We have been experimenting with foundation less frames and getting the bees to create their own foundation.
The problem with doing this on brood frames is that the bees tend to create more drone comb and we would rather their build this in our drone management frames. So we can keep varroa numbers lower.
Drone management frame
Foundation less frames with drones
The bees also sometimes create crazy comb when they get the chance. I wish the bees would read the same books I do .
Crazy Comb
When we use foundation less frames in the honey supers the bees tend to create more drone sized cells for the honey, which uses less nectar in producing the wax for the comb.
We still use wooden frames with wax foundation here at Kiwimana, our bees don’t like the plastic frames and neither do we .
But I think we will stick to using full foundation frames for the brood and give the bees some “Drone management frames” to fulfil their desire for drone space. What do you do with your foundation? Have you moved over to using plastic?
I found this clever tip on the beebehavior.com site to keep nine frames easily spaced in a ten frame box.
Using only nine frames causes the bees to build out the wax further, and surprisingly you will get more honey than if you used ten frames. Also as the wax extends out further, it’s easier to decap the honey with your decapping knife.
The tip is to use drawing pins on the top edge of the frames. This increases the gap between frames by about four millimetres.
I attached drawing pins (two per frame). For the frames by the sides of the box make a gap at both ends of the frames a finger width. Let’s see how this works out, still waiting for a period of no rain in Auckland to help the bees bring in some more nectar.
I will report back on how the bees do with drawing pinned frames.
Do you use nine frames in your hive boxes? How do you space them out?
I went along to Auckland bee club today, and spent most of the time helping Sue in the shop. It was a very busy day and I enjoyed meeting and talking to everyone that came in.
I managed to sneak out during the talks. The topics today were:-
Harvesting honey
Tips on entering the honey show.
Drone layers / AFB / Tutin checks.
Thanks to Donna for bringing in the old Green party election signs, we can recycle these as meshboard inspection trays or roof insulators for the bees. If only the Green party can also get neonicotinoid pesticides banned this term, all we be good with the world.
I also purchased some rope and food grade oil to make up some oily rope for one hive. The bees walk on the rope and get some of the oil on them. This is meant to make the bees groom themselves more and remove the varroa mites. Susie at the bee club is also going to give it a go.
We first heard about this at the last NBA conference last year from a talk by Anne Hulme. We will report back our findings.
Here is the recipe for the oily rope idea. I’m sure Anne Hulme wouldn’t mind it being published here. We had no way of getting in touch, if she is reading this then please get in touch.
Cords using Food Grade Mineral Oil (FGMO), Honey and Wax Recipe for 10 hives
250 grams FGMO and 125 grams Wax melted together first,
Then add 125 grams Honey stirred in on a low heat.
Drop in the cords and stir to cover well. Lift out with tongs and lay in an ice cream container. Pour any excess mixture back into the wok / frypan.
Use one metre of cord cut into a convenient size, to each brood box.
Lay the cords over the tops of the brood frames.
Replace monthly or before they get propolised. (Anne does it fortnightly in the honey season)
Cook the used cords again for next time. Can be used again and again for years.
Anne said that this did reduce the mites in her hives. So we are keen to give it a go, as it can be used with honey Supers on. And doesn’t add any pesticides to the hive .
Hi over the last three days, I have had inspection trays in some of our hives. Here are the results:-
Whenupai 1 Varroa Count
Tray placed 9 Jan 2012 18:30 (0 mites)
Tray Checked 12 Jan 2012 18:30 (5 mites)
=5/72 (Hours) = 0.069 per hour
or 5/3 (Days) = 1.67 mites per day
The hive has a large populatrion of pseudoscorpion’s These little guys are meant to eat Varroa Mites. Maybe thats why the hive has a low mite count…
Remuera 1 Varroa Count
Tray placed 9 Jan 2012 18:30 (0 mites)
Tray Checked 12 Jan 2012 18:30 (4 mites)
=5/72 (Hours) = 0.06 per hour
or 5/3 (Days) = 1.33 mites per day
Looks good to me. This is the swarm that was in bush in a previous blog post, these guys are building up well and are due a full inspection.
Taupaki 1 Varroa Count
Tray placed 9 Jan 2012 18:30 (0 mites)
Tray Checked 12 Jan 2012 18:30 (10 mites)
=5/72 (Hours) = 0.14 per hour
or 5/3 (Days) = 3.33 mites per day
Loads of pollen on the inspection tray. This is the second biggest hive, and doesn’t have any drone brood management frames in it. We need to build some more soon.
