Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
and autumn
By now, you have established your apiary in either a rural or urban site, or both. You
have inspected your bees every 10 days or so and have made sure that your colonies are
growing - they have a young queen and have been treated for varroa. You have carried
out swarm-prevention and swarm-control measures where required, and the bees have
sufficient room for expansion in the brood nest and enough space to store honey in the
supers.
Your management strategy should now be to assist your colonies in building up to their
maximum strength before the main flow starts. High bee numbers are important for
this flow. A colony of 60,000 bees will collect 50 kg (110 lb) of honey during the season,
and two colonies of 30,000 bees will collect a total of 45 kg (100 lb). You will see, that
therefore, one colony will collect 5 kg (10 lb) more honey than two smaller ones, even
though the total number of bees is the same. Thus six colonies of 10,000 bees will
collect only 40 kg (90 lb) of honey in total! Each bee in a large colony will therefore
collect more honey than each bee in a smaller colony over its foraging lifetime.
Spring is ending and the worst of the swarming season is over, so what is there to do
now? There is a honey flow to attend to and, in many areas, this may well have started.
Inspect your colonies: any by this stage that do not occupy to overflowing at least one
brood box should be united with another colony (see Chapter 8). Regarding the honey
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