Marietta Daisies Garden Club
- mariettadaisies
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
"What's the Buzz"
BEE HIVE
EDUCATIONAL NEWS
April - May
The busiest time of the year. Swarm prevention and colony buildup are the goals.
Continue equalizing colonies and cutting queen cells. Sell or trade frames of brood if necessary to knock back extra strong colonies. Another use of surplus brood is the production of splits, or new colonies. Take 3-5 frames of bees, honey, and brood (minus the queen), place them in a new hive body, give them a new caged queen, and move the new colony to a new apiary site. Package bees are also now available for making colony increase.
With the availability of mail-order queens the beekeeper can now replace failing queens. Find and remove the old queen from the colony, insert the new caged queen between two center brood frames, but do not remove the cork from the cage opening. Return after 2-3 days and observe the behavior of the bees on the outside of the cage. Do not release the queen if workers are biting the wires of the cage (Fig. 5). But if the hive bees are trying to feed the caged queen (reaching through the wires with their tongues), then this is a good sign that they are ready to accept her (Fig. 6). At that point you can remove the cork. Check a week later to make sure the new queen is accepted. You will know this if there is an abundance of newly-laid eggs and young brood in the cells.
By mid-April most of Georgia is in prime honey production. Hive manipulations should cease and the beekeeper should be supering up for the various flows which are clover, tupelo, blackberry and other brambles, tulip poplar, and gallberry.
For the first time ever, Beekeeper Guilmette has placed swarm 'boxes' in various spots around Cobb County.
These are hand-built boxes containing spent comb and pheromone (Swarm Commander) in hopes of attracting a 'scout' bee which would direct bees to this new home. If you see a wild swarm in a tree or elsewhere, let me know. We can come to your property and swoon them into a swarm box.
Comments