Beekeeping Tips for June & July

While it may have subsided a bit, swarm season is still in effect. Monitor hives for queen cells, eggs, and brood. If you find hives with a swarming tendency, remove the uncapped queen cells, rotate the brood boxes, or pull a couple of frames of sealed brood and use to fortify weaker hives. Place foundation in their place. It should be noted that swarm cups are a natural condition in the hive; their presence does not necessarily mean the hive will swarm. However, if a queen cell is capped, there is a good chance the hive has already swarmed. If they have not swarmed, one method to try and prevent it from swarming is to split it hard and make nucs.

Some of us just pull the queen, a frame or two of capped brood and some a pollen frame and make up a nuc to locate in another location. If you have questions about this ask someone who knows how to make splits.

The USDA Beltsville Bee Lab has reported that the lifespan of a queen has declined in recent years, with average longevity within the colony decreasing from 1.5 years to as short as 6 months. Therefore, more beekeepers are beginning to advocate late Summer and early Fall requeening. The rationale for this is based on several factors:

1. A young queen during late Summer/early Fall will lay more prolifically, producing more bees at this critical stage of the year.
2. A newer queen will be more effective in the Spring when early buildup is key, and at the same time will be less likely to swarm than an older queen. One method for requeening is to make summer splits and nucs using OTS (on the spot queen rearing) methods.

Add supers as needed or reshuffle supers away from hives that are lagging behind and give them to stronger hives. Remove and extract supers containing well-ripened honey. Avoid harvesting frames of uncapped honey early in the season or risk having too much moisture. Check the ripeness of uncapped honey in a given frame by giving it a hard downward shake. If there is a shower of nectar then clearly it is too wet to extract. Expect the nectar flow to taper off and stop towards the end of July or first of August.

Look ahead and prepare for a dearth in August before the Golden Rod blooms. In a dearth be cognizant of robbing activities. Consider open feeding with sugar water and pollen. Open feeding will help to prevent robbing. Reach out and ask experienced beekeepers in our club to advise you on what they do.

Varroa mites will peak in July-August. So it’s a good time to evaluate your mite levels and decide on your method for controlling them if it is needed. The Purdue University Bee Lab suggests the following 'rule of thumb' for determining if your mite load is too high: 50 or more mites drop on a sticky board in a 24 hour period or 5 mites per 100 bees are found using a sugar shake or alcohol wash.

It’s hot out. Overheating and dehydration can be fatal to the beekeeper. Keep yourself hydrated and take breaks. Also, make sure the bees have a steady supply of water. You can find them around swimming pools because they like the salt in the chlorinated water. Take a gallon of water and add a teaspoon of salt, mix thoroughly and put in a birdbath, or chicken water/feeder. Bees can drown easily. Add rocks to the birdbath or chicken waterer so the bees can climb out if they fall in the water.

Even though it is hot out, toward the end of summer is the time to start thinking about winter. The bees are now raising bees that will rear the bees that go through winter. Consolidating hives, requeening, feeding pollen (or protein substitutes), supplementing food stores, and boosting hives that are lagging are all techniques that you might consider.