May 2023
www.TheBeeSupply.com
THE BEE SUPPLY
Monthly
Cover Photo: Rich Beggs
Featured Articles Resource Colonies Drawing Comb on New Foundation Managing Supers Checkerboarding
Edition 35
Contents
32
Table Of
We welcome your feedback and submissions! editor@thebeesupply.com Beekeeping Questions: help@thebeesupply.com
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6 Monthly Tips 10 Resource Colonies 14 Drawing Comb on New Foundations 18 Expert: Steve Jimenez - Hives for Heroes 19 Club Directory 20 Managing Supers 23 Want to Make Honey Your 1st Year? 24 Should I use a Queen Excluder - How & What Style? 26 Checker boarding Honey Supers 27 Webinar Q&A
May
28 Red Eyed Drones 30 Treating for Varroa During Nectar Flow - Drone Trapping 32 How to Inspect a Hive During Honey Flow 33 Want to Make More Honey Per Frame? 34 Need to Check Your Bees at Night? 36 What's the Buzz? Bees Bugging Concession Stands - What to do? 40 How to Grow Your Bee Yard with Package Bees 44 Recipe: Honey-Orange Ginger Fizz 46 U.S. Drought Map
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2023 BEGINNING BEEKEEPING CLASSES
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By: Blake Shook
May Tips
As the honey flow begins in most states, your hive should be reaching its peak population. Check your hive weekly to ensure they have enough room. In some areas, bees can bring in up to 10 lbs. of nectar per day! If you are adding supers of foundation rather than comb, you may need to feed the bees for a few days, or weeks, to encourage them to begin drawing out foundation. Once they have drawn out a fist-sized piece of comb on 3-4 frames, you can stop feeding, add a queen excluder, and let the bees continue drawing out the foundation naturally. Using a queen excluder is optional. If you do not use one, your queen will move up into your honey supers and lay eggs. In many cases, as the bees fill the box with honey, they will begin forcing the queen back down into the lower brood box. However, you will typically still have a few frames of brood left in the super. This is not a problem but an inconvenience that will be addressed as we pull honey. If you do use a queen excluder, be sure the bees have begun to draw out a fist-sized piece of comb as mentioned in point #2. Bees will not travel through a queen excluder to draw out foundation if they have not already started. If you have started with nucs or packages, continue feeding them until they are ready for their first super, which is when 75% of the frames in the first box have drawn comb and are covered with bees. At that point, add your first super and follow the instructions from point #2. If queens were not available in March or April, splits or requeening can easily be done in May, but do not expect a honey crop. Begin providing ventilation for hives by using a screened bottom board, or slightly cracking the lid. Bees do better in full sun, or very limited shade, so avoid placing your hives in full shade.
Photo Credit: Rich Beggs
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Live in the Bee Yard Tips May Tips New Hive & Splits Care Adding Boxes & Supers When to Stop Feeding Nectar Flow Drawing Comb Queen Excluders
By Chari Elam
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What is a resource colony and why do I need one? A resource colony is almost always a 4 or 5 frame nucleus colony (Nuc). It contains a laying queen and is full of bees of all ages, plus the nectar and pollen to feed brood. It’s no secret that colonies die – on average about 40% each year. Why? Statistically, Varroa mites are the number one cause, but beyond that it’s nutrition and nature (natural and unnatural) i.e., weather, pests, pesticides, etc. