Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
If the weather's warm enough, you can remove all the boxes, setting them on the hive
stand, and clean the bottom board screen, removing the insert when finished checking
for varroa mites. It will have, probably, an accumulation of wax cappings, dead bees,
and other material on it, all of which need cleaning off. Scrape it all out before you do
your varroa mite test. (Remember to collect what you scrape out, because if left near
the hive, the scrapings will attract skunks and raccoons.) Remove the mouse guard and
put the inner cover back without the ventilation spacer, flat side down, when you reas-
semble the colony.
If there are no bees in the bottom box, or even bottom two boxes, move the upper
box with the bees down to your now clean bottom board, and place the two empty boxes
above that. Bees move up as they expand their nest, and this gives them room to ex-
pand. If you have a box of honey left, put that on the bottom, the bees in the middle, and
the empty box on top. (With two boxes of bees, both full boxes will be on the bottom,
the empty on top. Just make sure that the room they'll need is above them.)
If you need to rearrange frames, put honey on the sides, brood in the center, but, and
this is important, leave empty space in the middle of the brood so there's room to grow,
all in the middle of two boxes. Visualize that the food should be close to the brood, all
the brood and expansion space together in the middle, and empty space above. Pollen
frames should stay next to the brood too. The bees will rearrange and straighten out
what you messed up, but keep checking to make sure there is not a ring of honey across
the top of the brood area below. That will slow the queen's laying because she'll run out
of space, and crowding will occur.
A healthy overwintered colony, with frames of drawn comb, plenty of food, an ex-
panding population, and a year-old queen is prime for swarming. And, if honey produc-
tion is a goal, a colony that swarms will potentially diminish that goal greatly, because
about half the bees in your colony will leave with the swarm.
Recall what motivates a colony to swarm: perceived limited space, lots of brood, lots
of adult bees, an aging queen, a honey flow just beginning, and cooperative weather. If
you wish to control or prevent swarming (and you can, sometimes), those are the factors
you need to address.
Also, you should requeen every year. Order your queens before the end of the previ-
ous year so you don't have to wait for a delivery date to open up. Have her arrive when
the varroa mite treatments are complete (if you needed to do that), when the antibiotic
treatments are complete (if you did that), or almost (but not quite) as early as the queen
producer can deliver.
Unpredictable weather, not enough time, and luck sometimes foul the best of inten-
tions at swarm management, and the subtle steps toward swarming kick in before you
can act.
