A year in the life of a colony is compacted into a few months of work all governed by the queen. Without her the hive would be empty within a few short months. She will spend almost all of her life inside the hive only leaving for a few days shortly after she hatches to mate. During her egg laying months she will lay a staggering total amount of eggs, in a single day she could lay up to about 2000 eggs. A queens life span is 2-3 years compared to a normal honey bee who may only live for about 3 months during the summer months when out working every day, but this increases over the winter time to 3-4 months when they stay in the hive to keep warm.


This is only a rough guide, as it depends on the climate, plants and the weather in your local area.

Month
Beekeeper
The Hive
January
Will check the hive entrance is free of snow or other objects.
The colony will be in a ball shape cluster to keep warm.
February
Check equipment and the structure of the hive to see if any parts may need to be replaced for the up coming season.
The queen will start to lay a few eggs to raise as workers for the early part of the season. The colony will still be in a cluster.
March
Wait for a fine day to quickly check the bees have enough stores as the colony size increases and feed if they are low.
The queen will increase her rate of laying, the colony size will slowly increase.
April
Be aware of the local flowers around, as they will begin to produce nectar. Replace any winter damaged hive parts and add a queen excluder and super if required. The queens rate of laying will be increasing expanding the colony size very quickly.
May
Pollen and nectar collection will be up, check the super for space and add another super if required. Check for queen cells weekly. Its the start of the swarming season, have a spare hive ready to split the colony or take another swarm prevention action.
The queens rate of laying will be at its maximum. Queen cells will be made and the colony will be building up getting ready to swarm.
June
Check the bee stores to make sure they have enough to keep them going, continue with weekly inspections for queen cells and either split the colony or take another swarm prevention action. The queens rate of laying will fall. Queen cell production is common and a good chance the colony may still split and swarm.
July
This is generally a good month for nectar, so a beekeeper may need to add more supers, continue with weekly inspections for queen cells and either split the colony if they haven't already or take another swarm prevention action. The queen rate of laying will fall, the colony will be at its peak size for the season and its still possible they could swarm although any swarm now is unlikely to survive over winter without the beekeeper feeding them. 
August
Consider if the queen needs to be replaced ready for next season, reduce the entrance size.
The queen rate of laying will be very low the colony size will begin to decrease, as there is sharp fall in nectar amounts.
September
Remove the excess honey and start to think about winter feeding towards the end of the month.
The queen will stopped laying. The drones will be kicked out and the colony size will begin to shrink quickly.
October
Put on the mouse guard and secure the hive for winter.
The colony should be preparing for the winter. Very little activity.
November
The beekeepers season is over.
The bees will cluster into a ball to keep warm.
December
Enjoy the festive season with a little honey mead at the winter meetings with your association.
The bees will cluster into a ball to keep warm.





Inspections

Every month a beekeeper will visit his/her hive to check all is well, but from April to July/August the beekeeper will make weekly inspections to gauge the colonies health, colony numbers, bee stores and later on honey amounts. But most importantly one part of the weekly inspection is swarm prevention, although this is a natural event for the bees not all keepers want their colonies to split part way through the season as this will effect the rest of the year if they want a high yield of honey. 

As swarming is a natural process for the bees the keeper can take measures to prevent or decide when to split the colony. A good time to split one colony is when a keeper finds queen cells being made on one or more frames during an inspection and hopefully this will give each new colony enough time to build up before the main flow of nectar starts.

A basic inspection

External
  • Read your previous hive inspection notes
  • Monitor the bees coming and going through the entrance - Checking to see if some are carrying pollen
  • Check the ground in front of the hive for dead bees or any crawling upwards looking ill
  • Check the hive and stand for any signs of damage or wear and tear - Various animals may damage the hive (Woodpeckers - Mice)
  • Check the varroa tray for varroa or any other signs of other problems
Once this is done the next part is critical to get right so it is worth taking a few extra moments to think before deciding what to do as many novice beekeepers (myself included this year) get this part wrong and will cause more harm than good to their colony.