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? You have a hive in which (for whatever reason) the queen just died? Purchasing a new queen may mean a shipping cost because you live too far from a supplier, or a trip to the supplier that is an hour away – not to mention the cost of the queen! You need a queen now! What about a hive that just went through a rough patch recovering from a high mite load? It’s now under control, but your population has decreased, brood production was down for a bit – therefore foragers were impacted so your food resources are stressed. It needs bees! Remember that day you walked out to your bee yard and the colony that was fine the last time you checked, just up and left? No note or anything!! You need a whole new colony! That’s why you need resources colonies! Resource colonies give you the ability to instantly “restock” any of these issues right in your own bee yard, and basically for little to no additional cost – because you already have them! Here’s how: Remember that hive you lost because it absconded or died? You caught it before wax moths moved in and made a mess of it, so you have good usable comb and even some salvageable food stores. Now that you have a resource colony you can instantly load the colony into the full-size box already full of drawn comb. Within days this will be a production colony with little to no down time. Need some brood for a weak hive? First and foremost, make sure you have your mites in check in the weak hive, and once that’s taken care of – simply take a frame or two of capped brood from the resource colony and voila! Population boost within days! This prevents you from having to take from your production hives during nectar flow or anytime for that matter! What about the queen? Yep – the last time you went out she was fine…and maybe she was – but oops – she was accidentally damaged in that last inspection and died. Don’t waste any time trying to find a queen – you have one right there! Simply take a resource colony queen and install her into the queenless hive before you end up with more issues than just adding a queen will solve! Building your resource colonies I think I have you convinced that we all need to have resources colonies, but how many do you need? An experienced (kind word for “older”) beekeeper once told me that for every 4 colonies you need at least 1 resource colony…he was not wrong! This is not hard to achieve. You can build these “forever Nucs” out of your own bees and just add queens. It’s nothing more than splits that remain small. Note: These Nucs will need to be built and live in wooden Nuc boxes. The Pro Nuc boxes are great for making splits, but for long term use, wooden boxes are the way to go. How do they stay small? At different times of year, we talk about equalizing bee yards – taking what one hive has in abundance and sharing it with another hive that is lacking. When these “small hives” start to out grow their space (and they will) you will have to share the overabundance with other hives…If you don’t, they’ll just swarm and you’ll get nowhere fast. Therefore, keeping Nucs is great fun for those of us that love to play with bees because there’s always something to do! What happens when I use the queen from a resource hive? Either let them raise a new one from the open brood in the Nuc, requeen it when you are able to get to the supplier, or simply disperse the frames left to other hives in your bees yard that could use them. Managing your resource hives One key component of resource colonies is that the forage population tends to be smaller. The reason being, as they continually grow, we continually have to remove brood – essentially stopping the aging into forager status for the small hive. That’s not to say they won’t have enough to support the hive, but you’ll be the primary food provider, so be prepared to feed syrup and pollen if needed. Keep in mind that these resource hives won’t have frames and frames of stored honey like production colonies because of what I just said about foragers– plus – there’s simply no room for it! Overwintering resource colonies Yes, you can overwinter these nucleus hives. The number one secret to this is pushing them close together in the bee yard and rotate some (now open) brood comb out of each and replace it with some capped honey for them to eat. Between those two management techniques, you should overwinter just fine. You can do this! It takes a bit of practice, but for beekeepers with some experience (not referring to ‘older’ – ha-ha!), you should have no problem at all developing this backstock of bees to keep your production hives producing!
WOODEN NUC BOXES 2 TO CHOOSE FROM TELESCOPIC LID & MIGRATORY LID LASTS FOR YEARS
Resource Colonies How to Always have Back-up Bees!
Italian/Carniolan
BULK WAX
Drawing Comb When All You Have is New Foundation
Having only new foundation can really slow the progress when expanding hives. Regardless of your particular focus – there is a solution!
