Door County Beekeepers Club

We are getting a warm spell!

Get out and clean out the entrances to your hives! I checked mine on Wednesday and 9 of 12 were blocked with dead bees!!

Also lift the lid of your hives. If you can see the top of the cluster, feed your bees. In 10 of my 12 hives, the cluster was visible on the top of the second brood box. Those 10 now have hard candy on top of the brood box frames.

The good news is that all 12 of my hives were alive yet as well as one nuc with the VSH queen in it!

If you have a hive that died, make sure to clean out the dead bees as soon as possible to prevent molding in the hive.

Good luck!

Winter has certainly been slow to arrive this year, but it doesn’t mean the care of your hive(s) can be relaxed. The bees are clustered around the queen to keep her warm and properly nourished. By this time, you should have your hive closed, a mouse guard installed, and proper ventilation systems in place. There are also things that you should periodically check as the winter progresses. Check your hive entrance for snow blockage. On sunny days, the bees will try to exit the hive to do cleansing flights. It is also important to make sure dead bees aren’t blocking the entrance. Remove the mouse guard and using a stick or long screwdriver, scrape the dead bees out. Make sure to reinstall the mouse guard when you’re done. You should also check food supplies and make sure the bees have ample honey. This can be verified by simply lifting the back of the hive to see if it still feels heavy. If it feels quite a bit lighter than it did last fall, it’s time to provide emergency feeding; the most common of which is hard sugar blocks. Try to perform these checks on a sunny day when the temperature is at or above freezing.

Happy Spring everyone! Despite a cold and snowy March, warmth and bee activity is at our doorstep.

For those of you that were successful in overwintering your colonies, there are several important things to focus on. Hive wraps and moisture pillows should be removed. Check food supplies, and until pollen is plentiful, add sugar cakes and or patties.

For those that lost hives, review the information presented by Max last month and try to determine what went wrong. Be sure to clean the dead bees out of your brood boxes and prepare the hive for re-populating.

Watch your email inbox for notification on the arrival of new bee packages and nucs. Typically, that occurs in the first week of May.

Door County Beekeepers things to do in March

Most queens will be laying eggs by the end of March so monitoring food reserves is critical. It is not uncommon for a hive to make it through the hardest part of winter only to starve in March or April. If honey reserves are low, feed candy, fondant, or dry sugar. Colonies that consume feed should be monitored carefully and fed as needed. Feed pollen substitute to strong hives with plenty of honey stores in mid-March.

Door County Beekeepers things to do in January

• Keep the hive entrance clear of snow and dead bees to allow for proper hive ventilation.
• As soon as the temperature rises to 40 degrees, preferably in January, take a quick peek inside the hive. Without removing any frames, see if you can spot the location of the cluster. How are they doing for food stores? It is a good idea at this time to provide your bees with fondant, sugar candy or granulated sugar to ensure they have enough food.
• If the temperature is too cold to open the hive, you can listen to the hive instead. Do you hear the gentle hum of the cluster? If so, you can be relieved to know your bees are still alive. Wait for a warmer day to open the hive and take a look at them. If you are accustomed to knowing the weight of your hive full of honey, you can also lift the hive slightly to judge how much food stores the bees have left. This will give you an idea how soon they will need supplemental food.
• Assess your equipment and plan for the upcoming year. Now is the time to order new equipment, build, paint, clean and repair if needed.
• Order new package bees and/or queens to be delivered in the spring.
• Attend local bee club meetings, take or register for a beekeeping class, read beekeeping books and articles, and research, study, and make a varroa testing and treatment plan for the new season.

The Bees – The bees are in a tight cluster. No peeking.
The Beekeeper – There’s nothing you can do with the bees, except clear out the entrance of dead bees. Read a good book on beekeeping, and enjoy the holidays!

It is the time of year to prep your hive for the winter months ahead. Your goal is to raise fat bees that will overwinter in the hive for the next 5-6 months. There is interesting reading on the web about vitellogenin and overwintering bees.

Harvest honey at the end of August, first of September and remove queen excluder.

Varroa mite treatment program. Check your hive for mite levels and if you find you have no mites then check again! Go to DATCP Varroa mite treatment and see the recommended options for mite control in Wisconsin (https://datcp.wi.gov/Documents/TreatmentOptions.pdf). After you have finished your mite treatment protocol, you may want to check for mites again just to be sure your mite treatment worked — brood timing can be a glitch and resistance exists!

Check your hive for pollen supplies. If you don’t see much pollen, you might want to add a pollen substitute for the bees. Check out the pollen substitute article by Randy Oliver (https://scientificbeekeeping.com/a-comparative-test-of-the-pollen-sub/). If you are going to feed pollen patties, use winter pollen patties.

Feed the bees heavy syrup to assure that they have enough food to get them through the winter months.

Decide if you are going to wrap your hives in a cozy or cover it with a pillow or a 2 inch polystyrene hat.

Last, but not least, be sure to put on a mouse excluder just before the first frost; be sure to check that you have not enclosed a mouse family inside the hive (been there and done that).

See you at the meeting September 20th.