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Year around management includes:       

Winter survival	Spring management
Summer management	Fall management

This is a long lesson and includes many topics.   The links below can help you reach some of these topics without reading them all or scrolling down to find what you want.   

A new beekeeper will have started in the spring of the year.  However, at the end of the bee season (the time that the queen reducers her egg laying and nectar is in short supply) much needs to be done to prepare the bees for winter survival.    It is only natural that we begin our study of beekeeping management in the fall of the year.  For it is what we do during this time of year that our success  in beekeeping begins.   Many beekeepers feel that the season is over once the honey harvest is made; however, as far as I am concerned, it is only beginning.

We are going to start our management program with winter survival because next year beekeeping depends so much on what we do with our bees getting them ready for winter.

Beekeeper who keep bees in those areas with a long deep winter will be unable to check bees during those long frigid days.   Beekeepers in those milder climates will be able to visit the bees often during the winter season and take corrective measures immediately if the hive is in need of help.   They can check for egg laying in the brood nest and provide necessary feeding as needed.    The major problems for beekeepers in the milder climates are starvation and dwindling bee populations. 

Starvation 

Dwindling populations

There are many causes for dwindling populations.  A summer bee may live only 40 days.  A bee born in the late summer and fall can be expected to live into the spring until the population again is buoyed by the new bees from eggs the queen has laid during late winter and early spring.  However, some bees die much before their time for a variety of reasons  which include: nosema, mites, bacterial diseases etc.    When this begins to happen, the number of bees in a cluster become less.  Fewer bees place a stress on the remaining bees to maintain cluster temperatures during very cold weather.  When checking a hive that has had dwindling populations, the beekeeper may see only enough bees in the hive to cover the space between two frames -- probably not more than a quart of bees at most.  This hive will most likely die.  At this point it is too late to do much for the bees.  An old beekeeping adage was "take your losses in the fall and make increases in the spring."   However, taking this quart of bees and adding it to another hive may lead to greater problems such as introduce the problem from a poor hive into the population of a very good hive.   Feeding an antibiotic may help.  Look for staining on the top bars.  These frames should not be placed into another hive because they could be carry nosema spores which will infect the new hive in which they are placed.  Stained frames can be cleaned up.  Scrap all the staining off the frames and wash with clorox.

Winter survival begins with fall management.

Fall Management:

When does fall management begin?   My answer to you is when you have removed the surplus honey crop or should have removed the surplus honey crop after all nectar plants producing the honey crop has finished blooming.   It also corresponds with the first frost date in your area.     In Ohio, we look at Labor Day as the date to start taking off honey and getting our bees ready for winter but this date will vary in other areas of the U.S.   Many beekeepers remove their honey well before this date.  It is an individual decision based upon what the bees have done.

Fall management consist of the following task:

• A good examination of each hive for: 
  • A good laying queen - -  The queen will still have brood present in the brood chamber.   Check to make sure this brood is not spotty.  If you have several hives, a comparison of queens should give you an idea of which is doing a better job.   Many beekeepers requeen in the fall of the year during this examination.  If the queen is poor, now is the time to replace her.   Finding the queen at this time of the year is more difficult than in the spring of the year because the hive should have a large population of bees and the more bees make it more difficult to find the queen.  If you can not locate the queen in a strong hive, we suggest you place a queen excluder between the two hive bodies and wait for another four or five days.  The queen will be in the brood box with the eggs.  This reduces the number of frames you will need to check to find the queen.
  • Disease  --  Treat for diseases you can not see.    Nosema is one of the disease not treated and most likely causes the largest loss of colonies in the U.S.   You can feed Fumilid-B with sugar water at this time of year and gain great benefits from it.   The use of Terramycin in the fall will help.  Note that I did not say use it for American foulbrood but it is of value for a hive under stress.  Use grease patties for Tracheal mites or other treatment.
  • Diseases  -- Diseases you can see.   If your bees have Varroa mites, use the approved strips as soon as possible.  Varroa mites weaken bees and  kill their host (the bee) in time.  Many viral diseases are associated with varroa mites, so the use of antibiotics is also recommended.   If you discover American foulbrood, your choice is limited.  As a new beekeeper this can be devastating.   It is much easier to kill the bees and burn all frames to get rid of the disease.  They honey could be salvaged for human consumption.  It should never -- never -- be used to feed bees!  The hive body, bottom board, inner cover and top cover should be scrapped clean of any wax or propolis and then it can be treated with a good clorox wash.   Many beekeepers go beyond this and scorch the wood with a burning torch to further kill any AFB spores.  You can begin again as you did before with a new package of bees and new frames.  AFB can be very costly.
  • Check the hive for any critters such as mice.   Now is the time to clean the bottom board and install a mouse guard.
  • Make sure the hive supports - cinder blocks or what ever you are using are still level and supporting the bottom board.    The hive should have a gentle slope to the front to allow the water to drain out.   Make sure water does not run back into the hive from the landing board.
  • Check to make sure the bees have enough winter stores.  This should be about 60 to 90 pounds of honey.  How do you check?  One simple method is to lift the hive with the rear hand hold on the bottom brood chamber.  If it is light, comes right up, the bees do not have enough food.  You will need to begin now to feed sugar syrup.  You man chose any of the methods discussed under Spring management with one exception:  Sugar should be mixed with water in a much heavier concentration than in the spring.  We recommend 1 part water to 1 part sugar based on weight.  The bees will be able to store this better because they do not have to remove so much water from the solution to store it.
  • Provide the hive with some protection from the wind.   This could consist of nothing more than sitting a bale of straw next to the hive on the side facing the prevailing wind (SW).   Hives can be  protected by a wind break fence, buildings,  woods or shrubs near by.    You could wrap the hive in black tarpaper as well. 
  • Check the hive bee population.  You will need several gallons of bees to provide for a good winter cluster.   Remember that many of the summer bees will die before cold weather really sets in.   If a hive is weak -  has a quart or so of bees - the beekeeper with two hives (one strong and one weak) can combine the two into one very strong hive.  In the spring of the year, the strong surviving hive can be split back into two hives.   Remember the old adage: take your loses in the fall, make your increases in the spring.   
  • Much of the expense of beekeeping is the cost of bee equipment not the bees.   Bees are easy to replace.  If the hive has lost its bees during the summer months, wax moths will surely have taken over.   If you find wax moth damage, now is the time to clean everything up so the equipment can be reused in the spring.   Wax moths are not much of a problem in the North when the temperatures turn cold, but in the warmer regions of the U.S., the wax moth can cause considerable damage to comb and frames in a dead hive of bees or stored equipment.  If wax moths get a head start on you, it is because you did not check your bees and equipment frequently enough.  If you live in an area where the temperatures often reach the 60° degree range, you should be on the look out for the moth of the wax moth.  If you see them, you should treat any stored equipment.   Wax moths can do a lot of damage in very warm temperatures and they like the dark.  
  • Remember -- All the work you do now will help your spring beekeeping management because you should have a hive of bees to work with in the spring of the year.

