cold water. The solution must be stirred vigorously at this point to keep the cooled solution on the side of the pan thoroughly mixed with the hot solution in the centre of the pan. When the solution begins to thicken, pour into the moulds, scraping as much of the solution out of the pan with a wooden spoon before it candies. When the slabs of candy are cool they can be removed from the moulds, complete with the lining paper and stored in plastic bags until needed.

Note:
It is essential that the solution is constantly stirred throughout the whole process. If the sugar solution is burnt it can be harmful to the bees. Any of the candy sticking to the saucepan, spoon etc. can be dissolved off with hot water to make syrup. Similarly, any candy unused at the end of winter can be dissolved in water to make syrup for feeding to the bees.

Apply:
To use the candy, place the slab of candy directly on top of the frames and cover with the hive mat on a warm day when the bees are flying freely. It is unnecessary to remove the baking paper as long as the bees have access to one face of the candy. Replace as necessary.



3 - How often do I inspect my hives? (by Ian Brown)

The short answer is – only when necessary. A hive is like a factory, and like a factory, any unnecessary interruption results in loss of output. A number of years ago I sold someone a hive of very docile Caucasian bees which he used to open practically every day just for the pleasure of handling the gentle creatures. Well, I’m sure he got a lot of pleasure, but I bet he didn’t get much in the way of honey.

So how often is it necessary?
During the swarming season, which here in Victoria is approximately from September to December, you should inspect every ten days or, if your work dictates that you are a week-end beekeeper, every seven days. Provided that there were no queen cells at your previous inspection, this interval will give you time to act if the bees have started queen cells in the meantime.

During the remainder of the season when the bees are active, a two-week inspection should be sufficient to tell you that all is well in the hive. If you are lucky enough to encounter a heavy honey flow, you may have to shorten the two week interval temporarily to ensure the bees have enough storage space.

During the quiet season, from late Autumn to early Spring, assuming you have done the right thing and left ample Winter stores in the hive, the bees should not be disturbed. If you get a warm day in Spring, when the bees are flying well, you can open the hive, and without disturbing the bees too much, gently prise apart two or three frames to make sure you can see sealed stores, but do not be tempted to lift out brood frames as Spring breezes can be fatal to young brood.



4 - What do I look for when inspecting a hive? (by Ian Brown)

• Are there good patches of brood, varying in size from little or none on the two outside combs to large areas in the centre combs? Does it vary in age from eggs, small larvae, large larvae, capped cells and even, if you are lucky, young adult bees emerging? If you see plenty of eggs and young brood, the queen is doing her job so there is no need to actually see her.

• Do the combs contain honey, varying from practically full outside combs to the top corners in the centre combs, usually with a line two or three cells wide of pollen between the honey and the brood? If there is little or no honey, the bees may require a feed of sugar syrup.

• Are the bees “squeezing out” the queen by depositing a lot of honey among the brood? You may need to consider giving extra room by adding a super with empty comb, for example.

• Is the capping on the brood regular and slightly convex? Too many “.22 bullet” shaped cells may mean a queen who is growing old and laying a lot of infertile drone eggs – though occasionally newly mated queens will lay a few infertile eggs until they get into their stride.

• Are there queen cells present? If it is in the swarming season, between September and December, you may lose a swarm if you do not take action. At other times, queen cells may be the result of the queen being accidentally killed, or the bees may have decided the queen is old and are taking steps to replace her.

• Are there no eggs or young brood? If there are queen cells present, again it may be the result of the queen being accidentally killed. If there are broken-down queen cells, particularly ones with the top neatly cut off, there is probably an unmated queen in the hive and a week or two will see her laying. If there are no queen cells at all, without a queen and with no young brood to raise one, the bees desperately need help. If you are not sure what is happening, give a comb with young brood if possible and see if the bees raise queen cells on it in the next few days.

• Are there holes in some of the brood cappings which show a dirty brown mess if opened with a match stick? (Remember to burn the match stick afterwards as it could be a sign of disease). Occasionally you may find there is a perfectly healthy larva inside and the bees hadn’t quite finished capping the cell over.

• Are there open cells where the larvae, instead of being plump and pearly white, are slumped over and discoloured? This could be a sign of disease.

If you are unsure of any of the above, or even if you would just like someone standing by the first time you open a hive, there are people in the Club who would be happy to help and particularly get more experienced help if you have the slightest suspicion on the last two items.



5 - Plants to avoid (by Dietmar Klimkeit)

Spring is in the air and flowers are popping up everywhere. Great for the bees and the honey they collect, you might think, but be careful, not all the beautiful plants and flowers we see are good to collect honey from. There are plants that should be avoided as the honey produced contains toxins causing liver damage for humans. Some years back when I was travelling to NSW I was fascinated by blue/purple flowers covering the ground up to the horizon - I didn't know then what it was, it just looked beautiful. These beautiful flowers were one of Australia's common weeds, called "Paterson's Curse" and collecting honey from these flowers is not recommended for human consumption. However, it is good for the bees though. Please read the following reports:
Weed Identification - Australian Weeds - Paterson's Curse and from Radio National - Honey - Nature's own health food? - Think Again