Drawing comb in new colonies If you’ve just purchased a Nuc, package, new hive of bees, or made a split, chances are several frames in your brood box are new foundation. It will greatly increase the speed at which your new bees can draw out comb if you feed them heavily. Whether it is summer or spring, feeding as much as they will consume until they begin drawing out the two outside frames in the bottom box is ideal. At that point, you can add an additional box. Drawing comb in your second brood box Once your bees have begun drawing out about a fist-sized piece of comb on the two outside frames in your bottom box, it’s time to add another box. Assuming your second box is a brood box, and not a super for honey, simply continue feeding your hive as much syrup as they will drink. This will help them draw out the comb in the new second brood box as quickly as possible, so you can move on to adding a super and making a honey crop. Drawing comb in supers Once the top brood box is 80% drawn out, or 80% full of bees, it’s time to add your honey super. Remember, don’t add your queen excluder yet, since bees won’t get started drawing out foundation through a queen excluder. So, with no queen excluder in place, add your super, and continue feeding. Check back every few days, and once your bees have drawn out a fist-sized piece of comb on 3-4 frames in your super, you can stop feeding, add your queen excluder, and allow the bees to finish drawing the comb and filling it with natural nectar. This will ensure you have honey in your super, not sugar water. If the bees stop drawing out comb when you stop feeding them, start feeding back up for a few days, then stop again. Sometimes it takes some starting and stopping to get them going strong on their own, especially if the honey flow hasn’t quite started yet. Drawing extra comb for next year during early summer months One fun thing to try is using feeding after harvest to encourage your bees to draw out an extra box or two of comb to jumpstart your new hives or splits next year with already drawn comb. After pulling off and harvesting your supers, add a deep box of foundation to your hive, above the brood box(es) and feed 1:1 syrup at a rate of 1-2 gallons per week until the box is drawn and full of syrup. That additional box can be left on over the winter or removed and stored in wax moth crystals. This works far better in early summer than late summer, as the later in the year you go, the more bees resist drawing out comb. Adding extra wax to plastic foundation Another very good way to increase the speed bees will draw comb is to wax the new foundation prior to installing it in your hive. This goes for brood frames as well as frames for honey supers. You'll find bees are much faster to draw out foundation when it has a fresh coat of beeswax on it, either from the manufacturer, or applied by the beekeeper. That being said, the biggest influence on how fast bees draw out foundation is hive strength and an abundance of food. If your foundation gets a light coat of dust on it, the bees are much slower to draw it out. Assuming you purchased foundation which was coated with wax, you can quickly heat the foundation with a hair dryer on max heat to re-melt the wax, which should serve as a decent alternative to recoating the foundation. If the foundation is very old, has been cleaned off with damaged wax, it was never coated by the manufacturer, or you just want the bees to draw the comb out faster – you can coat the foundation with new beeswax. How to melt beeswax and coat frames: You can buy pure beeswax from other beekeepers, reputable online sources, or use your own wax cappings from a previous honey harvest. My favorite way to melt wax is using an old crockpot. They maintain low heat, and can melt small amounts of wax safely. Once the wax is liquid, you can use a small paintbrush, or a small foam paint roller to apply a very thin layer of wax to the old foundation. Be sure not to fill in the cells imprinted into the foundation. Your goal is to simply apply a very thin layer over the entire surface. A general rule of thumb is 1lb per 10 deep frames or 1lb per 15 mediums. Ideally, place the newly coated frames on the hive as soon as possible. If you are not going to place the frames in a hive within a few days, be sure to wrap them up well to avoid getting any dust on the newly waxed foundation.
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FIND A CLUB
Need help finding a bee club near you? Click on the link below to connect with one of the hundreds of great clubs across the nation!
Talk with the Expert Introducing Steve Jimenez Hives for Heroes Founder and CEO
Bee Club Directory
I was super excited to finally get a chance to sit down and have a conversation with longtime friend and beekeeper Steve Jimenez, Hives for Heroes founder and CEO. Steve is quick to say that it takes a team of Mentors to drive the program – and because of them, countless veterans have found the therapeutic ability honey bees provide. Listen as we talk about the program and of course, Steve, and how his journey has impacted so many others…and BEES!
with Chari Elam
Managing Honey Supers
Stay ahead of demand - Order your honey supers and frames today! Free shipping over $99 Delivered to your doorstep within a few days!