Special topics under Late Fall and Winter Management

• If you discover in January that you have a hive that is queenless, you will need to replace the queen immediately.  Mainland queen breeders often do not have queens to sell in January or February.  This is understandable because the climate in almost all regions of the United States go through a winter cycle in which drones are killed and driven out of the hive.  If there are no drones, you can not get fertilized queens.  One area of the United States can import queen bees into the mainland in January and February.    Hawaii has a temperature conductive to beekeeping the year around.  Sources as of the 2003 Bee magazines for queens this early in the year include:  www.hawaiihoneybees.com and  www.hawaiianqueen.com.  Florida queen producers can provide queens in Late February and early March.  Most other southern and western producers can provide queens in April (the traditional month for requeening) and later.  Check the bee journals for ads.
• Feeding during winter must be done if the bees are on the verge of starvation.   Dry sugar placed around the hole in the inner cover is a method used by many beekeepers.  Sugar or corn syrup can be used in division board or top feeders during the winter as long as the bees can break cluster to get to it.    Be sure to use a heavy syrup mixture.  Place any feed used in the winter close to the cluster of bees.  On warm days the bees will take feed from the feeder and place it around the brood nest where it is available for them to use.
• Snow insulates the hive.  Upper entrances to hives are something to consider if you live in an area with heavy snowfall.  One will see on the ground around a bee hive even with snow on the ground, dead bees and what looks like spots of tobacco juice was spit out in front of the hive.  This is a healthy sign and not something to get upset about.  When daily temperatures rise usually from sun hitting the hive and heating up the interior a bit, a few bees or many bees may take cleansing flights.
• Are the bees alive?        During the dead of winter, it is hard to tell if the bees in a hive are dead or alive.  Several things can be done to find out.  1) Wait until the temperatures rise to 40 to 50° open the hive -- look and listen -- for bee activity.  2)  Look on the snow for dead bees and the tobacco juice spots that I have described earlier.  3) Heat rises within a hive and often the covering of snow  in the center of the top cover will be melted indicating heat from within the hive. 4) Make a light tapping on the front of the hive and listen for the gentle hum the disturbed bee will make.   Some beekeepers have turned to stethoscopes to listen for signs of life.   All of this really doesn't tell you the condition of the bees in the hive -- just that if you see them or hear them, you have live bees.   The real test will come with early spring management.
• Build any equipment you desire for the next bee season.  Don't put this off until the equipment is needed.  Usually, you are busy with something else, and good bee management is not putting off what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

Early Spring Management

For the experience and second year beekeeper, looking into a hive of bees with live bees in the spring is a rewarding sight.    Twenty  years ago, one would expect to find the bees alive if all fall management was provided the bees.  Now, losses are so common that a beekeeper feels mighty lucky to be able to bring his/her bees through the winter.   The earlier you find that your hive has died out the better because one of the things you must do to keep bees is order any replacement bees early.   This winter of 2002-2003 has been a hard winter compared to last winter.   Bee losses are running much higher.  Package producers are seeing the demand for package bees increase dramatically from last year.  Already, the month of January has given beekeepers the opportunity to check hives to see how many bee hives have died.   Experienced  beekeepers  place orders early for packages.  If one waits too long, package bees may be available later in the spring or not at all.   If this should happen, the beekeeper is faced with the prospect of protecting the already drawn comb from the destruction of varmints and wax moth.  Drawn comb is worth a great deal and allows the bees a chance to do some real work of gathering nectar etc.  rather than building large amounts of comb.      A new package of bees can be placed on drawn comb and the beekeeper can expect the package to do almost as well as an over wintered colony in honey production if the honey/nectar flow comes in about 8 to 10 weeks after the package is installed.  A two pound package will do extremely well and many commercial beekeepers buy nothing but two pound packages of bees to restart dead-outs.

Task for Spring Management

• Assess losses of bees and damage to equipment.   Be prepared to replace any bees that died, and replace any frames destroyed by mice etc.
• Check for eggs, larva, and brood.   A large number of eggs, larva, and brood is an indication that the queen is doing a good job.   If you have any doubts about the job a queen is doing, you should replace her.  Generally, a poor queen will not get better.   However, before you make a quick decision, be sure you check for disease that could have or be a cause of the problem.  Order replacement queens early!
• Review material that shows diseases and what they look like.  Check the hive and bees for any sign of disease or pest.  American foulbrood shows up rather early in the spring in the new brood.  Look for signs of dead larvae and sunken cappings.   Be prepared to isolate this hive if AFB is discovered and protect other bees from robbing the spore ridden honey this hive may have.    Set about to destroy the bees and frames of comb.    You are better off doing this than trying to treat with Terramycin.  Many states require the destruction of   AFB hives and some allow the use of the chemical Terramycin.  You should know that once you begin treatment for AFB, you must continue that treatment and any equipment sold that came into contact with the hive with AFB will need to be treated differently than equipment from clean hives.   In our opinion, the hobby beekeeper is far better off by killing the bees, destroying the frames of comb, and cleaning up the wood or plastic hive parts that still remain usable.   This is one bad disease!  It is spread easily.  Often the beekeeper is responsible for it's spread.  Some strains of AFB are developing resistance to the chemical Terramycin thus making the disease harder to control with medication.
• Clean up around the hives.  During winter, debris  falls from trees and clutters the bee yard.   If the grass took over around the bee hives the previous year, now is the time to develop a plan to prevent it this year.  Many beekeepers use various types of covering around their hives.  Old carpet works well as does black plastic.   Other beekeepers spray weed killer around the bee yard to kill weeds and  maintains  the bee yard.  It is important to have a comfortable working space around each hive.
• If you neglected your bees in the fall of the year, you will be faced with much more work in the spring.  Dead hive bodies need to be picked up and cleaned.   Feeding is important in the spring of year.  Many bees make it through the winter only to die of starvation in the spring.  Check on honey stores.  Make sure the bees have food available and if not, feed them.

Management details

          It is important to have young vigorous queen bees.   The queen is the heart of the hive.  While all the other bees in the hive are temporary (live such short lives) the queen can live five years or more.  As she gets older, she looses some of the egg laying capacity she had as a young queen.   Any old queens should be replaced.  How old do you ask?  This is a difficult question.   I would think that a queen two years old should be replaced. 

  Beekeepers can keep track through good record keeping when queens are introduced to hives.    Just because a queen has never been replaced doesn't mean the queen is old.  The hive may have a new queen from supercedure or the hive may have swarmed the previous year and now has a queen that is less than a year old.  One way to know the age of your queen or whether you have a new queen in a hive is to mark the queens you introduce with a color representing the year of birth.    The color scale is as follows with the number representing the year ending in:

Marking colors

• 0  or  5        Blue
• 1 and 6       White
• 2 and 7       Yellow
• 3 and 8        Red
• 4 and 9       Green

A good queen produces a lot of bees and a lot of bee produce a large honey crop.  It is said that a beekeeper with only 10 hives can produce a ton of honey.   This can only be accomplished with outstanding queens and good plant forage for the worker bees.  Poorer queens produce far less eggs thus fewer bees and fewer bees means fewer bees available to forage for nectar.     The difference in the amount of honey gathered will pay dividends to the beekeeper with very good queens.    Good queens do not cost a lot,  poor queens are the most expensive because the beekeeper often puts far more energy into keeping a weak hive than a strong one.

So spring management begins with identifying the quality of your queen or queens if you have more than one hive.    Your success begins with the decision to keep or replace the queen in the colony.    If you make this decision on cost alone, then you harvest the results of your decision.   This is what goes into beekeeping style -- making decisions.     You are sure to receive advice from a number of beekeepers and you may make decision based on what they tell you but after a few years, you will decide that advice is free and decisions are priceless.

