The Buzz Newsletter

Page 5

THE BEEYARD REPORT

During one of my delivery days in May, I broke down in Ankeny. I spent three hours in the parking lot at Arnold Motor Supply working on my truck. The employees went the extra mile helping me out with parts, tools and advice. It turned out that assistant manager Eric Stewart was a beekeeper. He’s from the Fairfield area and knows Vern Ramsey.

We caught a good flow in mid May but there hasn’t been anything since. There isn’t any Dutch clover at all in our area. There is a good bloom of trefoil and sweet clover but there is no flow. The basswood bloom has been uneven. The basswood trees in Lynnville bloomed at the beginning of the month. The ones along the Skunk River are just coming into bloom now (June 16th). I could see the bees in the trees but there were very few bees in the honey supers.

Adam has the queen yard up and running. He has around 100 mating nucs set up. He has been using a nuc box for his cell builder but is branching out to a new method. I don’t know enough about it to explain it. All I know is that he is using full sized boxes this time. He sold all the queens he produced in the first two lots so we have had to put off requeening some of our colonies. In the end we are going to wind up with way more queens than we can use or sell but we have to push the envelope to see what our capabilities are. Part of what we do will be determined by how the summer develops. If it stays dry and the flow doesn’t develop we will probably start building more colonies. If the flow comes, we will ride it out and requeen our poor colonies in the fall.

I don’t think I would be good at queen raring. I hate to tear colonies up after they get going good. Adam is in them all the time making what he needs. Today he tore down a colony with a couple of supers on it to make his cell builder. I have never figured the value of the equipment we have tied up in the queen operation. I might be afraid of the answer. I feel it’s necessary, though. It gives us the flexibility to maintain our colony numbers. With queens in the $12-$15 range, 100 queens represents serious money

Most of our excess honey is sold. I’ve got 25 barrels left in the warehouse. I have a promise for twelve of those. I’m going to sit on the rest until I see how this years crop is going to turn out. I need 60 or 70 barrels to take care of our store business. I am not anticipating a crop disaster but the possibility is always there. My planning always looks at the worst case scenario.

Ron Wehr is also raising queens this year. We were visiting on the phone about our experiences. Ron made his grafting tool out of a piece of #14 wire. I had never thought of that. Adam likes the metal grafting tools but we always seem to lose them over the winter. The next time we lose one, I am going to try the #14 wire trick.

Here’s hoping we all get a good crop!!!

Submitted by Phil Ebert

The Southeast Iowa Beekeepers

The Southeast Iowa Beekeepers met at Ron Wehr’s on Saturday June 10 for an afternoon of instruction on the art of queen grafting. Ron has had good success this year in the project. He prepared the frames and his son Brian removed the larvae from the cells into the cups Ron had made from wax, and then put into finisher hives to feed and draw out the cells.

We had the 3 FFA boys that we had supplied with bees and equipment this spring with us. They also tried removing the larvae from frames, looked for queens in nukes and observed Ron’s honey house. After the meeting we of course had a supper of hamburgers, hot dogs, and pot luck which was enjoyed by all.

Submitted by Vern Ramsey