Wednesday, June 15, 2016

June - The Swarming Month & Time to Remove the Entrance Reducer

I added honey supers to my hives this week!

June is considered the swarming month so I am persistent at staying on top of removing queen cells provided my original queen is still in the hive and I see eggs, larva, and pupa. I have been on many hive consultations and found this to be true again this year. One person had a swarm and actually caught 6-8 queens and caged them. We killed all but one to release the next day so she could do her mating flights. Hopefully she was bred well and is now laying hundreds of eggs everyday.

I have removed my entrance reducers and won't use them again until fall. Thankfully, we were blessed with rain before the fireweed started to bloom. Last year we had beautiful fireweed flowers however they didn't have enough rain early in the season so didn't produce an abundance of nectar beyond the food they needed for themselves. This year promises to be a bumper crop of honey at this rate.

As a reminder: If you took my class this year you have a $20 discount on a hive consultation. The price for the first consultation for those who took my class is $40.00. The price for subsequent consultations is $60.00 Please email me if you need to make an appointment. I am out of spare queens now so if anyone has an extra queen please let me know as I do get calls from time to time with requests for a new queen. It is getting a bit late in the year for ordering new queens. If you need a new queen:




2 comments:

  1. So if we add a super does that mean that we also place the queen excluder between the top brood box and the newly added super?

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  2. Yes, you can do this. I have stopped using queen excluders so that the bees don't have to squeeze through the excluder to store honey. If you cage your queen 21-24 days prior to harvesting honey you won't have any eggs, larva or pupa in the honey supers.

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