George Imirie's PINK PAGES
April 2003
Cocked and Ready?
Beginning last November, Commander-and-Chief George Bush ordered the Pentagon
to get troops well prepared for the possible invasion of Iraq. Repeatedly, I have warned
beekeepers that you start preparing your bee colonies for an April-May nectar collection
in September, not March. As I write this in March, pollen is coming into colonies in
great quantities, my colonies have 4-6 frames of brood, I am feeding 1:1 sugar syrup
to keep the queen bee laying brood, the famous cherry blossom festival around the
Washington Tidal Basin is just 3 weeks off, and buds are all over my willows, maples,
alders, forsythia, tulips, crocus, etc. SPRING IS HERE, and the ground is "full of water'
implying we are going to have nectar "flowing out on the ground".
Unfortunately, there are those non-caring or non-learning people out there who
lost many colonies during the cold winter, and, of course, blame it all on the "cold
winter" and NEVER themselves. Meanwhile, local beekeepers like Barry Thompson,
Bill Troup, or David Bernard didn't lose any bees and their bees are so strong that
they are selling 'nuc' colonies. Doesn't that make you wonder just what successful
beekeepers do that you don't? I noted the puzzled look on the faces of the 30 Short
Course members when 2-3 of the Master Beekeeper instructors pointed out that this
prolonged cold winter weather was "wonderful and calming" for their bees rather than
a mild winter that changed from day to day from 20° to 60°, which causes chilled
brood and excess use of honey stores. My queens were laying in January, surrounded by
plenty of bees for clustering warmth of brood, and eating very little because of lack
of flight weather. It was a great winter for bees if you had properly prepared them
for it with a menthol treatment for tracheal mites in August (not September), 1:1 sugar
syrup feeding in September to stimulate queen laying for young winter bees, hopefully
a new queen installed in late August, Apistan strips installed on October 1st AND REMOVAL
BEFORE DECEMBER to kill over 95% of all Varroa mites, Fumadil-B in November to prevent
spring Nosema, and 2:1 sugar syrup in October and November to insure the colony with at
least 70 pounds of winter stores. WHAT IS SO TOUGH ABOUT THAT? Are you satisfied
with just being a beeHAVER and having to buy new EXPENSIVE bees every year or so?
With your intelligence, you could be a real fine beeKEEPER if you just paid as much
attention to your bees as you do to the Redskin football games, Oriole baseball games,
Wizard basketball games, and the TV "who done its". Don't you want to find the excitement
and JOYS OF BEEKEEPING that I have had for 70+ years?
I guess I have chastised some of you enough and bored those that did not lose colonies
this winter, so let me talk about things you should do NOW to get these gallons of nectar
converted into honey in you hives. By the way, when I use the word NOW, I don't mean
some nice weekend in April or May - I mean NOW, like tomorrow regardless of whether
it is a workday or not, because it might be raining on the weekend. If you have been
REVERSING YOUR BROOD CHAMBERS as I have "begged you to do" to prevent swarming, and
if you have been feeding 1:2 or 1:1 sugar syrup to stimulate queen laying as I have "begged
you to do", your bee population should be strong and they might think about swarming in
early April UNLESS YOU GIVE THEM MORE ROOM. Install just one super of drawn comb or 10
tightly packed together frames of foundation NOW, NOW, NOW without any queen excluder!
REVERSE the Brood chambers so the queen is laying in the bottom chamber, add a 1:1 sugar
syrup feeder over the inner cover hole, and the bees will start to draw the foundation or
pack the sugar syrup in the drawn comb. This feeder should have TINY holes because you
just want to tease the bees with sugar syrup, not "drown" them. In central Maryland,
this should be done on April 1st, NOT APRIL 15TH or the nice weekend of April 19-20. When
the frames in that super are about 50%-75% filled with nectar or young brood, which
will be about April 15th, but surely before May 1st, make sure that the queen is put
"downstairs' in the brood area and install a queen excluder under that first super, and
then add either 3-4 more supers of DRAWN COMB, or just one super of 10 frames of tightly
packed frames of foundation. When that super of foundation is about 70% filled, add
ONE more super of 10 tightly packed frames of foundation, etc.
The single thing that defeats so many beginners or beeHAVERS is
they don't STAY AHEAD of their bees, and upon discovering a need,
they try to play "catch-up". Often the bees SWARM. PLAN AHEAD
AND STAY AHEAD OF YOUR BEES, so they have no reason to swarm.
Frames of drawn comb or frames or foundation sitting in your basement or your garage
attracts nothing more than dust, and maybe your bees swarm because they were not
in place on you colony at the right time. Now, you have no excuse, because I have told
you the RIGHT TIMES to install supers in Montgomery County , MD and other surrounding
Maryland and Virginia counties.
I want to REPEAT something I have said thousands of times, but some people just don't
seem to understand. BEES DO NOT GATHER HONEY! THEY GATHER THIN, WATERY NECTAR!
Since nectar might be 80% water and honey is only about 16%-18% water, bees might
require 5 supers of drawn comb to store all that thin watery nectar until they have
time to evaporate the water from the nectar and ripen it into honey that makes just 2-3
supers of honey. If there is NOT enough super space for the bees to store all this thin
watery nectar, maybe collecting as much as 20 pounds a day, they will build BURR comb
in every nook and cranny of the colony WARNING YOU THAT THEY NEED ROOM, and finding
no more space, SWARM. Was that the bee's FAULT or yours? Take out "insurance" by
providing too much space and provide it AHEAD OF TIME.
