August 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.
August 2016: The Dog Days of Summer, I don’t have to tell you folks that it is HOT. Now is the time to get your last supers on for that late summer honey. The hives look good, this year should give us a good honey crop. If you haven’t started, you should plan to pull honey starting by mid August. If you have chunk honey supers they should be off the hives by now. We will start pulling and extracting honey from my strong hives soon. REMEMBER HONEY SUPERS MUST BE OFFTHE HIVES BY THE END OF FIRST WEEK IN SEPTEMBER (Bee Bob). This gives the bees sufficient time to store honey in the brood boxes for the winter. Protect your weaker hives from robbers, and make plans to combine weak colonies soon. You will not get any honey from these weak colonies so combine them soon, so they can get enough honey for winter, maybe save one colony for spring. Check those weak colonies for brood, honey, and disease. Weak colonies can by treated even now.
There may still be some late summer swarms, they take more work to have them survive over the winter. The 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.
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