Starting from one side of the hive, lift out one frame at a time from the brood chamber
inspect it and replace it so not to chill any eggs or sealed brood on it.

Not listed in any set order but
check for all the following:

Internal
  • Check the supers - (If any) to see if you need to add one - Beekeepers should always make sure their bees have enough space to store nectar
  • The queen - Some times you wont find her but thats fine, provided there are eggs and they are still stood upright
  • Eggs - If some eggs are still upright you know the queen was laying within the last couple of days
  • Larvae, unsealed and sealed across the frames
  • Drone brood cells - Although the male bee does very little they are important to every colony
  • Egg laying pattern - Is it patchy or is there excessive drone brood - Points to a problem with the queen
  • Pollen - This is food for the bees, and affects the queens egg laying rate
  • Honey/Nectar - The honey arc across the top of the middle frames and covering the outer frames
  • Queen cells or supersedure cells - Complete your inspection before removing them just in case you don't find the queen and or eggs
  • Frame and Comb condition - Age, colour or damage
  • Signs of diseases - Foul brood, chalk brood, deformed bees, nosema are few of the possible problems
  • Medications - If used, check what further course of action is required (not used during honey production)
Then take a few moments to consider what needs to be done and only then take the required action before closing the hive up again. At this point it is good practice to fill in a hive inspection sheet or make notes ready for the next time you need to visit your hive.



Below is a close up picture of part of a frame. Click the picture to see it in more detail.



Yellow - Sealed brood (when they emerge they will be workers - female)
Green - Larvae (if you look very closely you will see they are different sizes) when they are the right age the cell will be capped over (sealed brood) until they are ready to emerge
Blue - Eggs - All these eggs are at least 2 days old and they are laying flat on the bottom of the cell
Red - Pollen - different colours from different flowers or trees




The Hive

There are a few types of hives of slightly different shapes and sizes but for the most part they all contain the same parts.



Starting from the bottom up

The Floor
The floor is a vital piece of the hive, some beekeepers will have a solid floor to keep frost out others will have an open wire mesh floor to help remove the unwanted verroa from the hive and give good ventilation during the summer months, the wire mesh is large enough to allow the
verroa parasite to fall through to the ground below, but too fine to allow bees or other unwanted creatures or insects in. An entrance block is fitted to reduce access to the hive during the winter time to help keep the warmth in and unwanted visitors out, during the spring and summer it is removed.

The Brood Box
The brood box is the largest part of the hive, this is where the queen lives all year round and she will lay her eggs, the bees will also store pollen, nectar and honey for themselves. The beekeepers will never take the honey from this box as the frames are purely for the bees to feed themselves.

The Queen Excluder
This is a thin sheet of steel or plastic with slots or holes in it. The holes are big enough to allow a bee through but too small to allow the slightly larger queen through. So the frames kept above the excluder and queen can be filled with honey which the beekeeper can remove when they are full with out any eggs in it. 

The Super
The super is the box of frames for the bees to store their excess honey which the beekeeper can remove when its capped over and ready to be extracted. If the weather has been good and there is a lot of nectar to be collected some beekeepers may stack 2,3 or even 4 supers full of frames on top of the brood box and queen excluder. Although as a general rule one or two is normal and these will be swapped out when full and replaced with another super with fresh frames. The queen excluder and supers are removed after the bees stop making honey to reduce the hive space to just the brood box to help the bees keep warm. 

The Roof
Some hives have plain felt covered roof others a steel sheet covered roof, but generally they are a good weight to stop them being blown off in strong winds and to trap the warmth in the brood box for winter time.