Swarm control

This is a topic we can discuss in spring management.    Swarms can occur at any time during the bee season.   However, the first swarm will likely happen sometime early in the spring just as leaves are beginning to appear on trees.    Note the swarm to the left.  There are no leaves on trees in this picture.  Some pine needles is all that can be seen.  This means the beekeeper must know the condition of his/her hives early enough to head off swarming of the hive or use the swarming impulse in the management of his/her hives as discussed below in making increases.  Later in the year, bees may hang on the front of the hive in large numbers.  It could be because the bees are overheated, you just used a fume board to harvest honey, or they are crowded and most likely will swarm.  You will need to know what is going on if you want to manage your hive of bees.   Left unmanaged and they will do what bees do!

I maintain that it is almost impossible to stop swarming.  Bee intent on swarming usually do.  A beekeeper can keep it at a minimum, however. 

Methods:

•   Many bee books recommend clipping a queens wings so she can not fly away with a swarm.  Our experience is the queen drops to the ground and is lost to the swarm of bees.  The swarm returns to the hive -- some of the bees will gather on the ground with the queen.   Once the virgin queens emerge from their cells, one of these virgin queens will take off with the swarm following behind.   Some swarms have been found to have a dozen or more virgin queen in them.
• Cutting queen cells?  What if you miss one?  We have found it very hard to check for all queen cells.   It is labor intensive and not all that productive.
• Trapping a queen in a queen/drone trap  --  Again these traps are a waste of money.   Young virgin queens will still get through the wire that a larger queen can not and again off goes the bees with the swarm impulse.
• Opening up a brood chamber by selecting capped brood frames and replacing them with comb which  has already been drawn out or with new foundation.  The capped brood frames are usually moved to a honey super above a queen excluder for the person not wanting to make increases and they can be used to make increases as described below.   This is the only effective method that I have used.

Increasing number of hives

• Increasing the number of hives is an on going process.  Each year, new hives must be started to replace hives that die out.   A beekeeper should always have more than one hive.    Some beekeeper say a person should have at least three hives.    Should one hive die out, the beekeeper can always make increases from the hive/hives that survive.   We are going to discuss the methods used to increase the number of hive.
  • Replace with package bees or nuc's
    • This is the same process the new beekeeper usually starts with.  Purchase packages early and have equipment ready when the packages arrive.  The beekeeper starts the new year with a new queen and new bees with the prospect of getting a honey crop.   Some beekeepers (commercial) kill all the bees in the fall of the year, harvest all the honey, and buy packages to put back into their hive equipment in the spring.   The 60 to 90 pounds of honey the bees would have used over winter is sold and a profit made between the cost of the honey and the price to replace the bees.  Additional savings include: not have to pay labor to check hives in the winter or make splits in the spring, not having to medicate hives, and knowing exactly how many packages of bees they need and no fear of winter loss.
  • Buying bees
    • Some beekeepers purchase more bees to increase their numbers.  This is possible because bee hives are always for sale by someone.   The bee journals are filled with ads with bees for sale.    The larger the number of hives, the better the price for each individual hive.  After Almonds are pollinated in California, a number of migratory beekeepers will sell double hives of bees for as little as $50.00 a hive in large quantities.  Beekeepers die and their bees become available -- sold by children or widow  who doesn't want to take care of bees.   These can often be had at a good price.   Bee equipment is also sold in the same way.   To be aware of these offers, one would be wise to join local bee clubs and state organizations to hear of them.  Auctions of bee equipment are becoming more popular ways  to dispose of bees and equipment for beekeepers getting out of the business.  The number of commercial beekeepers is declining year by year. 
  • Making splits
    • For the hobby beekeeper
      • If one has a strong hive of bees, it can be divided into two parts and a new queen added to the part without a queen.   This is done in the spring of the year.  Too often new beekeepers try to make splits too late in the season and thus weaken both new hives so that neither on survives the winter.  Making a split is rather easy.  The beekeeper will need a bottom board, hive body and frames, inner cover and top cover for the new hive.  The process is to move 1/2 of the brood, plenty of bees  and the queen into the new hive, provide enough honey stores for the new hive to survive, and feed both new hives.  The hive on the original stand is left in place and a new queen is introduced to the now queenless bees.  Many of the bees taken with the other new hive will return to this hive so if it starts out being a little weaker than the new hive made up with the old queen, don't be alarmed because many of the bees with the old queen will return to the old location. 
      • Another method involves separating a hive into two hives - one on the other.   This method requires a queen excluder and a deep hive body with 9 or 10 frames.   The beekeeper can pull frames of brood from the bottom box,  replace them with new comb, shake all the bees off the frames onto the landing board in front of the hive and place these frames of brood above the queen excluder.   Wonders of wonders happens.  No need to look for the queen.  She will go back into the bottom super without any brood and begin laying.   Many of the younger worker bees will move up into the super with the brood and care for it.   Once you have determined that the queen in the hive body below is laying well, the upper box can be moved and sit on a new bottom board in a new location.   The beekeeper will only need to introduce a new queen to this new hive of bees.   several  advantage of this method is the amount of work required to find the queen is no longer required  and the likely-hood that the brood will not be chilled is prevented with all the bees remaining in the old hive stand until the actual split is made.    If you use the first  method, bees will stay with the old queen but in some cases not enough to cover the brood and thus, when the temperatures fall, not enough bees are present to keep the brood warm and chilled brood -- brood that get cold will die.
    • For the commercial beekeeper
      • Commercial beekeepers make splits in many different way.
        • Some may move colonies of bees to the warmer regions of the U.S. after the northern honey crop is harvested.   These colonies build up rapidly  and the beekeeper makes up splits, adds new queens or queen cells and gets the bees ready for the trip to pollination or honey crop in the north.   Often the commercial beekeeper will not take all his/her hives South.  These hives are harvested for all their honey and the bees either gassed or allowed to starve out.  Some of these beekeepers offer the bees in their Northern hives to other beekeepers for a small fee -- Bees only, no equipment.    They figure that for each hive taken South, they can return with two or three new hives (singles).   These hives are given additional brood chambers after they are moved and the new yearly cycle begins all over again. Many commercial beekeepers will have bees in the states of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas during the winter and begin to move them in many cases to California for Almond pollination in January or some will wait until April to move bees into Wisconsin and the Dakotas.   Others, are commercial pollinators and will move hives of bees North as the season progress and the demand for pollination services arrive.
        • Some will winter over in the north and the commercial beekeeper will  figure on making up about 20% loss with new splits and equalizing all colonies of bees.  A loss of up to 50% of all the bees the commercial beekeeper has can be made up as long as the beekeeper is not doing spring pollination.   In many cases, all the queens are replaced in all the hives.   An equalized hive is one in which frames of brood and honey have been either added or taken away to make all colonies in the bee yard equal.   An equalized  hive of bees with only three frames of brood, plenty of bees and a new queen will produce  100 or more pounds of honey by years end.   This is the goal of the beekeeper.  Additional income is produced by putting these bees on later crops such as pickles and pumpkins for pollination at a price of $45.00 to $50.00 per hive.

Making a split

One of the method to make a split discussed here is for the beekeeper who has one or two hives of bees.   We are going to suggest that the method used can be adjusted to fit the beekeepers need.  Splits should be made up of only strong healthy hives!  We will also show the beekeeper with 5 or more hives how increases can be made rapidly.

Key points:

• To increase the number of hives you own, you will need to build or purchase equipment the new bees are going to occupy. 
• You will need to order the queens you will need early -- At least by early February.
• If you are going to make up splits to replace dead-out, you will need to clean up the dead-out hive and hive parts before the splits need to be made up.

