Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
to the pad, put the fume board on top of the super full of honey (cover and inner cover
removed) you want to remove, and wait 10 to 15 minutes for the bees to move down
into the colony away from the fumes and out of the honey super you want to remove.
This frame has brood in the center and honey on the edges and sides and top. The honey
stored here will feed brood during the winter.
The chemical product to use has the brand name of Bee-Quick, and is a pleasant-
smelling (to humans), nontoxic concoction with a vanilla fragrance. If it isn't already
permitted to be used in organic honey production, it probably soon will be. It's that safe
and easy to use.
Fume boards are usually dark colored or black (furnished that way or painted by
you), and on a sunny day they will warm the repellent, vaporizing it, and flushing the
bees out of the super. In a few moments, the bees will be gone, and you can remove the
bee-free super and place it in a bee-free location.
The reason this fume board works so well is that your neighbors will not even sus-
pect you are harvesting. If correctly managed, no bees fly, no bees become defensive,
and no bees even seem concerned. However, too much of a good thing can and will
cause a problem. Apply just the small amount of repellent recommended by the label. If
you overapply, you will chase bees out of one, two, maybe three supers. And they'll run
right outside. Suddenly you will have a flood of bees pouring out the door, stumbling
over each other to escape. This is not good. Err on the side of not quite enough at first.
You can add more if needed, but you can't push bees back inside the hive.
You can't just leave surplus honey in the colony over winter. It will most likely crys-
tallize in the cells. Cool temperatures hasten crystallization, and those frames will sit on
a colony, uncovered by the cluster, unprotected from wax moth, and turn hard as a rock.
When this happens, you can't get the honey out, no matter what you do, and neither
can the bees. Come spring it's still there, and neither you nor the bees can use the frame.
Your bees need some honey, certainly. Bees will consume 40 pounds (18.1 kg) if it's
warm all winter, maybe as much as 60 pounds (27.2 kg). A medium frame full of honey
has about 5 pounds (2.3 kg) of available food. To supply 60 pounds (27.2 kg), use 12
full frames of honey. Often, but not often enough to gamble on, a first-year colony will
have six frames of honey somewhere in the three brood boxes. It may be 12 half-frames
or some other combination. Examine them so you know. That's 30 pounds (13.6 kg) or
so. There may be more, so look carefully.
