June 2016 Tips from the President
Greetings from your WCBA president. My intent is to give pertinent beekeeping tips to you each month so that you will be able to plan the work that needs to be accomplished to keep your bees healthy, strong and productive. These tips are based on the timeline and the way I keep bees.
June 2016: It’s June already. I apologize, I completely forgot my May message. I seem to run out of time before the work is finished. This month our hive inspections should check for queen cells and diseases. Queen cells indicate a change is coming to the hive. They may be preparing to swarm or they want to supersede the current queen. You must remedy the situation or you may lose bees. I would split off and relocate the old queen. If the remaining colony is strong, use the queen cells to make two or more splits, leave each with at least one cell a frame of brood and a frame of honey and pollen. Keep an eye on these splits to be sure they become Queenright.
Adding supers is important, the colony will become honey bound in the brood chamber if they do not have a super to store honey in. A honey bound colony will not survive. So add supers.
If you are trying to capture comb honey, it should be capped soon, remove from the hive as soon as it is capped. Replace the supper.
We will discuss queen rearing at the next WCBA meeting. Jack is going to tell us all his secret’s.
This is also the time of the year to capture swarms, get an extra hive body or nuc box ready for a swarm. This hive should have several frames of honey and several frames of drawn comb. The drawn comb will allow the queen to settle in and go to laying eggs right away. Swarms and splits are a great way to grow your bee yard.
Do you want to Learn more about beekeeping, attend our club meetings where seasoned beekeeper share their knowledge and experiences. Come and join us, we would love to share.
Howard “Howdy” Martsolf
WCBA President