Regardless of what you have been told, there is almost no nectar collected after May 31st
in Montgomery County, and essentially ZERO after June 15th, so your honey should be
harvested and bottled around July 4th. I will talk about this in the May PINK PAGES.
Is Your Queen MARKED?
If your queen is NOT marked, how to you know that the queen you see tomorrow is the
same queen that you bought and installed 6 months ago? Face it - YOU DON'T KNOW!
If the queen you purchased was an Italian queen, and the one you see now is unmarked,
WHAT DRONES DID SHE MATE WITH? Were they my Carniolans, or Bob's Caucasians, or
Harry's "County Specials", or maybe a Africanized drone that escaped from a migratory
beekeeper's truck when passing by your apiary? Not only does this bad breeding really
mess up the genetic traits that you want with your bees, but a MARKED queen is so much
EASIER TO SEE a you inspect your colony. Buy a Queen marking Kit from BetterBee, Part
Number QMT1 for $3.95 and mark your queens from now on. RED is the color for 2003.
If you don't know how to pick up a queen and place her in the marking tube, ask some
Master Beekeeper for a demonstration; but every beeKEEPER should certainly know how
to pick up a queen without hurting her or losing her.
A Major Reason for Requeening
You should know that I requeen every colony every year in order to MINIMIZE SWARMING.
However, I refuse to requeen in the spring because I don't want anything to "screw up"
my honey production. I much prefer requeening in late August (before Labor day), so
that young queen lays a bunch of new bees for the winter bees that makes a bigger
cluster which enables the bees to keep a larger brood area open for queen laying in
January and February. I think you should consider this, and there is an old PINK PAGE
that totally describes my "ALMOST FOOLPROOF REQUEENING METHOD."
Just in case you
have forgotten, all queens emit a pheromone that inhibits the worker bees from building
queen cells, and the ability of the queen to make this pheromone REDUCES a little bit
every day of her life. Hence, a 13 month old queen is 3 times more likely to swarm than
a 1 month old queen; and the probability of a 25 month old queen swarming is almost
astronomical. A new queen only costs about $10-$15, and you lose your honey crop if
bees swarm. Losing a 50-100 pound honey crop that you can sell for $3.50/lb. which
is $175-$350 because you wouldn't spend $10-$15 for a new queen doesn't make good
sense. If you want a copy of Imirie's Almost Foolproof Requeening Method, e-mail or
telephone me for a copy.
How to MAKE a Split
A split is made to either increase colony numbers or to prevent swarming. In
either case, a colony is NOT split unless it is strong in numbers of worker bees, has a
prolific queen, and is healthy. Although sometimes desirable to be done in very early
spring, a split should NOT be made until decent flight weather for pollen or nectar
collecting in the spring. In Maryland, because our total honey crop is made in April and
May, and little, if any, is collected during the rest of the year, the new split is NOT
going to produce any honey in its first year. This might be dramatically different in
states that have nectar collection during the summer and/or fall.
Order a new queen, preferably MARKED, and upon its arrival, give the queen a drink
of water and put her in a cool, dark place until the next day. Go to the colony you want to
split, find the queen and ISOLATE the frame she is on and the adhering bees in a spare
hive body while you select the frames you want to remove and move them to the new
split. I select 2 frames of honey, 2 frames of CAPPED brood, 1 frame of OPEN brood, and
1 frame of nectar and pollen ALL WITH ADHERING BEES which is a total of 6 frames. Put
these 6 frames in a new hive body and add 3 more frames of drawn comb, totaling 9
frames, put the new queen cage in place between the frame of OPEN BROOD and the frame
of nectar, and then SHAKE the adhering bees off 2 BROOD frames from the old colony. Add
a bottle of 1:1 sugar syrup and do not touch for at least 3 days and if the queen is out of
her queen cage, remove it, and put the 10th frame of drawn comb in place. Going back to
the original colony, return the old queen on her frame to the colony and replace the 6
frames you have removed for the split with 6 frames of drawn comb. YOU HAVE A SPLIT!
If you do NOT have drawn comb frames, if you are LUCKY, you might get by using
foundation, but there MUST BE A STRONG NECTAR FLOW PRESENT and/or a CONTINUOUS
FEED OF 1:1 SUGAR SYRUP to get that foundation drawn and drawn properly. As I have
repeatedly said for over 40 years FOUNDATION IS NOT DRAWN COMB.
Feeding NEW Colonies
New colonies started in April from packages or nucs, particularly if the frames
are foundation rather than drawn comb, just have a very difficult time building a strong
population, finding enough food, and making foundation into drawn comb in our Maryland
area because our ONLY major nectar flows are in April, May, and maybe early June and
then NOTHING until next year. You can't do much work without food, and neither can bees.
Bees have to consume about 8 pounds of honey (NOT NECTAR) to produce and construct
just ONE pound of wax comb! Bees will NOT, will NOT, will NOT build comb without a
strong nectar flow or an artificial nectar of 1:1 sugar syrup, and sugar is only 30¢/lb.
Not only do brood frames have to be built, but super frames of drawn comb have to be
built for next year; and don't forget that those bees have to make about 50-70 lbs. of
honey before November 1st in order to get through the coming winter!
The solution to this problem is EASY. CONTINUE FEEDING THE BEES FROM THE DAY
THE COLONY IS STARTED WITHOUT STOPPING UNTIL LABOR DAY IN SEPTEMBER. There
are people out there that will tell you "George has lost his marbles to say continuously
feed for 4 months". Let's compare my new colonies with theirs next March and see
which is ready to make lots of honey in the spring of 2004!
George Imirie
Certified EAS Master Beekeeper
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