One or two hive method

We rather like the system of making increases on the original hive.    It is very easy to do and requires less management skill.   You should have made sure the hive is healthy and strong enough to split.    This is a two step operation.  The first step is to evaluate the number of brood frames that are in the hive.  Our assumption is that you are working with a two deep brood chamber.

• First Step  (Time the split to when your new queen is to arrive--  start the process below three or four days  before her scheduled arrival date)

Remove the top cover and inner cover and smoke the hive lightly.   The top cover should be laid on the ground behind the hive with the rim side up.   Remove the 1st outside frame.  Check it for honey  stores.  It most likely will have a good amount of honey but no brood.   Set this frame aside.  Select the second frame.  Check it in the same manner and set it aside if no brood is on the frame.  As you work toward the center of the brood nest you will begin to find frames with brood.  Each succeeding frame in the brood nest will have a greater amount of brood on each frame.   If you should by chance see the queen, remove the frame she is on and set it at the front entrance of the hive.   This frame will be placed in the bottom box when you are ready to put combs into it.  Do not remove other frames of brood from this box but slide the frames into the vacant area that was occupied by the frames removed from the hive.    As you reach the other frames toward the outside of the box the brood should again end and you will have only frames with honey and pollen.   Remove these frames as you did the first two or so.

Now remove this top super with brood frames and place it on the rim of the top cover to avoid crushing any bees.  We will begin the bottom brood box in the same manner as we did the upper box.  We will start with the first frame nearest to us and remove it.  Examine it for honey and brood.   This frame can be set aside.   Remove the next frame and check for brood.  As soon as you come to frames with brood, remove them and place them in the box on the hive cover.   Once all the brood has been removed from the bottom hive box, replace all frames you have removed with the frames you set aside but place the frame with the queen if you were lucky enough to find her in the center of this bottom chamber.  

 If at  this point we do not know exactly where the queen is you will need to pull each frame of brood from the upper brood box, check each one and then carefully shake all the bees on the frame off so they land  in front of the landing board of the hive.  These bees will begin to make their way back into the hive.  Follow this up with the next frame and the next.  If you should then find the queen in this box, you can carefully lift her from the frame and set her gently down on a top bar of a frame in the bottom box.  She will disappear quickly down into the box.

We next must put a queen excluder over the bottom hive.  It will keep the queen in the bottom brood box where we want her.  We then set the brood box with the many frames of brood we could find above the queen excluder.  If there are not many bees on the brood, don't worry.  They will quickly pass through the queen excluder and again cover the brood and continue feeding larva and keeping the brood warm.   The old queen will begin laying eggs in the brood chamber below and many bees will stay there to care for her and the new brood she produces.

Replace the inner cover and the top cover.  Get a cup of coffee and relax.   Be sure you have your new queen or have ordered one.  Step one is done!

• Second Step  ( You must have your queen available to put into the new hive)

Prepare the new location for your new hive.   Set up blocks --solid and level-- on which  to put the bottom board.  Place the bottom board on these blocks and make sure the bottom board slopes a little to the front for any rain water to drain out of the hive.   Your job is to next go to the hive from which you have moved most of the brood up into the second hive chamber.  Check the frames again for any evidence of eggs.  Remember that honey bee eggs hatch in three day.  If four days have gone by and you find eggs in this brood chamber,  a queen is present and you must find her before going on.   If the job was completed in step one and the queen was in the bottom box, we can proceed with making the split.   Sometimes the bees will begin new queen cells on the face of the comb in the upper chamber and still have a queen below.   If you find any evidence of queen cells in this upper body, check the brood chamber below just to make sure you can find some eggs.   You can do several things if you find queen cells -- cut them all down.  Cut them down means to destroy the cells you find.   You could move one frame that has the most cells on it down into the lower brood chamber.   There the bees will cut down the queen cells because they are queen-right.  But it does provide some insurance that a queen cells is still available for a short time if you should need one.

If you cut all the queen cells and then find no eggs in the bottom hive body, the queen may have been killed during the manipulation of the hive during step one.  If so, you can order a new queen for it -- shipped immediately -- or you can let the bees raise a new queen from the queen cells you pulled from the upper hive body.   If a queen cell is capped over, a new queen will be emerging within another eight days.

So, you have checked everything and found that the queen is laying a nice pattern under the queen excluder, the bees in the upper super are taking care of all the brood and have no queen cells, your bottom board is in place and your new queen is ready for introduction.    Pick up this second hive body and carry it to the bottom board and place it gently down.   This hive will have a number of young bees but a few of the older bees will return to the original hive location.  Don't worry about this.

You will now introduce the new queen to the new split hive.  Queens arrive in generally three types of queen cages (plastic, wood with three holes and wood with only one hole).    Remove anything blocking the access hole to expose the queen candy  to the queen such as a cork or paper or cup.    The bees will eat the candy from the tube or hole in the cage to release the new queen.   We do not like to recommend speeding up this job by poking a hole in the candy. You will find some reference to removing  worker bees in the queen cage but we have successfully introduced many queens without removing any worker bees and the bees in the new hive accepted the new queen readily.   Place the queen cage where you find the bees.   If you place her in the front entrance on the bottom board, she may die from exposure to cold or the bees may just ignore her and continue trying to build queen cells from older larvae.   Placement is important.    All queen cells present must be cut or the bees will surely kill the new queen in preference to their own.

Place the new inner cover and top cover on your new hive.  You now have two colonies of bees from one.     Check both hives in several day to make sure everything seems to be okay.     The new hive will require that you check the queen cage to make sure the new queen has been release.   If she has, good.   If she hasn't, open up the cage by removing the sugar candy from the tube or poking a large enough hole in the block of sugar in the three hole cage for the queen to get out.  Be careful in this operation, not to injure the queen by poking her as well as the candy.

Close the hive and wait another week before going back.   In that weeks time you should see that both queens have been  busy at work laying eggs.   The reason we go back is to verify that everything is going according to plan.  If not, then corrections can be made before it is too late to save one of the hives.   Usually this failure would be with the queen and replacing a queen in the hive is just a matter of ordering another queen and going thru the steps above. Hopefully, you will not have to do that, but I tell beekeepers all the time that when it does happen, you will learn more about beekeeping from the mistakes and failures than you will with anything else.  This entire process if done for the first time is a learning experience.   The new beekeeper uses experience such as this to grow and develop beekeeping savvy.

Growing Hives

This is a very interesting subject.  How do beekeepers who have 30, 40, 50 or more hives get them?

• The Miller plan for increase.

Getting started is the hard part.  Keeping what you have is the hardest part.   Yet, if you have 10 colonies of bees it becomes much easier to increase the number of hives one has.     Dr. C. C. Miller in his great book Fifty years among the bees describes making increases.  He says, " You cannot make something out of nothing, and if increase is to be made you may as well devote a certain number of colonies to that business."  You can not in other words, make increases from honey production hives and still expect a good honey crop.  It is not the number of hives one owns but the number of productive honey hives one owns that really counts.  Weak hives do not gather a good honey crop.   Put another way, a person could start 10 hives from one hive.  But the 11 hives created would be very weak hives and most likely never survive the winter season for lack of bees and honey resources.  In Miller's beekeeping methods, we find a way to make increases without disrupting the management of bees for a profitable honey crop.  Miller talks about setting hives aside for just making increases.  In this he was able to increase 9 colonies in 1899 to 56 and the bees built  up their own foundation.   The nine hives were considered weak and it was not until June 12 that he was able to make any increases from them.   During the time between early spring and June all effort was made to make the surviving hives strong as possible.    The story of his increases is very interesting and worth the cost of what you might pay for this book alone.   Briefly, he used  two hives with his best queen to make the increases.