By: Chari Elam
Do I Use a Medium or a Deep? 2 factors help determine which super best suits your situation – weight and nectar flow. A full medium super (both sides capped with honey) can weigh between 35-60 lbs. A full deep super (both sides capped with honey) can weigh between 60-90 lbs. Personally, we have a mixture of deep and medium supers. Take it from me, mediums are much easier to manage. Depending on the size of your bee yard, you’ll want to think about how many you’ll be moving, as well as how you will be transporting them and factor that in your decision. You may not realize it, but your specific geographic location can make a big difference in how much nectar will be brought in by your bees, which in turn, determines how heavy your full boxes will be. For instance, bees kept near a Tallow tree grove will likely bring the top end of the weight maximums in honey yields. On the other hand, a pasture in west Texas wouldn’t be expected to come even close! Subdivision bees (backyard beekeepers) can expect somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Area truly does determine the yield. Another aspect affecting your honey yield is “beekeeper experience.” You wouldn’t think this could influence it, but it has a LOT to do with it. For example, if a beekeeper is doing a great job of keeping mites in check, and nutrition consistent, requeening each year and generally staying on top of hive management, that beekeeper can expect the best honey yield possible from their area. On the other hand, the opposite on all points can be true as well. Adding your first super Once your hive is 80% full of bees AND resources, you may add your first honey super. I emphasized and because if there is room to store nectar in the brood boxes, bees typically will fill it before adding to the supers. Tip: Just because your fellow beekeepers are adding supers doesn’t mean your hive is ready – inspect each hive first before adding supers. Queen Excluders In this issue, there's an article on the greatly debated topic "to use queen excluders or not." Although it is your choice, if you choose to use them, learn the proper way to do so. Adding the excluder only once comb has started being drawn on new supers is crucial as mentioned on page 15. It's also very important to verify your queen isn’t in the super above where you will be installing the excluder! Trapping a queen above an excluder could be disastrous! Adding additional supers Once your first honey super is 80% filled with capped OR uncapped honey, add another super as long as it's 2-3 weeks prior to the nectar flow ending. In most regions this is by mid to late June. By this time, most of the nectar flow will have stopped, or slowed to the point no more frames would be filled. Monitoring your supers Nectar flow only lasts about 2 ½ months for most of us. Knowing this can be a bit intimidating and make you feel pressured to gain the most honey yield possible. Be careful not to add additional supers too soon! The downside in doing so is that the bees may begin filling it prior to completing the first one – leaving you with supers not filled out or capped in some instances. Depending on your area and flow, you could easily add additional supers every 2 weeks. Typically, 2 or 3 supers all season is what you can expect for most areas. But don’t beat yourself up if your bees only fill one. That’s still 35-60 lbs. of honey from that hive!! In conclusion It's advised to do a weekly check on your bees as they are in honey- production mode in order to keep up with super expansion. But remember, while there is a nectar flow going, bees won’t be too happy for you to be opening their hive. Do it quickly just to verify things are going smoothly and to monitor the super(s) being filled. IF you find your bees are not filling a super over the course of a couple of weeks or more, evaluate why and act accordingly. It may be that the colony just wasn’t strong enough to produce honey. If you’ve given it ample time and the super is still not being filled, remove it - that added space will do more harm than good. What a fun time of year! Now you can start preparing for extraction time! Getting equipment ready as well as gathering buckets and containers will save the last minute running around gathering of equipment.
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Want to make honey your first year? Here’s how to do it using single brood nest hives!
Need help on deciding what equipment you'll need? Honey Supers Frames Queen Excluders
Let's listen to what James & Chari have to say about Queen Excluders
Should I use a Queen Excluder? How? And What Style?
Queen excluders are optional. Using them does make harvesting a bit simpler, but in some cases, it can slightly reduce the honey your hive stores in the super. Anti- queen excluder beekeepers jokingly call queen excluders “honey excluders” since it is a slight barrier for weak hives, or hives in areas with weak honey flows. Bees can be more hesitant to move through a queen excluder to store honey, but strong hives seem to never miss a beat, and quickly move through them to store honey. Queen excluders are placed between your brood box and your honey super to exclude the queen from entering your super. This will prevent her from laying eggs in the frames you plan to harvest honey from. If you have a strong, healthy hive, and an average honey flow, queen excluders are a great option. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you use a queen excluder: If your honey supers are new, with undrawn foundation, always allow your hive to begin drawing out comb before you install the queen excluder. Bees almost never move through a queen excluder to start drawing out a new foundation. Once they have a fist-sized piece of comb drawn out on 3-4 frames, then add the queen excluder, and they will continue drawing out frames. Always remove the queen excluder after you harvest honey. If it is left on over the winter, it can trap the queen in lower boxes as the winter cluster moves up over the winter. Any style of queen excluder works. Plastic, metal, and wood-bound with metal all work well. The metal queen excluders last longer but are more expensive. Early plastic queen excluders had issues, but have since improved, and the bees don’t seem to care either way. Note: There is value in adding a top entrance as an option to overcome reluctance of honey storage while using a queen excluder. This entrance can be drilled with a spade bit 1”- 1 ½ “. Using an Entrance Disc to cover it when not in use is an added bonus.
CHECKER BOARDING HONEY SUPERS
Checker boarding frames works quite well in supers. It is the practice of alternating frames with drawn comb and frames with undrawn comb. Note: This should NEVER be done in a brood box. It’s critical to always keep brood frames side by side in the brood boxes to maintain temperature and resources (food) next to open brood. But, in a honey super, checker boarding your frames can encourage the bees to draw out foundation more quickly since the new undrawn foundation is mixed with drawn comb. Once you’ve kept bees for a year and have some drawn comb in reserve, doing this rather than placing a full box of new foundation on a hive will give you better honey yield results. If your nectar flow is poor or the new frames or foundation are dirty or dusty, the bees may draw out the uncapped comb extra wide rather than drawing out the new foundation. When checker boarding, it’s best if the foundation is brand new, and the smell of beeswax is easily discernible on the foundation. Alternatively, recoat the frames with fresh wax as described in the Drawing Comb article. To reiterate: This should NEVER be done in a brood box. It’s critical to always keep brood together in the brood boxes.
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A Red Eyed Drone? What could this bee?
Photo Credit: Dareice Rau
If both the mother and father contribute a white-eye gene, white-eyed workers and queens result.
One of these bees is not like the others!
Normal colored "wild type" eyes.
Content and Photos Credit: Glenn-Apiaries.com
This eye color variation changes from light yellow to dark red over time.
A different recessive gene gives bees white eyes. White-eyed bees behave normally up until they are old enough to take their first flight. Once they fly, it's obvious that they are sightless, flying wildly in circles. They rarely return to the hive.
Visible mutations are most often seen in drones. Since drones develop from unfertilized eggs, they have only one set of chromosomes. All recessive genes are expressed in drones, none are hidden by a second, dominant gene.
DRONE FRAME
Treating Varroa mites during nectar flow can be tricky. Since we wouldn’t want to use any chemical treatments while producing honey, some beekeepers opt for a mechanical approach – drone trapping! It is understood that Varroa mites choose drone comb as their favorite place to propagate because drone brood stays capped longer. The mother Varroa mite lays a male drone first, then subsequently lays a female mite every 30 hours which then mates with the male. The added 3 days of being capped can, in theory, give the mother mite the opportunity to lay an additional 2.4 mites per cell. Doing the math…this could mean a significant increase just due to the availability of drone brood! Drone trapping can help!
Treating for Varroa Mites During Nectar Flow
How to use a green Drone Frame This one piece plastic frame and foundation has a larger cell pattern which encourages the bees to make drone comb. As part of your Integrated Pest Management program for Varroa mites, insert one drone frame into each hive in position 3 or 7. When the bees have drawn the comb and capped the cells, place the frame in a plastic bag in the freezer overnight. Remove the frame from the freezer and let it warm to room temperature. Drag your capping scratcher across the cells, breaking them open, then place the frame back in the hive for the worker bees to clean out the dead drones and mites. Repeat the cycle as the bees refill and cap the cells. Use with 9 5/8″ (24.45 cm) Hive Bodies.
Want more Honey per Frame?
