The Buzz Newsletter

May 2008

 

 

Page 5

Greetings from the Queen

Hello everyone!  Happy Spring finally!  This past month I attended the SW Iowa Honey Producers meeting.  I got the privilege of meeting the new state apiarist, Andy.  I also crowned the new SW Iowa Honey Queen, Laura Jurchen, my little sister.  I am really looking forward to the field day this summer.  My summer begins at the beginning of May, so remember to contact me for any promotions, presentations, or farmer’s markets you would like me to attend! My number is (712)-779-0540. 

Diane Jurchen
2008 Iowa Honey Queen

Laura Jurchen, Southwest Iowa Honey Queen for 2008 and Diane Jurchen, 2008 Iowa Honey Queen. This photo was taken at the Southwest Iowa Beekeepers Meeting, March 29th, 2008.

 

The Beeyard Report

It’s April 22. I’m well past deadline. I have been waiting for something to report about the bees. The winter with unending snow has turned into a spring with unending rain. There are a few hyacinths poking through the ground but other than that there are very few signs of spring.  There were only a few soft maples in bloom on April 10. The bees have had almost no flying time. Adam saw them bringing in some light yellow pollen on the 5th. Things started to improve during the last ten days He finally started splitting on the 20th. I can’t remember ever having such a late start. I delayed the first queen shipment but we still have about 150 banked as of this writing.

There was capped brood immediately under the top bars on the frames in the top box. Within the last week, the queens have started to lay on the lower part of the frames. I have some nucs booked. I have been hard pressed to find good frames of brood to start them with. There are a few good colonies in most of the yards but it’s hard to accumulate any quantity of brood without a lot of driving. It would have been a good spring to use pollen supplement but it was hard enough just getting to the yards with feed. The lane that goes into one of the yards is washed out.

Adam got the flatbed stuck. He drove through a ditch and got to the top of the hill where one would have expected it to be dry. Much to his disappointment, the truck proceeded to sink. It rained every day for a week after that. Finally, we got a sunny day with a lot of wind. I borrowed a truck from the neighbors and took the loader to pull the truck out. As we were unloading the loader, I noticed a tire on the trailer was going flat. A rock had drilled through the center of the tread. Of course, there was no spare. I had to take the tire to New Sharon to get it fixed. I think I may have to invest in some spare tires. You may recall, we had a similar problem with the truck last summer.

I reflect more on the past than I used to. This is probably a function of age. In high school, my main concern in the spring was how soon the ball diamond was going to dry out. Better weather had to be coming when Harry Caray returned to the air with the Cardinal games. The games always seemed better when I could pick up the scratchy broadcast of the originating station KMOX--billed as The Voice of St Louis. It made the games seem closer at hand. Baseball seemed important in those days. That was before the players became crybaby millionaires.

Package bees are beginning to be quite time consuming. I was glad when it was over. My phone didn’t ring for two days. That was nice. We kept a few packages just to test the product. We like to block them in initially to hold down the drifting. We forgot about the drain holes on the pallets. The bees were running back and forth between the holes trying to figure out which box they belonged in. In the end, we only had one drift away completely. Some of them are uneven but we can fix that later. Once they are established, we can move some brood around.

We aren’t going to see any apple bloom until May. It’s obvious that splitting is going to last past the middle of May. We split into the third week of May last year but our numbers were down. The numbers are better this year but it’s still going to run late. I like to super early. Sometimes we can catch a box full of honey in May. The sequence is going to be different this year.

Submitted by Phil Ebert