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Joe Gaglione: Posted on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 2:58 PM
Yesterday with the weather not cooperating we only had time to visit an apiary to check out six packages. Three of the packages had five or more frames of brood with nice looking brood patterns. One of packages queen was not laying enough worker brood. There was more than 50% drone brood and very little open worker brood. I did not see any eggs or small larvae. I gave that queen the squish with the hive tool. The other two packages we checked had only bees packing nectar and pollen. No queens! No brood! We will take all six packages to another apiary in Ipswich and paper merge the bad queen less packages on top of the good packages and put honey supers on. I would rather have three producing hives than three good packages. The other three packages won't mount to anything at this point. They will die off and wax moth will move in. Today we bottled honey for a few hours. What fun! Then I went to the store to assemble more deep boxes and prepared for the class this evening. We are teaching the beekeeping class for North Shore Community College in our classroom at the store on Wednesday nights. We are also planning to have a bee discussion night from 6-9 on the first Thursday of each month. It will be open to everyone. We have limited space so let us know if you are interested. We will save you a seat. That's about it. Today was sort of a boring day in the life as a beekeeper. |
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Joe Gaglione: Posted on Monday, May 20, 2013 7:52 PM
Today was a muggy day with more sun than clouds. We needed to check a few 5 frame nucs brood pattern. The apiaries we were going to visit are on a large orchard. The first stop had a 5 frame nuc box with more than 3 frames of brood and a good looking queen. I installed it into a customers 10 frame equipment. They will be picking it up at the store on Saturday. A shook swarm is what we were really here for. The hive we had checked last Thursday had swarm cells capped. So we went through the hive frame by frame to find the queen. We found a ton of brood and 8 nicely formed queen cells hanging down from the bottom of the frames. Finally we found the queen. I moved the hive onto another hive stand. Then we set up a bottom board with a towel connected to it with pins. The new hive was a medium box with wired wax foundation and a queen excluder with 2 cut comb boxes on top. Then we shook the queen and most of the bees off the frames on the towels near the front entrance. The bees started going right back into the hive. You must leave enough nurse bees on the brood frames to take care of the brood. Now we set up a bottom board and the 2 deep boxes with the nurse bees, brood and swarm cells on another hive stand. So what we have now is one hive with a queen and a ton of bees in a hive. But there is no brood to care for and just wax foundation. These bees will draw comb and pack nectar. Making comb honey! The second hive has some bees with swarm cells. There was plenty of honey and pollen stores to help this hive out. All we need now is for the new queen to start laying eggs. We will monitor this hive. Hopefully they will bring out a good queen. Then we drove to the other location on the orchard. There were 4 hives with honey supers and 7 nuc boxes. The bees were busy. Every hive had a ton of traffic at the front entrances. We both went through the nucs to check the amount of brood(open & closed) and brood pattern. 3 out of 7 were ready for a 10 frame boxes. I then installed the nucs into the other beekeepers equipment for pick up Saturday. The others just need a little more time. They were just started later. But they seemed ok. I'll check them in a week. |
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Joe Gaglione: Posted on Monday, May 20, 2013 7:53 AM
Yesterday, before the Essex County Beekeeper meeting, I went to a couple of our apiaries and put out a couple more swarm traps. The weather for the next 4 days is rain. That is a perfect forecast for swarms. The next sunny day after all this rain there will be a bunch of swarms. I will try to catch everyone I can. And with any luck maybe a swarm will take up house keeping in one or more of my traps. |
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Joe Gaglione: Posted on Friday, May 17, 2013 8:29 PM
Today was another beautiful sunny day. Vin and I delivered honey in the morning. Then we proceeded to the apiary to finish the work we started yesterday. We checked the queens brood patterns in a bunch of nucs. They were all good with 3 plus frames of brood in a five frame box except the last nuc in line. It only had 2 frames of brood. One of the frames had open brood. I'll give it another week and check it again. I was heading home when I got the call. A swarm! I turned around and went to catch it. It was up about 10 ft in a white pine. It was big. It took 2 buckets to fit all the bees. I caught it and took it to an apiary. There I installed it into a medium box with wired wax foundation. Then I put on a queen excluder and 2 cut comb boxes. Yes , bees were everywhere and I tried not to rush to many bees. That would be two days in a row that I caught a swarm and put comb honey boxes on them. I will check them in a week to see the progress. Not that I am keeping track, but that is the 4th swarm I caught this year. It is still early. There will be plenty more swarms. |
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Joe Gaglione: Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2013 8:00 PM
Today in between checking nucs, we caught a few swarms. Vin and I arrived at the apiary around 10.00 AM. I got out of the truck and heard the buzzing sound in the wind. I checked the swarm trap that we had set up. It was an old bottom board, old box with moth damaged frames and an outer cover that belonged in the trash a few years ago. I looked in and found a very small cluster. Then looking around, I noticed another very small cluster high in a tree. These 2 small swarms were after swarms. We started checking the hives when I saw the big swarm. We had both been looking up in the trees. This swarm was in the brush about 3 feet off the ground. After a bunch of cutting, we swept the bees into a bucket. The bucket weighed almost 10lbs. We installed the swarm into a medium box with wired wax foundation and place cut comb supers on top. Swarms draw out comb. So we use the swarm to make comb honey. It makes sense and it works. The small swarm that was in the trap will be transferred into a 5 frame nuc box in a week. If the virgin queen gets mated properly. It might turn out to be a good little hive. We will have to check the rest of the nucs tomorrow. The swarm took to much time to catch and set it up in a hive. |
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