Vice-president's Message: Wintering Bees
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
By Wayne Vitale, LIBC Vice-president
I feel that preparation for wintering bees should begin in June with an assessment of hives for brood, stores and mites.
Winters on Long Island typically last from November to March and we want to strengthen bees so they produce more bees in order to keep the hives strong through winter and into spring.
I’d like to focus our attention on Varroa.
Varroa mites are in every hive (except if you have hives in Australia). The mites spread from hive to hive by bees robbing other hives, bees leaving a hive due to a collapse, swarming, drifting, and even bee keepers themselves.
We must keep our bees healthy now before the winter is upon us or we’ll have a mess in March. I like to start my Integrated Pest Management, IPM in mid August when Varroa spikes.
There are several ways to check for mites: Ether roll, powder sugar roll, sticky board or a visual inspection. Be aware that 80% of mites are under capped cells.
A mite in one drone cell will produce 27 mites in 30 days. A mite in one worker cell will produce 8 mites in 30 days. You can understand how a Varroa population can increase quickly without the beekeeper knowing so.
What to do to slow or even stop Varroa infestation:
Roughly 10 to 15% of the colony is comprised of drone cells. You should supply about three deep or four medium frames in a two deep or three medium super colonies.
You can manage the drone population by putting drone comb in your colony and trapping the mites. Then remove the frames in twenty one days before the drones emerge while still keeping the mites in the cells. Afterwards you can freeze the frames and place them back on the hive after twenty-four hours, or without freezing the frames place the frames in a drone bank. A drone bank is where drone cells hatch out in a separate hive with a caged queen and a steady supply of young worker bees. The drone bank has two purposes, to remove mites from another hive and to keep drones in the apiary to mate with new queens. The drone frame method is a great way to safely remove drones from the hive. You can also uncap the drone cells and allow the pupae and mites to fall into a bucket and then place the frames back on the hive while in the bee yard, saving the amount of equipment and time.
Remember this is an ongoing process and you must replace the drone frames while removing frames.
There are several IPM techniques to treat Varroa and a mid-to-late summer split off a large colony to produce queens to requeen your hives is a great way to break the brood cycle to stop mites from reproducing. At the same time you can dust your hives with powdered sugar and allow the mites to lose grip and drop onto a sticky board to rid the hives of mites.
This is great method of jump starting your hive into winter with a young laying queen and low Varroa count which will greatly benefit your hive coming into spring.
I feel that preparation for wintering bees should begin in June with an assessment of hives for brood, stores and mites.
Winters on Long Island typically last from November to March and we want to strengthen bees so they produce more bees in order to keep the hives strong through winter and into spring.
I’d like to focus our attention on Varroa.
Varroa mites are in every hive (except if you have hives in Australia). The mites spread from hive to hive by bees robbing other hives, bees leaving a hive due to a collapse, swarming, drifting, and even bee keepers themselves.
We must keep our bees healthy now before the winter is upon us or we’ll have a mess in March. I like to start my Integrated Pest Management, IPM in mid August when Varroa spikes.
There are several ways to check for mites: Ether roll, powder sugar roll, sticky board or a visual inspection. Be aware that 80% of mites are under capped cells.
A mite in one drone cell will produce 27 mites in 30 days. A mite in one worker cell will produce 8 mites in 30 days. You can understand how a Varroa population can increase quickly without the beekeeper knowing so.
What to do to slow or even stop Varroa infestation:
Roughly 10 to 15% of the colony is comprised of drone cells. You should supply about three deep or four medium frames in a two deep or three medium super colonies.
You can manage the drone population by putting drone comb in your colony and trapping the mites. Then remove the frames in twenty one days before the drones emerge while still keeping the mites in the cells. Afterwards you can freeze the frames and place them back on the hive after twenty-four hours, or without freezing the frames place the frames in a drone bank. A drone bank is where drone cells hatch out in a separate hive with a caged queen and a steady supply of young worker bees. The drone bank has two purposes, to remove mites from another hive and to keep drones in the apiary to mate with new queens. The drone frame method is a great way to safely remove drones from the hive. You can also uncap the drone cells and allow the pupae and mites to fall into a bucket and then place the frames back on the hive while in the bee yard, saving the amount of equipment and time.
Remember this is an ongoing process and you must replace the drone frames while removing frames.
There are several IPM techniques to treat Varroa and a mid-to-late summer split off a large colony to produce queens to requeen your hives is a great way to break the brood cycle to stop mites from reproducing. At the same time you can dust your hives with powdered sugar and allow the mites to lose grip and drop onto a sticky board to rid the hives of mites.
This is great method of jump starting your hive into winter with a young laying queen and low Varroa count which will greatly benefit your hive coming into spring.