This was done by taking the strongest hive and placing it in another location where a hive was located and that hive was moved to a new location.   On the old stand he placed a hive body with new foundation.  He moved no brood or bees except the queen from the strong colony into this hive.  He now has two hives of bees on these two stands.  One has the old queen and new foundation and the field force.  The moved hive has no queen but has the field force of the second hive that was moved.  This second hive that was moved will loose its field force but will recover and recuperate in short time.

   No new queens were purchased.  The hive with the best queen was now queenless.  The bees naturally built queen cells and these new queens would be the daughters of the best queen in the yard.   His plan was to visit the yard every 9 days and the following practices were put into place.   He says," that these two hive were now the principal actors throughout the season.  The other colonies in the apiary merely serving a feeders from which to draw brood from time to time."    He added four frames of brood to the hive with the old queen in an upper brood box.  As he indicated, it would not be long for the bees and queen to move up into this upper chamber.

The box without the queen was now queenless and the bees set out to build a number of queen cells as stated above.  At the end of the 9 days, Miller took the brood with queen cells and formed two nuclei.   He then took the upper story from the hive with the good queen and all the brood and placed this on the hive from which he had just taken the queen cells and brood.  He then removed the laying queen from this box and returned her to the original hive and again added frames of brood.   The entire process was repeated over an over until by fall, he had increased the original 9 to the 56.   All new hives had mated queens raised from the original best queen.   As he indicated, none of the assisting colonies were overdrawn and they got stronger.    This is a good plan.

• The A.J. Cook plan for increase

This plan is excellent as well.  Cook's plan allowed for the increase of hives when needed and wanted, saved time, and reduced swarming.    His plan was to create a new hive from six  other hives.  By taking one frame of brood and bees from each of six  hives he was not reducing the bee population by much and by replacing the removed comb with a new frame-- he provided more growing space for the hive that just gave up one comb of bees and brood.  These 6 frames of bees and  brood that was all capped  were placed into a hive body with a new queen.  In this fashion, one can build a new colony every day or so, if enough hives are available.   This is a good swarm management technique.

The beekeeper can revisit colonies to pull frames just about every week.  Each hive is giving up just one frame of brood on each visit.    The number of colonies that can be built up this way is staggering.  It uses fertile mated queens rather than developing  queens from queen cells as in the Miller method. Cook found that this method allowed the increase hives to build up very quickly and he counted on each them to produce a honey crop.   Just imagine what you could do with 12 colonies of  strong bees at the start of the bee season.    12 become 14 almost immediately.   In one week 14 become 16 and in two weeks the 14 become 18.  Once 18 hive are established, three new hives can be created each week until one has 24 hives and then four new hives can be established each week.  In the meantime, the hive that already exist are strong and have good young queens.  They will have large working forces to gather a nectar/honey crop.

Knowing when to quit is the important thing.  Beekeepers will usually build up the number of hives they own until they can no longer manage them properly or the wife gives the beekeeper a choice: the bees or me!

You can adapt any of these methods to your beekeeping style.  The key to success is to grow your hives slowly so no individual hive is harmed by your beekeeping practices.  What good are 100 hives of bees that produce no honey or are unable to produce enough honey for their own survival.  It could be very expensive to feed them.

Preparing for the honey/nectar flow

The beekeeper should begin to add supers when a hive of bees is strong enough to go up into the supers to work.   Some beekeepers use a method such as "putting on supers when the dandelion begins to bloom".   If that works for you, by all means adopt that as a sign post to put supers on your hives.   This is swarm season for honey bees and you need to provide plenty of room for the nectar/honey they gather and produce.   We highly recommend a weekly check on hives of bees during this period of time.   If the honey supers are being work (bees are up in them and honey is being stored), it is time to add another super.

 

Summer Management

   The goal of spring management was to get the bees to this point in  very strong (large populations of worker bees) condition.  The goal of summer management is to maintain the strength of colonies.   Strong hives gather surplus honey.  Weak hive do well just to store enough for their own use during winter.

It gets harder and harder to examine a colony at this time of year for several reasons:

• If you are adding honey supers, you will need to take them off the hive to examine the brood chamber for diseases and queen condition.   As the season progress, the bees begin to fill these honey supers and lifting heavy honey supers adds to the difficulty.
• We advise a good examination of the bee brood nest at least once during the summer.   American foulbrood is often discovered when the beekeeper is taking off honey.  It should have been detected much earlier than that.  For the beekeeper, it means the difference in having a number of contaminated honey supers or none at all. We the level of mite population varying from hive to hive, it is important to know what this population is so decision can be made such as take honey supers off the hive in order to use chemical treatment.   Is saving the hive more important than getting a honey crop?
• The beekeeper must work with large populations of honey bees.  The hive population should be at or near its peak.

A good strong hive of bees will reward the beekeeper with well over 100 pounds of honey per hive per year providing the bees are in a honey producing area.  Some areas are so lush in nectar plants that hives of honey bees have been known to produce well over 400 pounds of honey in a single year.

Generally speaking, the beekeeper will remove his/her honey crop in late summer.   Some beekeepers will wait until cold weather sets in to harvest  honey but it is best to harvest honey while honey will still flow well from the wax comb when extracted.   Cold honey is hard to get out of comb under any condition.    Some honeys granulate (become solid sugar) and it is necessary to extract the honey before that occurs.   After it occurs, granulated honey in the comb is very hard to process and is best used for bee feed. 

 Task during summer management include:

• Keeping the bee yard clear of weeds
• Checking for swarming conditions
• Adding supers for a honey crop
• Looking for signs of pest and disease  (No chemicals should be placed in any bee hive gathering a honey crop!)
• Removal of ripe honey

	Cutting weeds around bee hives makes working them so much easier.   Tidy beeyards also say something about the pride the beekeeper takes in his/her bees.   This is a constant job during the summer season.   This picture shows three hive with a total of 10 honey supers.   They may require more before the season is over.
	If you see queen cells in your hives like this, the bees are preparing to swarm in a few days.  Often the swarm is accompanied by the old queen in the hive.  If she is prevented from doing so, then one of the young virgin queens will leave with the swarm.   The most likely cause of  swarming is the crowded condition of the brood chamber.  Some bees are more inclined to swarm than other bees.
	Once skunks discover a hive of bees, they will visit night after night.   A hive being attacked night after night by skunks will become very aggressive at any movement around the hive.       Summer management includes watching for signs of their visit.   Check hive entrances for such things as chalk mummies laying on the landing board (bee drag these out of comb and try to clean debris out of the hive), any activity which is not considered normal (robbing for instance),  and the number of bees flying to and from the hive entrance.  Are the bees carrying pollen?   Are they hanging out the entrance?  Do they seem to be unnecessary aggressive?  These are signs you will add to your bag of tricks in handling bees.
	Hive equipment should be built by now and ready to put on the hives.  This is usually a fall/winter project but some beekeepers wait until they just have to build a super to put on a hive of bees.  Always have plenty of honey supers for your hive of bees.  Many hives of bees can fill three, four, and five of these supers.  Often during a really intense honey flow, the bees will fill a shallow super in two days -- it is remarkable how much honey a strong hive of bees can store away in such a short time.
	Honey is ready to remove from a hive of bees when 2/3 of the cells are capped over.  It is better to wait until 100 % are capped if it is early in the season.  Later in the season when the bees have slowed down because nectar sources have dried up/quit blooming, it is okay to remove a super of honey which is only 2/3 capped over.   The problem with uncapped honey is the fact that it contains much moisture and this  uncapped honey quickly ferment and can spoil a batch of honey.  There are process for drying honey with a high moisture content but most hobbiest would best leave the uncapped honey on the hive for winter stores.

