The Buzz Newsletter

May 2007

 

 

Page 8

Youth Program Update

The IHPA sent information to the State FFA Convention to be included in the packets for all the advisors in the state of Iowa. The information is for the new scholars for 2007. We are updating the application for our website and will send the updated application to the State FFA office to be e-mailed to all the FFA advisors in the state.

I know that the present youth scholars are patiently waiting for the arrival of their honey bees. As of this writing, I am waiting to hear from Lee Heine, when the bees will arrive in Iowa. Lee told me that the bees will be on any one of six shipments and that he will let me know as soon as he knows. We are so thankful to Lee for donating these packages. Next year we will have all of the information and know what to do to let the scholars get a great start to beekeeping. All new programs have “bugs” to work out. We are learning with the scholars.

We are excited to have new young members of the IHPA. The board is ready and willing to help these participants have a successful beekeeping season. The mentors are an important part of this program and we thank you for your commitment to the future of the IHPA also.

THE BEEYARD REPORT

The package bee truck backed up the driveway. It was 20 degrees out. I had some anxiety about the low temperatures. It proved to be unwarranted. Bees are heat machines if they have proper resources to work with. I thought the packages were easier to work with when it was cold. They stayed clustered and there weren't any hobos in the air.

Shortly after we got the packages stacked up in my unheated garage. The temp rose to 65 degrees. It decreased slowly throughout the day as we took packages out. There were about 150 packages left for the overnight. I put a little milkhouse heater in the garage and let it run. The morning temperature was 35 degrees. The bees were great. The syrup cans were empty on arrival as usual. I used a garden hand sprayer to feed the bees this year. It had enough pressure to force syrup though the screen wire onto the cluster. Then I sprayed some on the floor of the cage so there would be food on the bottom in case bees fell off the cluster. The wand of the sprayer went between the cages nicely so it was easy to feed. It takes about 1 ½ gallons of diluted syrup to feed 400 packages.

There was an article in the Bee Journal a couple of months ago about hiving packages at 22 degrees. It made sense to me so we tried it. Our temp wasn't quite as low. It was 32 degrees when we did our installation. We sprayed the bees with syrup until they were like a bunch of wet pellets. We stuck the queen cage between the top bars and dumped the bees on top of the bars. That left us with a sizeable mound of gooey bees. We covered the pile with a sheet of newspaper and placed an empty box on the newspaper to hold it down. You could feel the heat coming through the paper in a few minutes. We started the installation about 11:00 AM. Alex put a thermometer on top of the pile a couple of hours later. The temp was 60 degrees. It took the bees about four hours to go down on the combs. Everything looked great by evening. Two weeks after installation, they look great.

Our overwintered bees look good. I don't know why. They have had a lot of stress and our numbers are down. We pulled brood the last week in March to boost the weaker ones. Some of the weak colonies only had a handful of bees. Most of the weak ones got two frames of brood. I questioned whether the queens were good enough to warrant the infusion of brood. It now looks like the brood was the equivalent of giving the bees a happy pill. Those colonies have prospered. The weak ones that we didn't add bees to have gone downhill and many of them have died.

The wet weather has been a problem. Some of our yards have poor access. We haven't been able to get into them. It has made feeding difficult and splitting almost impossible. Our first shipment of queens was on time but we had to bank them for a week before we could use any of them.

It turned out that my hand wasn't broken. The swelling went down after about ten days.. It was feeling pretty good until I slipped in the mud during a rainy day in one of the yards. I landed on the same hand. An extended period of cursing didn't do anything to ease the pain.

We are still fooling around with Miteaway pads. We hit a warm spell toward the end of March. I had two yards in cartons that we could get to so we gave them pads. Since the colonies were in cartons, I didn't have to waste time taping up all the holes. We got around ten days of temps at the proper level. Later, I put them in three more yards and left sticky boards to monitor the drop. It started to rain so I haven't been able to get back into the yards to see if anything is happening. I have other yards that had lots of mites in the fall that are testing very low now. All these yards got was a shot of oxalic acid and a prayer in the fall. Logic tells me they should have a lot of mites but I can't find them.

Our numbers are going to be down so we kept 50 packages this year. They are in places where I have good access. We went back to the package yards and gave them a shot of oxalic before they had any capped brood. I hope we knocked off some of the mites they brought with them.

I hope everyone has a productive spring.

Submitted by Phil Ebert