I wrote in May that I was afraid of my bees swarming whilst I was away for a week. The bees were there when I got back, but swarmed 5 days later! Now I have 2 hives. It is now late July. I am asking about the first hive from which the swarm issued.
I put a medium on the first hive and the flow super. They love the flow super and are close to filling it, I think. Some capped, some not.
The medium has three or four frames being worked, halfway full, but some frames are untouched.
Brood box has some honey, some pollen and lots of eggs, brood. Government bee inspector says it’s doing well.
Weather in my area has been atrocious this year. Cool, cloudy, and rainy. Nectar Flow is meant to slow down in August and be mostly done at the end of August /September normally.
I was hoping to get a full medium to leave on for winter. (Winters are mild, with light frosts over night about a quarter of the time.)
Now I’m worried (I don’t have enough to worry about it seems…) that when I take off the flow super for winter there won’t be enough for the bees to get through winter. So my question is this:
Should I harvest the flow frames (not full as yet) and take it away now instead of waiting a while to get the last drop of honey possible? Would this force the bees to fill out the medium and thus have more for winter?
Should I take the half full medium off as well, and just feed all winter? Will the medium box, half full make the hive too cold for them through winter?
Should the queen have access to the medium if I leave it on?
Weather in fall is generally nice, cool and dry into middle of November, but all bets are off this year. Nectar flow is thin in fall, but perhaps a few things are out, so bees can scrape the barrel before winter.
I am planning to feed whenever I need to, and the Rebels (the swarm) hive will need feeding so I prepared for that. They only have a brood box at this point.
Location is Eastern Scotland, near Montrose in rural farmland.
Thanks!
I would wait until August, unless you have fast crystallizing honey in your area. Then harvest the ones that are 90% capped. Remember to open each frame in ~20% segments, waiting 5-15 minutes between segments to avoid an airlock in the Flow tube which could flood the hive. If you are able to harvest all frames, take the Flow super off. If not, I would leave it on until the end of August, and see if the bees move the remaining honey down into the medium.
If there is still uncapped honey in it at the end of August, I would take it off anyway and harvest it off the hive. This is controversial - Flow prefer you to harvest it on the hive. However, in my hands, uncapped Flow frames leak quite a bit into the hive, and I don’t like stressing and soaking my bees. If you are not sure whether the honey is ripe, keep it in the freezer and either feed it back to the bees as needed, or eat it.
The medium should stay on the hive if it has decent stores in it. If it was empty, I would remove it. If you are going to leave the medium on over winter, the queen should definitely have access to it.
Thank you for the advice. I didn’t know about waiting the 15-20 minutes between segments. I will be sure to do that.
And I will wait to take the flow super off. I’m hoping August will be better and the fireweed can start making nectar since we do have a lot of that around. We are say 5 miles away from huge heather fields, not sure if that is too far for them to go. It their first year here, as it is also my first year tending them.
If I take the flow super off, and harvest off the hive, how do I make sure all bees are out of there? Take one frame at a time? And then the box, perhaps?
Another question…
The Rebels, the swarm bees, seem to be much more active then the Remainers (those in the original hive that stayed put). Could that be because the Remainers have a lot of honey put away, and when the weather is iffy they don’t bother working much? The Rebels don’t have much stored, in fact I’ve fed them a bit because I felt sorry for them starting from scratch with such awful weather this year.
Cheers.
It would depend on what else is around. They will go 5 miles if nectar is short closer, but if there is plenty nearby, they tend not to go more than about 2 miles.
There are many ways to do it. One of the easiest is to use a board with a bee escape. Put it under the super, leave them for 48 hours. The escape has a kind of one way passage in it, and when the bees do down into the lower boxes, they can’t get back up.
Another way I have used is to take out one frame at a time, shake as many bees off as possible and brush off the stragglers. You then need another box nearby to put the cleared frame into, and I use a tea towel over the top to keep bees from getting back onto it while I work on the next frame. It can be a bit tricky, and if the hive isn’t very docile, you can end up with an angry mob, so I prefer the bee escape method.
Sounds reasonable. But then as Winnie-the-Pooh would say, “Bees are tricky things. You never really know what they are going to do.”
They are indeed tricky things!
Heather is about 3.6 miles away, I just checked on Google maps.
Thanks for the info.
Now I have to find an escape board!
I am not fond of this type, but it was very common when I was keeping bees in the UK. Please note that you will need the eke that they mention to use it with:
Alternatively, you could just buy the porter bee escape (plastic oval part) and put it into a crown board with an oval hole in it - some of them are made that way.
This type is better, but I am not sure if you will be able to find it:
Thanks! If I can’t get one this year here in the UK, I’ll get one next year in the States.
I visit my son every year…the shopping SOOO much better there then in the UK.
(Whatever you are looking for.)
Porter bee escapes work, they are just a bit tricky. They have metal prongs inside them which form the one way “bee valve”. If the prongs are a bit off center in the up down plane, bees can hop over them or squeeze under them. Also, they are very prone to propolis after more than a day or two, so they have to be cleaned regularly with rubbing alcohol or similar solvent. Just a bit finicky to use
For a one off harvest I would just lift the frames and shake/brush the bees off. They might get a bit stroppy but sometimes that is just part of beekeeping.
) that when I take off the flow super for winter there won’t be enough for the bees to get through winter. So my question is this:
