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NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, DECEMBER 2016
MAKING YOUR HARD WORK PAY OFF ABOUT THE APIARY
Frank Lindsay, Life Member
December is here and everything you have done over the last four months will have paid off (well, that’s what we hope). The weather hasn’t helped to promote a steady build-up. November has been extremely wet in my part of the country. A couple of small mating nucs died through not having enough stores.
Some of the larger colonies have been living day to day on what nectar they can bring in. The swarms that found a home away from another beekeeper’s beehive are likely to have died, as bees can’t build new comb and feed themselves in the rain. Many beekeepers have been feeding hives to keep brood production going. We are not sure how our honey crop will pan out this season. All the wet weather in the west has promoted good growth of pasture plants but as farmers will tell you, not much guts. We have seen good growth of mānuka bushes in some areas but far fewer flowering buds. With this and overstocking of hives, some could perhaps be in for a minor flow. Set up hives to maximise your crop Most of us are optimists (you have to be to be a beekeeper) and will be setting hives up to produce their best crop. Now is the time to decide what to do with your hives. Small hives don’t produce much honey. It’s not hive numbers that count, but the population in each hive. You need a minimum of two full-depth (three, if you’re using three-quarter- depth) boxes full of bees to produce a decent honey crop. It’s not hive numbers that count, but the population in each hive. Once the main flow starts, the bees and brood from small hives with new queens can be used to top up other weak hives, after first putting the queen and two frames of capped brood into a nuc box to build up during the season. Hives that produced queen cells and were split to stop them from swarming can be put
back together, with the new queen on top of the original hive to boost their population. Use two sheets of newsprint to slow the merging of the bees. I move the first honey box slightly ajar to provide an upper entrance and to stop the upper bees trapped by newsprint from overheating in hot weather. (With the amount of rain we’re getting as I write this, overheating is unlikely to occur.) New beekeepers with only foundation frames should put only one super of foundation on at a time. Draw up an outside frame from the brood super below and place it in the middle of the super. After a few days, inspect and move the fully drawn frames out one, putting another foundation frame between. It’s a slow and laborious process, but the only way to ensure you get all your frames drawn out evenly. You cannot just put a super of foundation (undrawn) frames on top of the hive and expect the bees to draw them out. Bees don’t see foundation frames as a resource, so
have to be encouraged to move up into the new frames by lifting up a few drawn frames from the super below. If you choose to use plastic frames in your honey supers, you shouldn’t mix plastic frames with beeswax frames as the bees tend to only draw out the natural frames further. We have to initially force the bees to start to draw them, so it’s necessary to interspace a few plastic frames in the brood super first until they start to draw them out. Once started, you can then move these up into the next full super of plastic frames and the bees will follow. You cannot just put a super of foundation (undrawn) frames on top of the hive and expect the bees to draw them out.
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