George Imirie’s PINK PAGES 1998 Maybe some don’t even know what a “MARKED” queen is, so I better explain that first. You paint the top side of the thorax of the queen bee with honest to goodness fast drying paint that will not wear off in the life span of the queen, nor does the […]
George Imirie’s PINK PAGES Swarming, a beekeeper’s nemesis because of the loss of honey crop, can usually be prevented by “splitting” a colony into two parts. Bee scientists have now well proven that the two major reasons for a swarm are, in order of importance: If you use “splitting” as a swarm retarding technique with
Regardless of whether you are using two deep bodies or three medium bodies for wintering colonies, in either case, the UPPER half of the colony was all capped honey in November, and the lower area was some brood, some capped honey, and the CLUSTER of bees. As the winter progressed, the cluster slowly moved ALWAYS
I noticed the other day that there were quite a few dead bees in front of the “Bees Rules” hive. This got me a little bit anxious to see if there were more serious issues going on. It was 47 F. today so I figured that I could take a look at the hive tops
I’ve had two tasks that I wanted to get done with the bees before winter sets in. These were to lower my hive stand by about 10 inches and the other was to treat the main hives for mites with formic acid (formic pro). Formic Pro should not be used it the temperatures are expected
The Tardis hive seems to be real active and healthy. Time to tear it down and see how things are really going. While I have observed what I think are good quantities of wet brood and capped brood, I haven’t found the queen the last couple of times I’ve done an inspection. Today’s plan was
The little NUC that I split off of the “Bees Rules” hive with a couple of the supercedure cells raised a new queen in July. After she had laid up all of the available space in the NUC, the bees – once again – sperceded her. Not sure if it was a problem with the
One of the current problems that bee keepers are having relates to low hive survival rates, particularly over the Winter. A lot of hobbyist bee keepers just accept the losses and buy replacement bees in the Spring. I think I need a more sustainable approach. I would prefer to just have one single beehive. Unfortunately,
Need to catch up here a bit. Had a bit of excitement this summer. I tried to replace the queen in my “Bees Rules” hive. The process had gone so smoothly in the Tardis hive that I actually thought I knew what I was doing. Wrong! Went into the “Bees Rules” hive a week after
So I have a hive and a NUC that are in the process of creating their own queens from supercedure cells. Counting back in the queen calendar from when I first noticed the capped queen cells there should be eggs in the hives today if the virgin queens were successful in their nuptial flights. I