Topic: Honey Production/Building Strong Hives

Honey Production

See Feeding bees    Feeding

Building Strong Hives

The job of getting ready for the next season begins just after the honey crop is removed from the previous season.  It has been typical for large numbers of bee hives to die out over winter since the mites became a problem in the mid 1980's.   

Today's beekeeper must treat bees with the various miticides or other treatments to help the bees combat the mortality that occurs when bees are not treated.  This is done following the removal of honey supers in the fall and again as soon as the bees are examined in the spring.

Fall preparation includes:

• Replace poor queens or requeen most hives (Queens are less expensive in the fall and young vigorous queens in the spring will add to the strength and early build up of the hive.)
• Treat for mites, etc. and check for disease.
• Place entrance reducers on hives to prevent drafts from wind as well as keeping mice out.
• Slope bottom boards so water can run out of a hive rather than into the hive.
• Provide wind protection.
• Feed early in the fall if necessary with liquid syrup or later with dry sugar around the inner cover hole.
• In cold areas, wrap hives.  Hive wrap can be purchased and is called colony quilt or it is made from treated corrugated paper or plastic.  They provide a hive with just that little bit of extra protection that may be needed during a very cold winter.

End of Winter

I like to use this term because queens are laying eggs by this time.   The hive may already have considerable brood or none at all.   Because it is winter doesn't mean that winter like conditions exist all the time.  On warm days the bees will be flying and the beekeeper should be in the yards checking for various things:

• Damage to hives  (Fallen branches, trees, etc).
• Lack of activity in a hive when others show activity
• Wax particles at the entrance/bottom board  (Mice at work in the hive)
• Clogged entrance   (Clean bottom board of dead bees)
• Check hive weight -- lift corner of hive to see if it has any weight.  If light, feed dry sugar immediately.

Beginning of Spring

This is the time that your real work begins.  You may have been able to identify dead hives during the winter visits.  It is important to replace these lost production units.  Yes, I called them production units!  Without strong hives or any hives, you are not going to make a honey crop.  The bees are the producer of that crop!

Most commercial beekeeper can not tell you how many life hives they have until after the early spring inspection.  It is important to know what has to be done!  After a few years experience the commercial beekeeper know just about how many new queens he/she needs to order each fall.  These queens must be on hand early in the spring.  Usually this is March or April.

I am going to use an example but this example can be multiplied times the number of bee yards a beekeeper operates.

Lets assume we have a bee yard with forty hive in it.  These are established as ten four-unit pallets.   As we begin our inspection, we find ten dead hives, two that are next to dead, five really weak hives, 12 hives very strong and the rest doing okay but not real strong.

What do we need?

• We need to build up seventeen hives to the strength of the others.   This is not half but just about half of the bee hives in the yard.

How are we going to do it?

• We are going to need at least 17 new queens for this operation.  There is a reason the 7 hives with queens are weak -- a hive is no better than its queen.   The queens do not have to be available all at once.
• We are going to make up the new hives from the 12 strong hives in the yard.  There is a possibility the other okay hives can help several weeks down the road.
• First, You could split the 12 hives into 24 units.  That would replace the 10 dead hives.  But would it give you 24 hives equal to the 11 hives that you have considered okay but not as strong as these 12..
• Or, you could do the following:       

1)  Lets start with the five hives that are very weak and the two hives that are almost dead.  Find the queens in these hives and kill them.  Our goal is to have these hives equal to all the other hives in the yard.  (You will need 8 queens for this phase of the operation.)

2) Your goal is to have seven frames of brood and enough bees in each hive when you give it a new queen.  You will need to assess how many bees are in each of these seven hives and how much brood.  Once you have assess the number of bees and brood, you will need to find bees and brood in the 12 strong hives to add to these units. "I am assuming that these 12 hives have brood both in the top and bottom brood chamber" and large populations of bees..

Example:   The two weakest hives have only two frames of bees and just a very small area of brood.  

• Reduce each  hive to a single brood box. and add a feeder.
• Remove six frames without brood and bees from these hives. 
• Remove three frames of bees and brood from four of the strongest hives and replace these frames with frames from the weaker hives.
• Add these frames of bees and brood to each of the two hives.  This should leave you with eight frames of bees and some brood.  The frames of brood must be clustered together so that the bees can keep the existing brood warm.  Remember that some of the bees on these frames will return to their home hive so you need to get a good number of young bees on these frames.  The younger bees will be found on frames with young larva in them.
• Introduce the new queens in her cage to each of these two hives.
• And feed these bees (in fact all hives will need feed).

