May 11 Meeting

May 11, 2010 Bee Meeting
Room 1 - UW-Extension

17 Members present; 2 guests

Meeting called to order at 7:00 pm by Bob Benes.
Visitor: Todd & Brandt Butler - Schofield; 3 hives

Larry - hives not doing good. gotten end of last month; queen failed or died in one hive.
Lapps had lots of complaints of queens; problems with mating of queens. queens came from CA.
Queen cells seemed to be started. suggested with stronger hive, with eggs and larva, remove bees and put frame into the "bad" hive.

Splitting one of the hives - question about this - tabled until later.

Reminder of starting of Mite season - use of treatments and to keep up on that. Benes starting up pads himself and could make extra pads for members who wish to have them. Needs to be at least 60 degrees -and must evaporate in hives.

Mite-away II - formic acid pad in bag with holes.
New treatment - little strip to lay on frames, once used up, bees will eat up strip and get rid of it. 7 day treatments - kills mites in every level and cells. not sure on pricing, still waiting to see about licensing.

Pads - 21 day treatment and then pull them off. ($38.95/10)

Teaching materials have been ordered and hasn't arrived yet. Will make list and hand out to all members at next meeting. Videos, need to figure out way to get it to members, contact Benes to bring to next meeting.

Main Topic: SPLITS
types of them, etc.

Walk-away split - take 2 deep hive boxes and equalize them up - could separate 1 deep from the other, the one without the queen will make a new one. One that doesn't have a queen will take about 30 days to make one.

Walk-away split but locate old queen, new box: introduce a new queen - doesn't have much of a lag time in the cycle - the two boxes would be pretty much equal.

One hive - split it to the point that a frame of eggs, a frame of capped brood and a frame of honey - minimal but have enough bees to cover brood. They will make a queen out of that -- 8 hives out of 1 -- wouldn't make any honey off of it - will use honey production, may be weaker.

Reasons:
More hives
Re-queen
Raising queens
Hives may be so full of bees that to help prevent swarming
Prevent of Swarming
Will have queen cells on it - take those frames and put it into a new hivebox queens would be open mated.
genetics go into halves when open mated

To get more production
cut down split
before nectar flow; take queen and all open brood and put into new split.
leave old hive in original spot - field bees will go back to original spot
leave one frame with old eggs; will raise a new queen - won't have any larvae to take care of but will make queen cells to get going….nothing other to do that to gather nectar and pollen.
When all done, keep new queen/get rid of old queen and put the 2 hives together.

Timing on making splits.
see drones present in hive before making splits
no drones = no mated queens

Drones congregation area - when you watch, can you find were they are? outside of hive and landing board - is it ready for splits - getting ready to go out and mate?
it's time - weather wise - after the nasty weather gets over with

question: doing combine - paper - bees would find the "new" hive - the hive left, bees will remember until they die out but will go to the new hive. Remove the old hive.
Move more than 2 feet but less than 2 miles. Put something where the old hive was.
flying to old spot but eventually go to new spot.

Spring Beekeeping Management:
tied to climate
microclimate where we are at
feeding the bees

watch for swarm control - bees have used up all their space and squeezing up brood area - bees want to reproduce but keepers don't - add honey supers, make splits; pull frames and put every other one as an empty frame; bees get idea - seem to do it anyway. Make a divide and take queen out and frames - give lot of room; put empty room and more space in the old hive - bees will have thought that they already swarmed.

supering for honey

??distance between the hives? it is important? how far away from original hive? put a branch in front of them. doesn't matter how far apart they are. ie: 5 way split - original hive - completely remove from area - 5 nuks - space like star around the spot. bees will circle around spot and equalize out. Can switch up boxes from weak to strong hive if there is a weak hive that you wish to make stronger.

Can't find the queen: sweep all bees into one hive; excluder - box to move set on top - put new frames on top and give bees time to get up into the upper box.

Question for next year: Can the queens be marked when getting them? Couldn't you mark them yourselves? You could use the number marker to glue onto them.

You can pick up a queen, generally doesn't sting you but hard to tell how hard to hold onto her.

Some places will clip one wing of the queen - but if she's wanting to swarm - she'll find a way.

Haun: article Queen/Queenless - split is like murder - Bee Culture May/June Issue? Commercials get rid of queen but need at least 24 hours to
laying workers ; tough to get workers to accept them;
take 2-3 frames out of drone brood - replace with worker brood - leave cork 4-5 days, the pheromones will be out of old worker and then be used to the new queen and will more likely to accept her.

Situation: didn't want new queens; let her out - they wanted to kill her; found that there were swarm cells; waited 5 days, let her out again; all was gone.

laying workers can't find way home.
laying worker = more than 1 egg per cell…look closely at cells - lay eggs on the side and is crooked.
laying workers only produced drones
Bad brood pattern, buckshot = laying worker

new queens - can get "excited" and lay more than one egg to the cell. Bees know that this is happening and workers will get rid of 1 of the eggs.

Carpenter had problems; Lapps would replace queen.


10 Commandments of Beekeeping -
www.bushfarms.com/beestencommandments.htm

discussion on first 5 commandments

do you invert hives in the spring? anyone else do that? Benes hasn't done it - didn't seem to make much of a difference

Teske: combined all into small cavity at first - added supers; has added honey supers
Sillars: McEvoy has small and then puts a Large on top
Benes: made all smalls - no large deeps
3 boxes of shallows and then put excluder on top if using it

checkerboarding - seems to work but labor intensive

Bring back of bee cages
Refunding at this point
Meeting adjourned 8:04 pm