| July 15 |
All honey supers removed by now and any subsequent honey be left for overwintering. |
| August 1 |
Check all colonies for presence of Varroa mites using the ether roll or drone spearing method.
Treat if mites are abundant. Requeen as needed |
| Sept 1 |
Entrance reducers on all colonies. They discourage robbing and exclude mice.
Check for Varroa if not treated. |
| Sept 15 |
Treat all colonies for Trachael mites. I use a 3"X5" piece of corrugated cardboard coated with 1/4" thick vege-table grease imbedded with two TBS. of menthol crystals. Check for Varroa and treat if needed. |
| Sept 25 |
Move cardboard/menthol strips from one corner of top bars to another, scrape propolis and repeat at 7 to 10 days. |
| November |
Remove Apistan strips after 45 to 55 days |
| January |
When temperatures exceeds 50°F check colonies for brood and/or presence of queen.
Colonies will benefit if fed a pollen substitute at this time. |
Mid-Feb to
end of April |
A critical time depending on weather. Hives should be boiling over with bees and close attention should be paid to adequate stores. If starvation is imminent I feed 5 lb. of dry sugar by pouring down the sides and back of the top brood box. This works better than on top of the inner cover.
IMPORTANT during this time I clean and transfer all my brood frames into clean hive bodies.
Check for Varroa and treat with Apistan if needed. |
| Mar 15 |
HONEY PRODUCTION AND SWARM CONTROL -
Starting with your top brood box, remove the frames and stand on end stacked against the bottom box. Make two stacks one with brood and remainder of frames in the other. If you find the queen set her frame apart from the others. Remove the top box and repeat procedure with frames in bottom box. Assuming you found the queen place her and frame in the now empty bottom box filling the rest of the space with broodless frames. Make sure enough honey goes into the top brood box as most of the field bees will end up in the bottom. Place a queen excluder on top of the bottom brood box; a honey super on top of that, followed by a double screen divider board. The divider board should have the small entrance hole to the rear if they are to requeen themselves or to the front if a new queen is to be introduced. Run as a two queen colony for about 3 weeks until at least one frame of capped worker cells is present in the top box. |
| May 7 |
About the 7th. of May, when the primary nectar flow begins, recombine the two colonies by moving the excluder and honey super above the two brood boxes. Add at least 5 more shallow supers at this time. You can let the two queens fight it out or find and kill the older queen in the bottom box.
If you plan to purchase queens follow the same procedure as above but start about 3 weeks later. |