| A Note from Walt:
Winter is a chill time
for our honeybees as they anxiously await the turning
of the seasons, and the beekeepers may well bee chillin’,
having done their best readying their bees for this
season. It is also a time for reflection of the past
season and preparation of the year to come.
The season of 2009 was
as interesting as a maiden roller coaster ride with
its ups and downs. The season began with a rising honey
flow that then fell to rainy weather, only to rise again
with the arrival of fall.
By stimulating our colonies
very early in the spring, our bees were ready when the
first honey flow presented itself. The populations were
xtremely strong, and we were adding honey supers to
the hives in a rather aggressive manner. The bees responded
by filling the supers with honey, and we kept adding
supers or “supering up” as need bee.
The hives grew into ‘towers’
as our super supplies dwindled, and we were left scrambling
for more honey supers. We were anticipating a record-breaking
year, and with hives that were bubbling over with bees,
we needed to stay focused on spring management. Our
preferred method of swarm prevention employs passive
‘splitting’ of the hives. This practice increases our
hive numbers, and consequently requires additional brood
supers. We purchase our woodenware from Isaac Zook at
Forest Hill Woodworking. The following conversation
portrays how this Amish woodworker beecame my stock
broker as we ascended. “Well, not so much need for the
honey supers that we ordered last week, but instead
double the brood supers that we talked about.”
Life was good thru May,
but then came June, as it always does. However, June
’09 was far wetter than any recent recollection. With
massive populations and minimal flight time, ‘the girls
got into mischief.’ Well, they needed food, and their
solution was to move up into the honey supers of ‘surplus’
honey. The honey supers beecame the nursery, and we
spent most of June making corrections, by reintroducing
the queen down to the brood supers, and inserting queen
xcluders beelow the honey supers for production. Queen
xcluders beecame necessary far earlier than expected
during this tumultuous season, but the roller coaster
ride continued.
July and August in Chester
County is normally a time of nectar dearth; however,
sufficient rainfall extended the honey flow. We were
very fortunate to harvest an average yield of seventy-five
pounds per hive during a wetter than normal season.
This is substantially lower than the yields we have
grown accustomed to. Such is farming.
We did xtremely well with
bee pollen production, and plans are underway for increasing
the number of colonies in our pollen yards. Our marketing
of fresh bee pollen has extended coast to coast, and
has been endorsed by bee pollen enthusiasts nationwide.
We anxiously await to
see what twenty ten has in store for our beeloved honeybee.
The Swarmbuster.
Send
emails to: swarmbuster@ccis.net
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