It was time to inspect hives today in between painting bee hive boxes and dodging the ever-present rain in Auckland. Isn’t it meant to be summer here?
These are some notes from the inspections today:-
Taupaki 1
Hive is very strong and doing very well, loads of bees in the brood area and their have built out two boxes with brood. The hive has some crazy comb issues due to using foundation less frames. I have removed this hopefully the bees will take the hint.
I removed one ¾ box which was added before Christmas in case of a honey flow, but the bees haven’t touched the box. So have left them with two ¾ boxes to work on.
The hive needs some Drone Management frames which we will build when we get a chance.
Did spot the Queen going about her royal duties, which is always a thrill (Can you spot her?)
The hive does seem to have a large population of drones for some reason.
Swanson 1
These bees were a swarm we picked up in the middle of November. There have been busy and have started building out the second full-sized box. No need to add or remove any boxes from these guys.
Didn’t spot the Queen in this hive, but did see plenty of brood. Here is a great picture from the hive:-
I did see a few Varroa mites when some drone comb broke apart between frames.
Adult Bee Testing
I have also been asked by Asure Quality to be part of their testing for their “American Foulbrood National Pest Management Strategy”.
My role is to provide some bees from our hives, which I also did today and have couriered them to them to test.
I always seem to be picked to do these random surveys? Felt sad that some of my girls had to lose their life for this testing.
This was a question posted in by one of our readers, Sophie asks:-
How can a New Zealand bee-keeper keep their bees alive every year?
Well this is a good question, over recent times bee-keepers are having trouble keeping bees alive. Due to Varroa mites and pesticides in the environment. Last year our plan failed resulting a loss of all our hives.
Our plan this year is going to do the following, it’s hard to follow a plan unless you have one .
Location
Keep bees elevated at least 12 inches from the ground. To reduce splash up from the Waitakere rains.
We moved our apiary to a sunnier spot, under tree cover just doesn’t work over winter in the Waitakere ranges we have discovered.
Early Spring
Treat bees with API Var life. An organic treatment that we are trying out this year.
Spring
Split hives – this disrupts the mites breeding cycle and increases the colonies chance of success.
Throughout the season Spring through to Autumn
Use drone brood management frames, removing every 24 days (if mites are present in brood).
Use screened bottom boards to reduce and monitor mites. Having a Screened bottom can remove up to 25% of the mites, it also allow you to do mite counts.
Check for mites at least every month, using a inspection tray in our mesh boards.
Use sugar shaking on each inspection (If mites located).
Autumn after honey supers removed – treat hives with Oxalic acid. We have not tried this, so will need to research this further. Have you had any success with Oxalic acid?
What are you planning this year?, make a plan and stick it on your wall. Maybe even share your plan here. It would be great to see what others have planned, so we can all learn.
Well it was a wet day in Auckland, and we were surprised the meeting was still on. But we were told by the Hive Manager “Peter” that weather forecast predicated clear skies until Lunch time. So it was off down to Franklin to attend the club day.
We had chat in the shed about the upcoming Honey Show, we will have to find out more and see if we can extract some honey for the day. The club will also be selling honey at the upcoming Karaka show.
The weather did stop raining for a brief time and it was time to check out the spilt that was taken on the last club day. The hive did have a lot of bees in it, but no sign of brood today. Peter said it could mean the Queen hasn’t started laying yet. We did find an empty Queen cell, so let’s hope she is all ok and the hive starts up soon.
We then inspected the Top Bar hive that club has now; it was great to see that the hive has several frames of brood. So these girls are going very well. The bees were also very calm and the frames were easy to remove and inspect.
I am still toying with the idea of building a top bar hive, maybe that could be a winter project for me. It could be an interesting project to try. I’m still not really sold of the benefits to the bees yet. Do you have a top bar what do you see as the benefits to the bees?
Afterwards a few members went down to a local café in Pukekohe for an after meeting coffee; the member that was meant to bring the hot water didn’t turn up to the meeting this week.
It was great chatting with everyone about ideas and plans to take over the bee-keeping world .
Thanks to everyone that came along today, despite the weather.
Got a call from Mary in Glen Eden, a swarm of bees had taken up residence on the side of her pool house. It was into the Kiwimana mobile after work, with a spare hive that I had gathered together from parts found in the workshop.
Mary said she thinks the bees had been there about a week, but I noticed a large comb hanging from the pool house around six inches long. I’m pretty sure these guys have been here for around three weeks.
This was their new home, so they were pretty aggressive bees. I must remember to bring gloves on swarm calls. Because you never know what you will find. Usually swarms are pretty calm, but not these guys. The girls managed to give me three stings for my troubles.
