Capital Region Beekeepers Association
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General Meeting (May 2021)
May 13, 2021 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
The Capital Regional Beekeepers Association (CRBA) meets on the second Thursday of every month.
This meeting usually starts with a beginners/intermediate beekeeper corner 30 minutes before the regular club proceedings start around 7pm.
Agenda
- 6:30PM – New Beekeepers Corner – Don L
- Preventing swarms – what to look for
- 7:00PM – Welcome – Bill F
- Breeding queens – Barry D
- What to do in May and June – Larry L
- Q & A – Starting with how to split a hive – Carolyn H
- 8:30PM – Close
Minutes
- Meeting started at 6:34pm (via Zoom)
- Bill welcomes everyone to the May CRBA General Meeting (approx. 53 attendees.)
- Beginners Corner (Swarm Control) – Don
- Why do bees swarm?
- To propagate the species.
- Hive can swarm more than once.
- Triggers
- Crowding (single largest driving factor); lack of room for laying eggs
- Randy Oliver says first swarm 60-90 days after first pollen arrives in spring.
- Decision to swarm made by bees, not queen.
- Initially lands close to mother hive; then send out scouts looking for a new location.
- In parent hive, a new virgin queen will emerge. About 8 days after swarm.
- Hopefully flies out and mates soon after.
- Virgin queens may take additional swarms before mating. Taking ~half the bees again and again.
- Otherwise, first virgin queen will sting other virgins through side of cell.
- You cannot stop swarming after the bees have decided to swarm.
- Look for signs of preparation.
- Check every 7 days.
- Signs:
- Queen cells
- Lots of drones
- Nectar in the brood nest
- Lots of frames of brood with lesser number of eggs/young larvae.
- What to do:
- Add space
- Add foundation
- Add supers
- Move brood around
- Cycle out old comb – not as usable
- Re-queen before queen is too old
- Split
- Questions
- Do you have to distance the new hive? Move more than 3-4 miles from parent is best.
- Won’t you have exponential growth if hives keep swarming? Can join them back together if desired.
- What to do with multiple queen cells? Can use additional for nucs. Destroy and leave 1 or 2 to prevent cast swarms.
- Lost a swarm today. Queen removed previously. First virgin swarmed. Can add original queen back.
- Ok to destroy “practice cups”? Yes.
- If you move frame with brood and nurse bees to another hive, will it be accepted? Bees may fight. Can move just the frame after brushing off bees.
- Can’t find mated queen after multiple swarms. Mating is always a challenge.
- Why do bees swarm?
- Main Meeting – 7:05pm
- Queen Breeding – Barry Denluck
- Important characteristic for local queens to be able to survive low temp/high humidity.
- Quality
- Well developed
- Well mated (10+ drones)
- Good laying pattern before being removed for shipping to final customer.
- Timely Availability
- We want them in early March – but local not available
- Local nuc
- Must contain local queen
- Must contain local combs
- Should contain local bees.
- Production Challenges
- Need production colonies
- Need drone colonies; 1.2km away from production colonies in various directions.
- Barry’s observation is drone production is a little low this year.
- Drones have one extra segment in their antenna for detecting virgin queens.
- Drones mate and then die.
- Birds are a problem at this time of year.
- Percentage of virgin queens in commercial production queens is high (10%)
- Nutrition is important for breeding queens – starts year before.
- 10,000 visits to queen larvae when feeding.
- Only young bees produce quality royal jelly.
- Raising queens in April is doable locally. Enough mature drones can be an issue.
- Once mated it can take 10 days to establish laying pattern.
- June is when a quality local queen is available. Inadequate for honey the same year.
- Cost of wintering queen may be greater than cost of production. But, proven wintering available and available in March.
- Questions:
- What does it mean when you talk about queen breeders? Subset of BCHPA
- How long can a virgin wait before mating? If she doesn’t get out in 2-3 days after ready to mate, may be a drone layer.
- Elaborate on Banking Queens. Put in nucs and hold them until you take to mating yard and release all on one day.
- How do you identify mated queen? Observe laying pattern 5-7 days after.
- VSH queens. A genetic trait for your source stock. A well raised local queen with marginal mating is a good queen. An exceptional genetics/mated queen poorly raised can be worse.
- Can a June queen raise enough bees to get through winter? Most definitely – subject to wasp management.
- Raising Queens for your own needs
- Depends whether you are grafting or just doing splits.
- If splits, want to target having a few more than you want going into winter.
- Bringing a nuc through winter is doable.
- Big producers on prairies are raising their own replacement queens late in season to reduce reliance on imports.
- How long would you wait to see if your queen is mated before introducing a mated queen?
- Introducing a mated queen from a mating nuc to another colony is a process. Well laying queens are easier than just laying ones. Need several days.
- If captured swarm – 10 days. Need to look at weather – if rainy – longer.
- How good are you at spotting eggs?
- Hard to find virgin queens – they are runners.
- Wait too long and you can get laying workers.
- Can assist by introducing a frame with young brood and eggs.
- Success at overwintering non local queens? 1 in 100
- What to do in May/June (Larry)
- A story…
- Maintenance in beeyard
- Extract first crop of honey when capped
- Check for mites
- Drone comb
- Chemical
- Look for queen
- Eggs? Laying pattern? Space to lay?
- Replace?
- Population expanding rapidly
- Give extra space or reverse chambers. Don’t reverse if brood nest in multiple chambers.
- Swarm control
- Separate house and field bees.
- Snelgrove swarm control board.
- Make a split
- Check for disease and stores.
- Super for colony growth
- If bees on 7 frames, add a super or 3.
- If started with package bees, continuing feeding.
- Don’t put an empty super of foundation above queen excluder. Make sure drawn comb or pull up a frame or 2.
- Place a bait hive in your yard. Entitled “Better Bee Inn”
- Watch for dearth end of May/Beginning of June – bees can consume a frame a day of honey.
- Bill’s perception is that dearth will come earlier this year. Not a lot of rain. April was a good month.
- Check entrance to see if bees coming in heavy or empty.
- Hive scales are useful.
- Yes, dearth could be early this year.
- Carolyn – Splits and Questions
- Decision tree presented.
- Good resource – https://pembsbeekeepers.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/wag_queen_cellseng.pdf
- Bees can choose the best larvae for queens.
- How to tell when bees are heavily loaded?
- Video and check to see how clumsy they are in slow motion.
- Can pollen on bottom board be used for feeding?
- A lot of other things in there (debris, etc.)
- Can use pollen trap, but still can be some debris. Clean out what you can and freeze.
- Bees can figure out pollen traps quickly.
- Does anyone have an Apimaye hive?
- No one has heard of anyone.
- Which hive is having the brood break?
- The queen keeps laying, so the hive waiting for a new queen has a brood break – all other brood will have emerged by the time she starts laying. Can do an oxalic vapourization when no brood (still need to remove honey supers in BC when doing this.)
- Last year my hive filled 8 frames with pollen. Is this pollen bound?
- Collecting pollen is ok, but filling up the brood nest is a problem. Generally they will put pollen around the broodnest, not in. Removing or using pollen trap is an idea. Should freeze to prevent wax moth.
- Raising a whole bunch of queens. What if I end up with a whole bunch of them?
- Need an inspection.
- Supplementing during dearth?
- Honey supers off
- 1:1 is fine for May/June
- When are small group meetings happening?
- Keep a lookout for information coming soon.
- Bill thanks everyone and wraps up the meeting at 8:26 pm.