Late Summer and Fall management 

The first task to discuss is removing the honey crop.  Hopefully, the bees reached a very strong population peak and the weather cooperated with the bees.  Bees gather good amounts of nectar/honey during dry, hot days.  They do little on rainy days.  Depending on the source of the nectar, the honey harvested will reflect that source.   It will seldom be all clover, or all what-ever-plant you think it came from.  You could call it wildflower honey and be very accurate in the label.  Under the topic Honey and Pollen, we went into some detail about pollen varieties in honey.  That is the way to determine the source of a particular honey.

As a general rule, spring honey is lighter than late summer honey.   The color of honey will vary considerably from almost water white (Black Locust honey) to almost black (Buckwheat honey).   The demand for light honey is much higher than for dark honey and thus the price paid for light honey is usually higher than that paid for dark honey.

Hobby beekeepers often produce so much honey that it becomes a major problem of how to get rid of it.  A friend of mine with 12 hives of bees sells his own honey.  But in certain years, he produces far more than he can sell from his home.  In this case, he takes the excess honey in five gallon buckets to a near-by honey processor.  This past year he earned over$600.00 for this excess honey.   He sells well over 1500 pounds of honey each year from his home.  Other beekeepers sit up stands at farmer markets to sell what honey they have and others just give it away as gifts to family and friends.  

Removing the crop

Getting bees out of a super of honey is not as easy as it would seem.   The beekeeper can not expect to take the honey super off and move it to the garage and expect all the bees to leave and go back to their hive.   What happens in a case like that is other bees discover the tasty treat you are offering them and visit to get what they can from your honey crop.  This is called robbing.  Once started, you will have a swarm of bees in your garage.   This is not good!  You could put the garage door down but the trapped bee will fly toward any window and continue flying about the garage looking for a way out.  Others will be trying just as hard to find a way in and this situation will last for quite a while until the bees outside decide the honey treat is no longer available.  

The proper handling of honey supers is critical for you to enjoy beekeeping.   First; however, I would like to get to the subject of taking or stealing the honey from the bees.    I really don't think of it as stealing!   The bees are working for me and the honey I remove from the hive is payment back to me for the effort I have put into hive equipment, time, and other expenses.    Some very naive people think that because the bees do all the work of gathering up the nectar, I should give it to them for nothing!  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Beekeepers work hard for the little they receive from honey sales.

A beekeeper removes honey from a hive of bees  during the warmest part of the day.   There are several methods to go about this:

• Bees can be brushed off the frames and the frames then taken to a place where they will be secure from other bees.   Some beekeepers build special frame carrying boxes to move frames from the hive to the house.  Others, like myself, carry the entire box to the place where extraction will take place.  Brushing bees is not the best way to get the bees off the comb and out of the honey super.  Brushing stirs up the bees and the bees can get nasty.
• Bees can be driven out of honey supers with what are called "fume boards."  A fume board can be made at home easily.  A rim of wood that fits the top rim of the hive exactly is needed.  On this rim, the beekeeper can place a heavy material such as burlap  and then nail either a sheet of tin or plywood painted black cut to fit onto the rim and in the process, fastening the material in place.     Once the fume board is made, the beekeeper will sprinkle a little "Bee Go" or "Honey Robber" on the cloth and place the fume board on the top super.   Just a few drops are needed.  (It works fine in warm weather, not very well when it is cold)   Bees react to the Butyric acid by leaving the supers for better air below and if left on too long, this stuff will drive bees right out the front entrance.   Bees subjected to a fume board are for the most part docile.   They just want to get away from the stuff.  You need to wear gloves when handling it and keep it away from children.  Acid boards/cloths are easy to use.  If you get the stuff on your clothing, people will try to avoid you as well.
• Bees can be removed from a honey super by using a blower.  Special blowers are made just for bees but a beekeeper with a leave blower can use it with just a few changes.  If using a leaf blower, the blower extension needs to be removed.    The nozzle is then held up to a honey super which has been removed from a hive.  The super can be set on the ground and the bees blown back toward their hive.  Bees that have been subjected to this treatment are surprising docile.   Many bees blown from a honey super will gather on the ground and crawl slowly back to their hive.   Other become air borne and fly back to the hive.   Often not all bees are removed from a super and the beekeeper will have to tolerate that or finish the job by brushing the remaining bees off the face of the comb before taking the honey super to the extracting room.

Comments:

Be sure to check with your family before beginning the process of removing bees from honey supers.   Bees may be agitated and attack anyone -- neighbors included.   It is best to remove honey when neighbor and others are not going to be in their yards.

Taking a honey super into the living quarters of you home may not be a good idea as well because there will always be hitchhikers that will ride along on the face of the comb on in the honey super box.   These bees will then fly toward light to escape.  They sometimes leave droppings (bee do-do) and this may cause your spouse to reconsider letting you use the kitchen.  Honey  leaks from cells that are broken apart in removing supers from the hive.  Tracking honey in on the floor is a problem you had better be aware of.    If your spouse is extremely sensitive to messes, take your extracting operation some place where you can operate without causing a fuss.   For the beekeeper who does not want to extract the honey immediately, there is a way to handle honey supers in small numbers that will take care of most of the problems discussed above.     Honey supers can be placed in plastic bags (garbage size -- leaf bag size).  Bees that remain in the bag will die if the bag is exposed to sunlight to heat up the interior of the bag.  Warning, do not leave the bag with the honey super  in the sun for a very long period or you may have melted wax and honey.   Second, other honey bees that would be expected to rob the honey in the super can not get to it and  do not become robbing pest.   Another warning -- putting the honey super in a black plastic bag, then placing that bag in the basement could cause problems unless the honey is extracted shortly afterwards.   Two problems have been encountered by beekeepers putting honey in basements.  1)  In a warm dark atmosphere wax moths flourish.  You may be left with a sticky gooey mess.    2)  In a moist basement, the honey will absorb moisture.  Moisture above 18.6% will cause the honey to ferment.  Fermented honey is sour to the taste and no one will want to eat it.  Your only recourse is to feed it back to the bees.

• The extracting process.

Extractors are usually a major investment in bee equipment after the hive and bees.  The removal of  honey from the honey comb cells requires centrifugal force.  A honey extractor can be built at home from a large garbage can.   Some of the bee magazines have articles from time to time on plans for a home made extractor.   For several hundred dollars you can purchase a new extractor (hand operated) that will handle two or three frames at a time.  This is adequate for a person with less than 10 hives or you may be lucky enough to  have an energetic  young person around that likes to spin frames loaded with honey.  Extractors (Used) come up for sale often on the various auction sites such as Ebay.  The problem -- shipping is very expensive for such a large item.

The person who plans to manage between 10 and 50 hives would do well to purchase a 20 or 32 frame extractor.  These motor operated extractors  may be a bit expensive for you but a good extractor will more than pay for itself over time and has a good resale value.  They are always in demand at bee meetings and once the word get out an extractor is available, it is sold in quick order.

