This Month in the Bee Yard
August
August, this is the month that colonies typically start collapsing due to varroa infestation. Frequently, these were strong colonies in July but dead by September. As the amount of brood rearing in the colony slows, the varroa mites have fewer and fewer cells in which to raise their young thus the mites per brood cell soon overwhelm the colony and it dies. Next comes the robbing and then the wax moths destroy what's left. This is the scenario that frequently occurs if colonies are not treated. So if you checked your colonies for varroa mites last month and no treatments were needed, you should be in good shape for the coming fall and winter. If, on the other hand, you did not check or treat any of your colonies last month, it is recommended that you check early this month and treat if needed. The details of these checks and treatments were given in the July article and thus will not be repeated this month.
While working in the brood chamber, check and make sure that the cells above and to the sides of the brood are filled with honey or sugar syrup. If not, that colony should be fed. Use some type of inside feeder such as a hive top feeder. This type feeder is ideal and it holds approximately 2 gallons of sugar syrup. It is also a good idea, as each brood frame is removed, to check the condition of the comb. If the comb is bad and contains a lot of drone cells, it should be removed. If the comb to be removed contains more than a few cells of brood, it should be moved to the outside of the cluster. It can then be exchanged with a frame of foundation or drawn comb after the brood emerges.
There is a problem opening a hive during periods of dearth or limited nectar supply and that problem is robbing. So during these August checks, be particularly careful and minimize, as much as possible, the exposure of any combs containing honey. If you are feeding a newly established colony, feed late in the evening and try not to spill any honey or sugar syrup. Once started, robbing bees can destroy a weak or newly established colony in a matter of minutes and as they say, the best control of robbing is prevention. One good way to cut down on the exposure is to place any combs removed in a spare hive body where the bottom entrance is closed and the top covered with something light such as a piece of plywood that can be easily moved.
August is also a good time to check that each colony has a laying queen. If you find that you have a bad queen or no queen at all in a colony, then requeen it as soon as you can obtain a replacement queen, regardless of the month. This is one of the main reasons for keeping a few nucs on hand. Because if you find a colony with no queen or one with a drone layer during one of the colder months, November - March, and you have a nuc with a good queen, you can save that colony. If you have a bad queen, kill her and place the nuc directly on top of the brood chamber of this now queenless colony with (only) a single sheet of newspaper in between. Make one cut 3 or 4 inches long in the newspaper above where most of the bees are clustered. I have used this method many times to introduce new queens into full size colonies and, except for one time, it has been a good and reliable system of introducing a new queen. The one time that this system did not work was when I had a super of honey in between the brood chamber and the newspaper. That is the reason for the wording above; place the nuc directly on top of the brood chamber.
If you requeen on a routine basis, August or early September, in my opinion, is a better time to requeen than in the springtime. Queens are more readily available in the fall than in early spring and if a queen is not accepted in September you still have time to introduce another queen before winter sets in.
There are other ways to successfully requeen an existing colony. To help you in this area, a few simple guidelines from the March 2002 Issue of the Bee Culture are listed below: These recommendations and comments are from an article on Queen Introduction written by Joe Latshaw. He operates the Ohio Queen Breeders in Columbus, Ohio and has successfully introduced thousands of queens.
He recommends that the queen cage be placed in the colony with both ends covered for 2 - 3 days then come back and remove the cork or other covering from the candy end of the cage. He does not recommend poking a hole through the candy to speed up the release of the queen. After 2 or 3 days, come back, remove the cork, check for and remove any queen cells and then let the colony rest for a week.
Regarding the attendant bees, he says that recent research indicates that queen acceptance is better and faster if the queen is alone in her cage.
The above method of introducing a new queen is one that I use when the queen is in a Benton three-compartment wooden shipping cage. It is another reliable method (in addition to the newspaper method) of introducing a queen but there is one step that I feel should be added. That added step is to return 2 days after the cork has been removed and, with no smoke, check and verify that the queen was released. (Delays in releasing the queen can be caused by crystal hard queen candy or the queen cage could be in a location away from the main cluster of bees.) If she has not been released and still in the cage, go ahead and release her. I like to release her on a frame of brood and observe how she reacts to the bees and how they react toward her. I usually observe her for no more than 60 seconds. If she starts running, place her back in the cage. If she moves slowly and starts searching for food or an empty cell, slowly replace the frame and close up the hive. That queen should be just fine.
Some beekeepers mark their queens or have them marked by the queen producer. Using a different color to mark the thorax is one way to document a queen's age plus the mark helps in locating the queen, especially in a populous hive. An international color code for marking queens has been devised where years ending in 1 or 6 are white; 2 or 7 are yellow; 3 or 8 are red; 4 or 9 are green and 5 or 0 are blue. To help in remembering this color code, it has been suggested that you think of this: Will You Read Good Books, where W is for 1 and is white; Y is for 2 and is yellow; etc.
Some beekeepers never requeen with queens from a known stock. They, instead, let the bees raise their replacement queen. This method of requeening, however, can be a gamble. A quick review of the queen biology can help explain this uncertainty.
Eggs hatch in three days and the larva, to produce a good queen, should be no more than about 12 hours old. The queen cells are sealed four days later and the new queens will emerge eight days later. This allows only four days for the larva to be fed as a queen larva. The amount and the quality of the food (royal jelly) that is fed to the queen larva during this four day period determines the size of the new queen and the number of eggs that the new queen can lay. Thus queens that are produced from older larvae or from larvae that are not fed properly will be inferior queens. Unfortunately the queen cell with the older larva will produce the first adult queen. That first adult queen, though she may be an inferior queen, will destroy all of the other queen cells and thus kill all of the potentially good queens. Queens that are produced from swarm cells, on the other hand, usually have good physical qualities. The eggs hatch in the swarm cells and thus the larvae are well fed from the very start of their life. Queens produced from swarm cells though can reinforce an undesirable characteristic and that is the instinct to swarm. These are a couple of the uncertainties that one takes in letting the bees raise their own replacement queen.
Most any colony will swarm when the queen runs out of space to lay in the brood chamber. This is normal and is not indicative of a highly developed swarming instinct. If, however, the colony swarms and only half of the brood frames are filled with brood, then that queen would appear to have a highly developed swarming instinct. Thus that queen would not be a good choice as a queen mother. kgp