LESSON 102: Adding Hive Bodies & Supers At The Right Time (217) 427-2678 www.honeybeesonline.com
Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in Central Illinois. We are David & Sheri Burns. If this is your first time to stop by, welcome and you’ll grow to really like us.
We are an everyday, hard working family desiring to make a living from our bees. We are fun natured and likeable. So get to know us more and you’ll be glad you did.
We have such great customers who continue to express their gratefulness for all that we do. Here’s some recent feedback from our customers:
Dear David -
My husband and I would like to thank you for the delivery of the Italian queen for his hive. She arrived today, and she is in the hive. We will be sure to tell our beekeeping friends the great service we received from your company.
Thank you,
Pam
Thanks for putting me on the late list and telephoning me personally when you had extra bees. You are the greatest! Just the few tips you gave me will make all the difference in the world with this new batch.
Thanks so much for your superior customer service,
Anita
Thank you. Please take this opportunity to support our FREE online beekeeping lessons by placing an order with us. We sell all beekeeping equipment and our big sellers this month are: fully assembled and painted hives, queens, slatted racks, green drone comb (varroa traps) and fully assembled supers. A few years ago we were some of the first to sell fully assembled and painted equipment. Now almost all other companies are doing the same but at a much higher cost. For example, two other companies sell their assembled and painted deep hive bodies for 61.00 and 52.50. We sell ours for $45. So take advantage of our great savings.
This week was really a special week for us, especially Sheri and Karee. Ann Kaiser, Contributing Editor at Country Woman Magazine spent Monday and Tuesday at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms to do an article on our queen bee operation. Ann writes an article for each edition called Editor in the Country, focusing upon unique agricultural niches.
It was so fun having Ann here for two days. Sheri has read Country Woman for a couple of decades so Sheri was so thrilled to have Ann here! Ann even marked someone’s queen that we shipped out. The article will appear in Country Woman in the Aug/Sept issue of Country Woman. It was a fun two days! To read more about those two days, visit Sheri’s Sweet Life blog.
Queen requests are off the charts. We are shipping out queens like I’ve never seen before. Some new customers have identified that there seems to be a shortage of queens and that some companies are sold out. Not us, we are fully stocked, grafting is going well and we are in full swing. The weather has finally improved and finally the bees are working hard to make up for lost time.
We hope to double our queen production this year and even Sheri is out there helping us graft and taking care of the mating nucs.
Raising queens is so much fun and we’re glad to see the queen rearing season finally here. If you’d like for us to train you how to raise queens, come to our two day queen rearing course, Friday-Saturday July 22-23, 2011.
Because we have increased our queen production, you can now order your queens online. Pick your dates and shipping options!
It was a very rough spring for beekeepers here in the Midwest and north. Cold weather lingered on with lots of cold nights and rainy days. Because we are also nuc producers we were forced to work our new nucs in the rain, trying to get food to them during those times when the rain trapped them in the hive for days. Small splits will die if they become too cold. Food in the hive helps them generate heat so we prepared bags of sugar water and placed them in the hive under an umbrella, using a super as a spacer to surround the bag of sugar water.
Before today’s lesson let me remind you that we have invaluable classes on beekeeping coming up in the next few weeks. Classes include Queen Rearing, Advance Beekeeping, Basic Beekeeping, Honey Marketing and many more. Visit our website for all upcoming classes.
LESSON 102:Adding Hive Bodies & Supers At The Right Time
Just when is the right time to add the next hive body or super? This is very important in order to control swarming and to hold down the spread of pests. New beekeepers as well as experienced beekeepers can make big mistakes when it comes time to add another box. So let me walk you through some sensible advice.
Bees love to be crowded, but not congested. Heavily populated colonies are always healthier colonies. Honey bees function more efficiently when the colony is well populated. Small colonies have an increased likelihood of struggling with pests and diseases.
For example, if you have a typical hive that consist of two deep hive bodies and a medium super, and you shook your package into those three boxes with 10 frames each, the bees would have too large of an area to protect. Wax moth and small hive beetle could gain access to the hive and lay eggs in unprotected corners.
I have found that it works best for me to make my splits in small 3 frame nuc boxes, and then when those frames are full, move them to a 5 frame nuc, then finally to a 10 frame nuc. But I do not add my 2nd deep box on until at least all 10 frames have some wax being drawn out. This allows the bees to work in a heavily populated environment but still have plenty of open cells in frames so as not to become congested and swarm.
In this picture, a second hive body could have been added weeks earlier. Although I will push my bees harder and wait till all 10 frames are started, I tell new beekeepers to add their second hive body on when 6-7 frames in the first deep are drawn out and full of bees. By “drawn out” I mean the bees have added their comb to the foundation and have extended out their comb on both sides of the frames.
Let’s talk about adding the third box, the honey super. Lots of mistakes are made here. First, add your super when 6 or 7 frames have been drawn out in the 2nd deep box. DO NOT use a queen excluder just yet. Place your super on, but without the excluder. This allows ease of access for bees to find and move up into the super to begin drawing out the comb. Once you see a minimum of 2 frames that are being worked by the bees add your queen excluder, but do so carefully.
When adding the queen excluder below a super after the bees have started drawing out the comb, make sure to inspect each frame of the super to ensure the queen is not in that super. This is very important or else you will trap your queen in your honey super and you will have a super of brood not honey. If you find that she is in your super, simply pick her up by her wings or thorax and place her in one of the deep hive bodies below.
Now place your queen excluder below your honey super (usually the third box from the bottom). When placing on your queen excluder, be sure to place the excluder with the cross wires facing down. Otherwise, queens might try to slide along the metal and slip in. Plastic excluders do not have this problem and can be place on either way.
One finally tip: When placing on your second deep hive body, remove one frame from the bottom deep, preferably a frame of nectar with bees on it and place it in the new deep hive box on the top and place the undrawn frame from the top into the box below where you removed the frame of nectar. With this frame of bees and nectar now above the lower deep, the bees will more quickly get the idea to move up.
There you go, now you know when and how to add your other boxes to your hive.
Plan now to learn more! Great conferences are coming up. I’ll be speaking at the Arkansas Advance Beekeeping Workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas May 26-28, 2011. Come join us! Look at the schedule and register now! Speakers include Dr. Clarence Collison, Ed Levi, Dr. Yong Park and Jon Zawislak and I’ll be heading up the queen rearing course.
Sheri and I will also be speaking at the Heartland Apicultural Society meeting July 7-9, 2011. This is the 10th anniversary of HAS and the theme is: “Helping bees to help themselves: Breeding for healthy bees” It will be held at historic Vincennes University in Vincennes, Indiana. Cost is only $40 for three days. Registration information is now available online, so come join us by visiting them at: http://www.heartlandbees.com Big hitter speakers are lined up such as: Ernesto Guzman-Novoa, Jerry Hayes, Clarence Collison, Greg Hunt, Tom Webster, John Skinner and Larry Connor. THIS IS A MUST ATTEND CONFERENCE!!
And plan now for the Eastern Apicultural Society—simply the best. It’s geared for beginners and advanced beekeepers with two separate tracks you can chose from depending on where you are at in your beekeeping experience. Who is speaking? Think of everyone you’ve always wanted to hear…they will be there, no kidding. Click on http://www.easternapiculture.org/ Why not start working on your Master Beekeeper Certification while you are there too!
Thanks for joining us again today for another great lesson in beekeeping!
David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
14556 N. 1020 E. Rd
Fairmount, IL 61841
(217) 427-2678
www.honeybeesonline.com
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