Also need to extract honey is an uncapping knife (electric).  A tank or container for the cappings to drop into is required as well.  Again, if you only have several hives this container can be a five gallon container -- food grade.   On the other hand, the beekeeper with 50 hives of bees will need a container with a much larger capacity to handle the cappings that will be produced.    Honey cappings make some of the finest wax available.   Do not throw it away.   The capping can be left to drip for a period of time and then pressed to remove as much honey as possible.   The cappings (wax) left are then heated to above 150 °.   As the wax melts it will form at the top of the container and can be recovered as a nice bright yellow block of wax when cooled.

Our advice is to select several bee supply catalogs and check out the equipment available that will fit your needs.   Spending just a little more for an extractor with a larger  capacity than you need is in my opinion a wise choice.   Many beekeepers end up with an extractor too small for their operation.   They then need to make another investment to get a larger extractor.

The comments here are not intended for the person wanting to become a commercial honey producer.  A single extractor for that person may run more than $5,000.00 and several would be needed as well as honey pumps, storage tanks (large tanks holding 500 or more gallons of honey), automatic uncappers, wax spinners, and so much more!

We are going to share a few photos of a small commercial operation.    These were taken at the White Star  Honey Farms.  They own over 2,000 colonies of bees, have four trucks, two skid loaders, and a multitude of buildings and equipment.

   

   These pictures give you just a little idea of the work commercial beekeepers are involved  in:   moving of hives to pollination, the storage of full honey supers , the extracting machinery, and how dry and fine the wax cappings are when they are spun dry.  If you are considering beekeeping as a career, visit a commercial beekeeper before jumping into this profession.  As Billy Engle once told me, "Many people get into beekeeping but it is like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute.  They think everything is okay until they look down and see an anvil tied to their ankle."  In order to make $20,000 dollars a year with 2000 hives of bees, a beekeeper needs to make at least $10.00 per hive after all after expenses.  Expenses for an operation like White Star includes such things as labor, (one full time person and three part time people); insurance for trucks, equipment, and buildings, license fees, usually a tanker load of corn syrup a year, repair cost, new equipment and replacement equipment, road usage fees and gasoline, and a multitude of other expenses that must be taken care of.   Mr. Grant who owns this operation thinks that when the final figures are in for the bee year, he makes just as much money as a cab driver.  However, he is his own boss.

The process:

• Be prepared:
  • Select area where extracting is to be done.
  • Have all equipment ready
    • Honey uncapping knife or scraper
    • A firm support for supporting the frame while uncapping
    • Extractor
    • Cappings catcher/melter
    • wash mop
    • container to put honey in for storage
    • Jars for bottling up the honey

Uncapping

Capped frames of honey are removed from the honey super.  Because conditions and equipment will vary from beekeeper to beekeeper, we are going to keep this very simple.    The frame with honey is set on the support over the cappings catcher (this could be a five gallon bucket or larger).   Anything that will come into contact with the honey must be absolutely clean and disinfected.  All equipment should be stainless steel or plastic.  Galvanized metal was often put together and soldered with lead to join the parts together.   The lead is not good for humans and can be detected in the honey in small amounts. 

This is a clear plastic uncapping tub which sells for a little over $80.00.  It is large enough for the person with several hives of bees. Something like this is available from all equipment suppliers of bee equipment.   You can build your own uncapping container for very little.  You will need a container (clean) large enough to hold several gallons of wax and honey.  Many stores handle large plastic buckets or waste containers which could be converted to your use.  It is possible to purchase a gate and install it in the container without much trouble.  You will need a support for the frame to rest on over the container.    It can be a very clean 1" x 2" board or larger.  

It helps to drive a large nail in the center of the board to serve as a pivot for rotating the frame.  The frame can be easily swiveled from one side to the other side in the uncapping process.  This board is placed over the cappings catcher as shown in the picture to the left and is best fastened in some way to the cappings catcher.  With a hot uncapping knife, the beekeeper will shave the cappings covering the honey from the honey comb.  Normally, the knife can be used as in this picture.  The blade of the knife is supported by the top bar and the bottom bar and all wax cappings extending beyond either is easily removed with either an upward or downward motion.  Using 8 or 9 frames in your honey supers will aid in the uncapping of frames because the bees will extend the depth of the cells beyond the plane of the top and bottom bar. 

The knife is held at a slight angle from the face of the comb as shown.  As cappings roll from the surface of the comb, they drop downward into the cappings tank/catcher.   A large amount of honey will fall with the wax cappings.  Exposed honey will drip from the frame.  In a small extracting set up, it is best as shown to have the extractor next to the uncapping operation.  The uncapped frames can then be moved directly to the extractor.   Some dripping honey is bound to occur as the frame is moved from the uncapping bar to the extractor.   Place paper or plastic on the floor to aid in the later clean-up.

Separating honey from wax cappings

It is very difficult to remove all the honey from wax cappings.  Many commercial beekeepers use wax spinners or melting tanks to remove most of the honey.   For the hobbiest, several things can be done.  One is to let the honey drain from the wax cappings.   Remember that cold honey will not drain and thus the wax cappings will need to be kept in a warm place.   After the cappings have drained for several days, they can be melted down.   This should be done outside -- wax is very flammable and has resulted in many fires.    The wax is added to water and heated to 160 °.     Once the cappings are melted (wax will float to the top of the water), the container can be removed from the heat source.  Allow the container to cool over night.  The next day, the wax will be a solid mass.  The bottom of the wax cake will contain a dark material of debris made up of a number of things such as cocoons from cells, pollen, propolis, and other materials that will float just below the wax as it cools.   This material contains some wax.   It is called Slumgum and it must be removed before the wax   can be used in  any wax project.   It can be saved for later melting operations (generally produces darker wax) or if in small amounts can be thrown out.  The remaining water can be dumped.   

The page below is from Beekeeping in the Midwest by Elbert R. Jaycox.  It is circular 1125 published by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  This book is often seen for sale on Ebay along with its sister publication Beekeeping in Illinois.      Both books are filled with plans for building your own beekeeping equipment.

The second method would be to use a solar wax melter.  This is nothing more than a box, a plastic container to hold wax and honey covered with a glass lid.   If you have small quantities of  wax cappings, you can place the cappings in the plastic container, set it in the box to hold the heat from the sun, place the glass top on the box, and place it in the sun for several hours.   The heat created in the box is called the greenhouse effect (just like your car sitting in a parking lot on a hot summer day with the windows up).   The honey will separate from the wax and when allowed to cool, the wax will form a hard cake.  The honey can then be drained off.

 

Extracting

Extractors vary considerably.   A common hobby extractor takes from 2 to 4 frames at a time and often require the beekeeper to remove the frames several times in the process of getting honey out of the comb.  In such an extractor (usually the less expensive ones), the beekeeper places the frames into fixed holders (called baskets)  within the extractor.  The extractor is spun until the honey in the comb on one side of the frame is mostly extracted and then the comb is removed  from the extractor and turned, it is then placed back into the holding basket and the other side of honey is removed.  This is a slow and time consuming process but if the beekeeper has only several hives and no more than 10 to 20 honey supers to extract, it will do the job.   These extractors are operated with a hand crank to turn the reel inside the extractor holding the baskets.  

The beekeeper can also find something called a two, three,  or four frame reversible extractor.  It again is found often and sold by the Walter T. Kelley Co, Inc. and others.    This is an extractor with hinged baskets.  It eliminates the need to remove the frames and turn them.  The frames are placed into the baskets of this type of extractor and spun as above.  However, once one side of the comb is empty of its honey load the baskets are moved (reversed) and the other side is spun out.   These extractor are usually powered by hand crank but can be motorized.

