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Beginning Beekeeping By Michael Bush Copyright 2013 Presentations online Before you take copious notes, all these presentations are online here: http://www.bushfarms.com/beespresentations.htm BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) With apologies to C.S. Lewis (who said in A Horse and His Boy, “no one teaches riding quite as well as a horse”) I think you need to realize that “no one teaches beekeeping quite as well as bees.” Listen to them and they will teach you. BLUF (Bootom Line Up Front) If the question in your mind starts “how do I make the bees …” then you are already thinking wrongly. If your question is “how can I help them with what they are trying to do…” you are on your way to becoming a beekeeper. BLUF Here, then, is the short answer to every beekeeping issue. Give them the resources to resolve the problem and let them. If you can’t give them the resources, then limit the need for the resources. BLUF For instance if they are being robbed, what they need is more bees to defend the hive, but if you can’t give them that, then reduce the entrance to one bee wide and you will create the “pass at Thermopylae where numbers count for nothing”. If they are having wax moth issues in the hive, what they need are more bees to guard the comb. If you can’t give them that then reduce the area they need to guard by removing empty combs and empty space. In other words, give them resources or reduce the need for the resources they don’t have. Managing space: One of the primary ways that beekeepers can control the need for resources is by managing space. Compressing a hive (removing all the unused combs or boxes) is a cure for many problems from wax moths to robbing. Panacea Most other bee problems come back to queen issues. Panacea There are few solutions as universal in their application and their success, than adding a frame of open brood from another hive every week for three weeks. It is a virtual panacea for any queen issues. It gives the bees the pheromones to suppress laying workers. It gives them more workers coming in during a period where there is no laying queen. It does not interfere if there is a virgin queen. It gives them the resources to rear a queen.. Panacea It is virtually foolproof and does not require finding a queen or seeing eggs or accurately diagnosing the problem. If you have any issue with queenrightness, no brood, worried that there is no queen, this is the simple solution that requires no worrying, no waiting, no hoping and no guessing. You just give them what they need to resolve the situation. If you have any doubts about the queenrightness of a hive, give them some open brood and sleep well. Repeat once a week for two more weeks if you still aren't sure. By then things will be well on their way to being fine Misleading experimentation Every colony does differently no matter how carefully you try to do things identically. This means that when you think to prove something with two hives treated differently, the statistical likelihood that any difference was due to the things you did differently is extremely low. Bees are very adaptable. They live quite well in almost any shape and size of a box within certain limits. The little details of the box you put them in are unlikely to yield significant differences in results. Equipment Decisions Decisions: Easy things to change Top or bottom entrance Queen excluder Race of bees Decisions: Difficult things to change Small cell or natural comb Kind of hive (Langstroth,Top Bar Hive etc.) Size of boxes (mediums, deeps etc.) Screened bottom boards etc. How to get bees Shaken swarm from local beekeeper Packages Nucs Photo from Gardenplotter.com When? Now is the time to order packages. Last month would have been better. Now is the time to buy and/or build equipment so it will be ready in the spring. Now is the time to read up on beekeeping Books Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping The Practical Beekeeper The Thinking Beekeeper Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health Beekeeping Mentor in a Book Homegrown Honey Bees: An Absolute Beginner’s guide Classes: UNL beginner’s classes http://events.unl.edu/2015/03/07/74683/ Forums Beesource.com Beemaster.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Organicbeeke epers Kinds of beekeeping Commercial Fixed Migratory Sideliner Hobbyist Photo from empireapiaries.com Products of the hive Bees Larvae Propolis Wax Pollen Pollination Honey Photo from Liquid, Chunk, Comb, Creamed... polyvore.com Climate How many boxes for winter? How much stores for winter? Preparation for winter? Timing? Equipment Stand Top Bottom Boxes Number of frames (width or length) Foundation? Excluder? Essential tools Smoker Spray bottle Veil, jacket or suit Hive tool Brush “Hair clip” queen catcher The organism: Bees Castes Queen Worker Drones Queen Why queens are raised Supersedure Emergency Swarming Egg 3 ½ days Larva until day 8 Emerge on day 16 Worker Raised from sometime after the winter solstice until fall. Live about 6 weeks in summer and 6 months in winter. Egg until day 3 ½ Capped on day 9 Emerge between day 18 and 21 (depending on cell size) Days 3-10 as nurse bee Days 11-21 as “house” bees 22- end of life as foragers Drones Live about six weeks in summer Egg until day 3 ½ Capped day 10 Emerge day 24 Fly to DCA about two weeks after they emerge The Superorganism: yearly cycle Winter Spring Summer Fall Personal Beekeeping Philosophy Organic Chemical Science vs Art Scale Reasons for beekeeping Pollination Honey Pets Ememies of the bees Skunks Mice Wax moths Varroa Contact Info Michael Bush bees at bushfarms dot com www.bushfarms.com Book: The Practical Beekeeper