I cut the largest comb and placed it into the hive box. But judging by the bees actions, I’m pretty sure the queen is still on the side of the building.
The area is a dangerous spot, the bees were around 1.5 meters up, but over the fence was a six metre drop. The deck surface was also very slippery.
Day Two
Mary called to advise that the bees have moved from the wall into the hive. I will go and visit and investigate.
We visited and indeed bees are coming and going from the hive. They have been busy building comb as well, I did noticed some new eggs. So we are fairly certain the hive is queen right. But it does concern me that some bees are coming and going from the hole where an electric cable is coming our from? Bees are also managing to get into the pool house, but can’t get back out, so the floor has become a wasteland of dead bees .
We will pick up the hive tonight. Hopefully the house owner are not dealing with another Colony in the wall.
Conclusion
We picked up the bees tonight, didn’t see any activity from the hole in the wall. I sealed it with some tape, just in case. Mary the home owner said a small amount of bees flew away the morning before we checked them. Maybe this was the hole in the wall bees?
Welcome to KiwiMana “Glen Eden 2″ found 11 kms from HQ.
We have since checked on the bees, and the amount of bees is much smaller than the first swarm. So I think its pretty certain that the swarm had split in two before we picked them up . The hive has three Queen Cells and we also provided them a frame of new eggs. We suspect they don’t have a valid Queen.
Today got up early and drove to Ceracell to pick up some much needed supplies, we needed some frames to put into our boxes we have made. We also needed to visit Peter in Rangiriri to pick up the NUC box he had made up for us.
Arrived at Ceracell at 09:00 but the gate was shut. I later discovered that it doesn’t open until 10:00, so I shot off to find a coffee.
At 10:00 the doors opened and the waiting bee-keepers poured in like the first bees in the morning pouring out of a hive.
The shop area has been moved to the front off the building, the shop is much bigger than it was before. We loaded up the van, and it was off to Rangiriri to pick up the NUC.
Peter had a great location for his bees. It’s in the middle of farmland and the weather was great so the bees were all out. Peter is the hive manager for the Franklin Bee Club and in the past has been a commercial bee keeper.
Peter gave me tour of his property which included:-
Peters large wax extractor made from an old drink fridge, which was a great idea. The size of the extractor allows you to put in entire frames and also queen excluders. Which is something that our smaller one doesn’t have the room for, we must build a bigger one of these days.
A solar wax extractor is a insulated box with a glass front which faces the sun, the ideas is that the sun raises the temperature of the box and melts the wax. You put the box on an angle and have a container to catch the melted wax. You can make a simple wax extractor by following these instructions from Linda’s great blog:-
The wax can then be used to makes candles or sold back to bee keeping suppliers to make more foundation.
Peter showed us his hive splitting operation as well, he used a novel approach by placing a box on the top of the hive so the returning queen can locate the correct hive box.
Peter also showed us his wax dipper which is used to disinfect hive boxes from AFB (American foul brood) and also to protect boxes by dipping them in paraffin wax.
We also got to finally met “Amelia” Peters donkey.
Thanks Peter for showing us your home and sharing your great cupcakes .
If you are looking for a NUC get in touch with Peter on honeybeenz@yahoo.co.nz. For a limited time you may even get a free cupcake with each NUC .
We got up late today after a late night at an engagement party last night congrats to Ben and Lorelle.
Anyway we stopped off at a cafe on the way and who should we run into but Tana Umaga the famous New Zealand All Black. We asked if we could take a photo with him, he was very nice and didn’t mind at all.
We were a little late to the meeting but had a good excuse . We have admired Tana’s rugby skills for a while. It was great to meet him.
Anyway enough Rugby talk, onwards to the Bee club.
The club now has a new top bar hive, which has only just had a swarm installed in it. The hive is a creation from Graham’s workshop, who had just returned from a holiday in England. Where he encountered some very large bees
Peter demonstrated how to split a hive based on his method, which I will publish a full document soon. I promise Peter
We also made a video of Peter inspecting one the hive:-
The top bar hive was doing some strange things. It looks like a swarm had landed on the side of it. We thought it might be confused bees from another hive. The numbers of bees seemed to reduce over the course over the meeting.
We also dropped off an empty Nuc for Peter to fill with his nice bees. We will need to pick up these at a later date. It was great to see Sharon picking up her new bees. They looked like a strong colony indeed.
Afterwards we went to a local cafe for a coffee, which seems to be a regular after meeting event. Hopefully you can join us next time.
.
.
.