The third kind of extractor the hobbiest will encounter could be the radial extractor.  This extractor has a reel in which frames are placed.  The top bar is placed close to the outside housing of the extractor and the bottom bar is close to the shaft the reel rides on.    Depending on the size of this type of extractor, nine to 100 combs can be extracted at one time.  It is more expensive than the types described above but does the job of extracting  in one complete operation (no reversing of comb is required).   Because of their size these extractors are motorized but Kelly's offers a 9 frame size with a hand crank for less than $500.00.-   If you are going to manage more than 20 hives of bees, we highly recommend a radial extractor for your extracting needs.

The Honey

Extracted honey straight from the extractor will contain various things other than honey.   Thus the need to strain the honey from bee parts, wax particles, and other debris that may come off the frame. One can purchase a strainer such as shown or use a filter cloth of  various materials such as: nylon, fine screen wire (plastic coated), cheese cloth, or other porous material that will not contaminate the honey and yet allow the honey to pass through while the wax etc. is collected and not allowed to pass.  Once the honey has been filtered (strained), it should be allowed to sit in the storage container for several days to allow bubbles etc. to rise to the top of the container.   These can be skimmed off the honey and fed back to the bees.    We would recommend that the beekeeper purchase a simple bottling bucket to fill jars from.  The bucket is equipped with a scissor gate which allows honey to flow from the bucket into the jar being filled without mess and fuss.  The gate allows honey flow to be cut off cleanly.   Dipping honey from the storage container is messy but many beekeepers do it that way.   But after a few over filled jars and the mess, you will decide that a good cut off gate is well worth the cost. 

Gift packs for your honey

Many beekeepers give honey to friends and family.   To dress up you product (honey) will make a better impression than just a jar of honey.  So often we see honey being sold at road side stands in nothing more than a quart canning jar.  Honey should be appreciated. To the left is a gift package produced by Stoller Honey Farms.  It is a commercial product but you could do something like this.   If you are handy with woodworking tools a neat container may help the presentation of your honey. 

 

A simple crate designed to fit the size of jars you are using would be nice or you might use a single block of wood and select several small jars that will fit into holes drilled into the wood.  Labels dress up the product and these can be made on your computer using any number of programs or you can purchase commercial labels.  We have covered the jars on the left with shrink wrap to prevent the jars from falling out of the container.   Dressed up with labels and a brand burned into the wood would create an ideal gift for anyone.  Mann Lake at www.mannlakeltd.com offers a fine selection of custom labels as well as a number of interesting jar shapes in various sizes.

  Another approach is to have a honey tasting party.  Select several varieties of honey you have taken from your hives.   This can be early season honey, mid season honey, and late honey.   You might also find a beekeeper who would be willing to join your efforts and you could then select a greater variety.   Nice jars well presented on a turntable with wood honey dippers make an inviting treat.

Selling honey

If you are going to sell honey, do it right.  The public can be turned off with dirty honey, dirty jars, and sloppy appearances.  All honey should be sold in clear jars to show off the rich golden clear color of honey.   All jars should have labels that identify the honey, the amount of honey by weight, and the producers (that's you) name and address. Make people want to buy honey!  Presentation is the key to success as you can see in the packaging of a product and the display table used by the beekeeper.   Honey has a reputation. Don't do anything to spoil what others have been doing to promote the wholesomeness of honey

This is John Jessels honey stand.  You can click on this picture to make it larger and we suggest that you do that.   Selling excess honey is profitable.    The difference in price between wholesale and retail is considerable.    As a hobby beekeeper, it may pay to bottle your own honey and sell it as John does -- from the back of his car.  He is mobile and can set up where ever a group of people can be found.   Factory parking lots at shift change, local flea markets or farmer markets, and even sporting events.  Be sure to get permission before setting up.    The wholesale price of honey varies from time to time.  For the summer of 2002, the price of wholesale honey skyrocketed to well over $1.40 per pound for almost any honey.   Honey prices are not stable and depending on the world market and honey crops produced in Canada, Argentina, and China find their way to the countries paying high prices for honey.  Thus, the summer of 2002, is unusual  in honey prices.   How far honey prices drop on the wholesale level should not affect the hobby beekeeper sell his/her own honey.    Don't give your honey away!  The production of one bottle of honey involves much work and investment.    Equipment to extract honey can be paid for with honey sales.   Your labor is worth something.  Bottles and labels are worth something.  The honey is worth something!   Charge a fair price for all that you put into this product.   After all, you are selling something that  most people can not buy at the grocery store.    Your honey product is local honey --- produced locally.   Your honey product is not commercially filtered, heated honey.    Your honey product is raw natural honey with all the rich ingredients that have not been removed by heat or pressure filtration.   Your honey is a perfect food.   It is as natural a food as the public can buy. 

The full cycle  -- Fall Management

Well here we are back to just about the point we started this discussion.    The honey crop has been harvested, the queen is reducing the number of eggs she lays each and every day, the nights are getting longer and colder, and the first frost is not far away.

It is now time to spend some time in the beeyard taking care of the business of getting ready for winter.   

Task to be completed before winter:

• All hives will need a final inspection for disease, evaluation of the queen, honey stores needed for winter, and evaluation of over all bee populations.
  • Each of these items calls for some judgment on the part of the beekeeper.   
  • Keeping a note book for  observations will be quite helpful when reviewing your records next spring.
• Beekeeping task include:
  • Checking all hive equipment for holes, cracks, etc.    These can be sealed and it may not be too late to add a coat of paint to the hive.
  • Check the supports for the bottom board -- see that the bottom board is level and slightly sloping so water can drain from the back of the bottom board out the front entrance.
  • Insert an entrance reducer to provide some additional protection to the bees from weather and mice.
  • Feed the bees if any doubt exist about the amount of honey stores on the hive.  They will need at least one deep box full of honey.   Feeding at this time of year also allows you to used medication for nosema disease.
  • Medicate for Varroa mites and Tracheal mites and remove any strips in the hive before winter sets in.  One of the major reasons the strips do not work is that many beekeepers have misused the strips and the result is mites have become resistant to the chemical in the strips.
  • Check for wind breaks -- Bees survive well in a hive in cold weather.  However, it is the moisture and wind that will cause them the most trouble.
  • Provide for good ventilation -- make sure the top vent in the inner cover is not obstructed and the top cover is weighed down or fastened down -- in many case I have seen a good strong hive of bees killed because a strong wind blew the top cover and inner cover off a hive and exposed the bees to rain, snow, and cold.
  • Finally, clean up the bee yard so you do not have much work in the spring to do.  

  Final comments:

  Beekeeping is as challenging today as it ever has been.  Methods to keep bees over 100 years ago have not changed much.  However, our world is getting smaller and time seems to move faster.   Travel between Europe and the United States is now only a matter of hours.   Travel to the far East is now down to one day by air.   Crops grown in the far reaches of the world are imported into the United States and with them come unwanted guest.   I am often asked how the mites, killer bees, small hive beetle got into the U.S.    They were transported into the New World (North and South America) either accidentally or by plan. The movement between continents and regions will continue to present our civilization with pest from other regions of the world.

  We then need to worry about scientific advancement in genetic engineering.   Already beekeepers are beginning to deal with crops that are engineered to kill certain pest.  Where this is going is anyone's guess.   What really counts is that we as beekeepers try our best to keep our bees alive and provide the public with trust and confidence in the products of the bee hive.