Campbell's Honey

The weather in Southeast Ontario in April, May, and early June, was unusually cool and wet. Not  exactly the kind of climate we were hoping for, after coming out of a cold winter with a thirty percent bee mortality rate. However as spring turned to summer the cool weather turned hot, the bees surprised everyone. Without delay the strongest hives were split in hopes the new queens would mature, mate, and lay eggs before the first of July; we hoped the hives would get strong before the start of the traditional summer honey flow.

Our hopes were answered, and we began to 'super' the hives before the end June,  not only to provide for honey storage, but to cool the strong colonies and keep them content at home. Last week I was adding 6 or 8 supers on a yard of 30 colonies, This week  I have several yards with most of the hives supered, and one perfect yard where every colony has a honey super. Just to set the record straight - I now have my original 400 colonies back, after losing 100 (more or less) over the winter.

There's more to supering (adding a honey box) then you might imagine. First  and foremost we check the hive to make sure it has a healthy queen laying eggs in the brood chamber. This is important  because if the hive is queenless it will soon die, and we not only lose our year's honey crop, but probably also the wax frames which are then at great risk for loss or damage by wax moths.

If the hive has a young queen, not yet mated, its very possible that she may come back from her mating flight and enter the honey box above the queen excluder where she will begin to lay eggs. When she fills the honey supers with brood, the worker bees will store the honey below in the brood chambers where the beekeeper cannot get it.

If the hive is not checked for a laying queen before the honey super goes on, a young mated queen may be about to begin laying. At this stage in her life, although she is mated, she has not yet grown to her full size, and as she moves about in the hive she might crawl up through the excluder into the honey box.

We always begin supering with a single box on each hive. This is because Honeybees like to fill several boxes at the same time, which makes a lot of handling and extra work for the beekeeper as he gathers his early honey crop for extraction. The only exception to this, would be if the colony was exceptionally strong, with bees hanging on the outside of the broodboxes. Then we would add an extra honeybox to help cool the hive, and make the colony more comfortable

Later on, we sometimes tease the bees by adding a super of wax foundation (this is undrawn comb as it comes from the bee supply house). We like to put this on top of a box of drawn honeycomb. The bees will fill the super of drawn comb completely, before beginning to draw out the foundation above. They hate starting from scratch on the flat plastic or wax sheets, but when they have no other choice they will draw out the foundation and fill it with honey.

What sweet little creatures they are!

Swarm season is an exciting time for a hobby beekeeper with a swarm box set up and ready to (hopefully)  catch a swarm of honeybees looking for a new home. But more experienced commercial beekeepers are all about preventing swarms, and properly managing increases before the bees draw out a queen cell and 'split'.

In the old days, commercial beekeepers counted on swarms to make an increase in their  colonies.  Here's an old-time beekeeper's rhyme,

A swarm in May, is worth a load of hay. A swarm June is worth a silver spoon.  A swarm in July is not worth a fly.

There are several good reasons why catching swarms has gone out of style with commercial beekeepers. A swarm is an unknown quantity. Nobody knows if the bees are carrying mites, foul brood, or some other bee disease. Bees that swarm are not as able to produce honey because their efforts are focused on producing bees.  The swarming tendency is inherited, so the commercial operator is not usually interested in catching swarms. But he is very interested in preventing his bees from swarming.

I begin to split  colonies as soon as the queen bee is forced down into the bottom box (around May first) where she resumes laying eggs. I make continuous trips about every two weeks to each hive, until the honey flow begins around July first. I pry the supers apart and search for swarm cells that are built on the bottom bars of the top super.  A swarm cell is a queen cell built to expedite a swarm. When I see this cell I split the hive, and this usually succeeds in keeping the colony from swarming.  I want my bees to stay home and produce honey.

There are two kinds of beekeepers, honey producers and queen and nuke producers.  (A nuke is a four frame nucleus of a hive complete with a queen bee).  The queen and nuke producers (bee breeders) produce honey bees and queens for sale. If you are a member of a Beekeeper's Association, it's doubtful you will hear much about splitting bee colonies from the membership, because if everyone split their bees to make an increase the Bee Breeders sales would be flat.

Beekeepers Prepare For Spring Pollination

A hive of honeybees contains anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000 worker bees, plus hundreds of drones, (male bees) and only one queen, yet it's a single colony. The Apiarist (beekeeper) and the bees, both recognize the colony as a single entity. Honey bees are always on the alert to protect their home from attack, whether it be from a bear, skunk, or a human with a sweet tooth.

When the colony is threatened, hundreds soldier bees fly out, in total disregard for their personal lives, and thinking only to save the colony sting the intruder to chase it away. If the attack was successfully thwarted, the bees that staved off the attack will certainly die, as their stingers remain in the body of the attacker, and are torn from their abdoman as they fly off.

That the bees recognize the colony as a single entity, is proven by the fact that if a single bee, or a small number of the insects, are attacked or threatened while away from the colony, not one bee comes rushing to the rescue. Single Bees are dispensable, but the colony as a whole is not.