Frames & Foundation
The frames are the wooden rectangles which hold the thin sheets of foundation which the bees pull outwards to create the tiny hexagon shaped cells made of bees wax. The cells are used to raise the eggs into larva and then finally bees, they are also used to store pollen, nectar and honey. The frame size depends on the over all size of the brood chamber and also the supers, the brood frames being x2, x3 or even x4 larger than the super frames. Supers are kept small due to the weight when full of honey and smaller frames are easier to spin to remove the honey once the cap over each cell is removed. 



Current Varroa Treatments v Essential Oils
 

One notable topic of debate between beekeepers is the types of chemicals put into the hives once or twice every year. Its well known the humble honey bee is under threat from several different problems. As a result most beekeepers have turned to some very toxic chemicals to try and ward off some of these problems, but the mites develop a level of immunity so the treatments have to be modified and made stronger and stronger and now as a result several of them are forced to display warning signs as they are highly toxic to humans and will often kill any developing larvae in the hive. This is likely to reach a point when they will be far to dangerous to even consider using, some may argue we are far beyond that point already and alternatives will need to be used.


I joined the forums at www.biobees.com and I followed with interest one member who has been working on finding a method of treating for varroa using non-toxic natural oils and has come up with a treatment and a simple method to apply it which has proved in several hives to be part of an effective method in helping to control the levels of these mites. He has posted his results and they look promising.



Essential oil treatment -

10g of thymol crystals

10 drops of tea tree oil

Olive oil, 25 ml

Sunflower oil, 50 ml

One or two pieces of bees wax (walnut sized)

Two or three teaspoons of fine sugar (icing sugar)

Thirty 50mm (2 inch) lengths undyed garden string (eg. hemp)


The only thing that is measured accurately are the thymol and tea tree.


Gently warm the oil and beeswax until the beeswax dissolves and then add the thymol crystals. Stir to dissolve these. (They smell strongly, so do not touch them with your hands.) Cool and add the tea tree (it will evaporate if the mix is too hot). Then add the sugar and stir. The mix will turn lumpy and sticky at this stage. The consistency should be that of soft butter. Dip the pieces of string in the mix to coat them thoroughly. Use enough string to soak up all the mix.


This makes enough to treat 3 hives once each provided that they are not heavily 'mited'. I generally repeat after about 10 days and will do a third treatment after another 10 days if the mite drop is still high. (The ten day timing is not crucial.) The treatment is most effective when the bees are active and the weather is warm. The dosage rate is about 1/4 that of commercially available thymol treatments and much more effective in my experience. This treatment is best used with a mesh floor so the mites fall out of the hive, but it should also work with solid floors although may be to a lesser extent.


To apply, move the top bars apart enough to push two pieces of string down between each for a top bar hive or tie the string to a used match stick or cocktail stick and rest it on top of the frames. The string, being sticky, will catch on the face of the comb. That's fine. Do this for 5 or so bars in the centre of the brood nest (10 strings in total). If the mite load is very heavy, a double dose will still be less than that in commercial treatments.


Over time the bees will chew at the string and throw it out of the hive entrance or push little pieces (finely chewed) through the mesh floor (looks like brown candy floss).


In addition to the direct effect of the oils on the mites, I suspect that the bees also groom each other more often, as they don't like the smell of either tea tree oil or thymol. In this regard, I suspect that the olive oil and sunflower oil also play a role as they contain oleic and linoleic acids which in insect terms is the smell of death and is what triggers the undertaking response in bees. The sugar is there to give the mixture some substance that the bees can get their mandibles around - I've tried it without and it is much less effective.


Remember that the aim is not to knock out all the mites, but to keep the numbers from spiralling out of control. I would be cautious about using the mixture if I was due to be harvesting honey. Although thymol is said to break down fairly quickly in wax, I'd want to be sure of avoiding contamination of the comb. (Thymol does not dissolve in water.)


Gareth (www.biobees.com)

 

 
 

The picture above shows the expected mite drop levels for 2009 - 2010 and when the numbers start to rise this is when treatments should be given. Sugar dusting and using essential oil treatments should help to keep the mite levels under control.





 
 

 
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