Example:  The five weak hives.  "Lets assume they have three or four frames of bees and brood"

• You will need to repeat the process above -- kill the old queens, pull empty comb from the hive, reduce them to a single deep brood chamber, and feed.
• Now with the extra empty frames pulled, you will need to go to the other strong hives and pull no more than three frames of bees and brood from each to put into these hives to equal seven frames of bees and brood.  Lets assume this will take brood and bees from five more of the very strong hives.

Now what have we done?

• We have made up the seven weak hives into units with brood, feed, and a new queen.  It will take some time for these hives to develop into productive units but you can expect this to be very short compared to starting a package in the same hive!  Why?
  • First, you have brood which will continue to emerge to build the population of these hives.
  • The hives population will continue to grow during the time it takes the new queens eggs to develop and emerge as adult bees.  In a package, many of the bees that came with the package will have died during the development of the new brood, thus the population actually decreases in the hive built up with a package.
  • The strong hives that have contributed brood should still be strong.  By feeding these strong hives, they should built back very quickly.  You have also reduced the population, added new comb space to open up the brood chamber, and reduced the chance of swarming in them!
• We should have 3 hives still available to take brood from.

 

The remaining three strong hives

• Take one of the dead hives, reduce it to a single brood chamber.  Remove all the frames from this brood chamber and add a feeder.
• Now take brood from the three remaining strong hives -- hopefully you will have at least seven frames to put into this last hive.  Introduce the queen as before and feed all hives with syrup.

You have now 31 hives in this yard built up into fairly good shape.  You still have nine hives  to build up into production hives before the honey season begins.  You have reduced your swarming problem and building these nine hives will be easier than you thought possible.

How?

You now have 31 hives with good queens, you are stimulating them with feed, and you have reduced your swarming problems.

A good queen will lay 2000 eggs a day.  2000 x 10 = 20,000 new bees to the population.  A package of bees will usually have 3.500 bees per pound more or less. Already your 31 hives  31 x 20,000 will be providing you with great possibilities for a honey crop.  And that is only 10 days of stimulated brood rearing.

You need to solve your swarming problem!  Queens producing this number of new bees will quickly provide populations of bees which if not managed will swarm.

Managing these 31 hives

In 10 days you will need to remove frames of brood from the brood chambers of some of the very strong hives and add a brood chamber to the hives you just built up.  Feeding should continue.

 You will need -- more new queens.

Method

Prepare the nine hives that died out much in the same way you did with the newly made up hives.  Pull frames from them, add a feeder, and get ready to move frames from the strongest hives into the newly prepared single brood chamber hives.   I always believe it is better to build up hives with at least seven frames of brood and a new queen rather than dividing a strong hive into two units and forcing them to build up at a slower rate.  The strong hives need to remain strong.

Lets assume that the 12 strong hives have generated new brood into the three frames you placed into them when you made up the hives 10 days earlier.   You should be able to pull two frames of brood from each of these plus a frame from the other hives that should now be stronger than they were 10 days before.  If any of them show signs of lagging behind, you will need to find the queen in that hive, kill her and replace her.  The quicker you find poor queens and replace them, the stronger your hives will be when the honey flow arrives.

Build as many new hives as possible by pulling brood from the stronger hives.  Be sure that each of these newly built hives have at least 7 frames of bees and brood.  Add a new queen and feed.

Lets assume that when you enter the yard in the 10 days that have passed, you find that all your queens in the newly created hives have took (this is not always the case), the 12 strong hives have filled the new comb with brood, and the average hives that no brood was removed from have really taken off with the feeding.  These hives will now add to the number of frames available to build up the other nine hives into production units.

If all the conditions are ideal, you will have 12 strong hives + 11 hives that have now kicked into brood production.  From these 23 hives you should be able to pull 35 frames of brood and bees.  This should allow you to build 5 more new hives.   Can you see where we are going with this!  You can continue to build hives in all of your yards in this manner.  If your hives are stronger than described, you can add more than 7 frames per new hive.  In another 10 days the entire process can be repeated.  Now, you should have the opportunity to add brood to the hives which failed to build as expected.  In a 30 day period, all of your dead hives should now be replaced and the second hive brood unit added.  If you had 30 bee yards, you can see that your time and labor will be really stretched to get this job done.

Don't mess with weak hives.  Replace their queens -- add new ones -- add brood and give them plenty of food. In this one month of intensive expansion, you will have returned to the normal number of production hive units and each unit will be prepared to gather a honey crop.  The bottom line -- What is the average production of honey per hive.   It takes just as much time to move, manage, super, and inspect a weak hive as it does a strong hive.  Only  strong hives will bring in a honey crop to pay for the expenses of running your operation.   The weak hives are just dead wood.

Honey Production