Preparing for next Honeybee Season

Thanks to Ginny Kinney for this link!


http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Building_a_bee_waterer/

Honey Extractor For Rent

I have a much better extractor to rent out this year than last year!
Includes a hot knife, two decapping forks, and strainer.
Cost: $25 per day

You will need to have a food grade bucket to set the strainer on. A gated bucket is actually best and I won't be able to include that this year.

Happy Honey Harvesting!!

Robbing Hives for Honey

Any time now is a great time to rob frames that have both sides "capped" which looks like a thin layer of virgin wax (white) over the top of cells loaded with honey. What I do is check to make sure there is no eggs, larvae, or pupae in the cells and if not then I hold the frame over the open hie and use my bee brush to brush all the bees off of both sides of the frame. I walk about 10 yards away from my hive and place the frame inside a covered Rubbermaid tote. I take every frame that is "capped" and if I extract frames that are uncapped, my honey will crystallize much sooner than usual.

Queen Caging Success!

Yesterday was my queen-caging demonstration and it went very well. With the help of Jill and Carl Addington and Pat and Tom Lyngholm we caged one queen in a top bar hive and five queens in Langstroth hives. One of the Langstroth queens was unmarked because she appeared during a hive check about a month ago in the same hive as the original, marked queen. I separated the two queens with a queen excluder and made sure they each had plenty of space to lay eggs. It worked! Both queens were laying full frames of brood in the same hive separated by a queen excluder. The worker bees were working for both queens. I will wait 21 days until I harvest the last of our honey so that all the bees will have hatched out. This way, I won't have eggs and larva in my honey. If you aren't planning on wintering over your honeybees, I wouldn't wait any longer to cage my queens. The reason we keep them alive is so the workers won't try as hard to make another queen because the pheromones from their queen are still alive and well.

How to Combine Two Beehives

http://smallfarm.about.com/od/beekeeping/a/How-To-Combine-Two-Beehives.htm

				How to Combine Two Beehives In beekeeping it is sometimes necessary to combine hives. Learn when and why to combine colonies or hives, and how to combine beehives in the right way.
				View on smallfarm.about.com