You may have been told “not” to go into a hive and disrupt them while there is a nectar flow going on. That is somewhat true, but when it comes to managing hives, a good honey flow can't stand in the way! Going in at least once a month during nectar flow to check on progress is acceptable. Be prepared: the bees will likely not be as calm as usual due to the fact they are in a time crunch to bring in as much nectar as possible before the flow ends. Make it quick and check for the following: Good population Supers being filled - Do you need to add more? Brood disease Condition of the brood
FRAME SPACER
Check out this video showing exactly how to inspect during a honey flow and what to look for!
Here is one way to do it! Use a plastic 9-frame spacing tool. This will easily evenly space 9 frames in a 10-frame honey super. It makes uncapping easier and quicker because the bees will draw the wax out on the frames further.
How to Inspect a Hive During Honey Flow
By: Brian Cummings TBS Blue Ridge, TX Branch Manager
RECHARGEABLE CLIP-ON LED LIGHT
Rechargeable Clip-On LED Light ...for when you need to check your bees at night!
Bee season has arrived at TBS! As manager of the TBS Blue Ridge store, I spend my days making sure our amazing customers are taken care of and their questions are answered, leaving me with little daylight to check my own hives at the end of the day. I’m sure many of you can totally relate! To give myself more flexibility with my bees, I recently purchased a clip-on light. This red light allows me to quickly inspect my bees once the sun has set. While I know not to use this short inspection as my only indicator of my hives' overall health, it gives me peace of mind knowing my bees are still there, and their numbers are strong, especially during my busy times. Here are a few tips when using the red light to check on your hives. ALWAYS wear protective gear if you are going to check your hives at night. Bees will crawl up your pant legs and down your sleeves so duct tape them closed if you aren’t wearing a suit. Although bees don’t normally fly when they are exposed to red light, they can and will still crawl. If you use a red light and put your hands into a hive, they will crawl up your arms and onto your body. Once you get bees on your suit at night, it's hard to get them off. Full moonlight, which is in the blue spectrum, counts as light, and bees can see well enough to fly. Be careful. Every hive is different and in turn has a different personality. I wouldn’t recommend pulling out any frames or doing a deep check in the hive in the dark. Checking at night is more about seeing the total number of bees in a hive. Always zip up your suit! When we were first opening the Dayton store, I transported a load of single-story hives for their first bee pick up. I arrived around 1 a.m. and had only the light of the moon to set up the hives. As I was about to set down the fourth single story hive, I realized my neck was completely covered in bees. In case you are wondering what that looked like CLICK HERE to see a clip accurately describing it. Trust me, there is no worse feeling than being covered by bees you can’t see. Always make sure you zip up your suit, unlike I did that night…I received around twenty reminders for next time! If using the light to move your hives at night, use something to close up the entrances. Here at TBS, we like to use a piece of drywall corner bead cut to fit in the entrance. This will help keep the bees inside the hive and off you. If there is any light at the hive’s final location, I recommend wearing your protective gear when you open the entrance since they aren’t usually very happy after the road trip. The TBS clip-on flashlight is a handy tool for those times when you need to check on or move your hive after dark. It will also work great the next time you are crawling around in an attic on a swarm removal! It has three light modes: white light, red light, and red flashing light. Come by the store or order online today for only $14.99. And don’t forget to zip up your suit!
By: Lynne Jones
As the secretary-treasurer for my club, I am responsible for monitoring and responding to questions sent to our ‘info@’ email address. Most questions are pretty run-of-the-mill, asking how to join the club, wanting a speaker for a classroom or garden club, and at least one or two a month offering their property to any beekeeper wanting a place to put hives. On March 30th, a more unusual question was received from an employee of a local Public Works Department. He said their softball complex has a concession stand, and “Every year around this time the honey bees like to visit and some times players and visitors get stung. I'm looking for ways if any, to keep the bees away from the area with out [sic] killing them.” I have certainly seen honey bees buzzing around trash barrels with soda cans before and easily came up with a few ideas for his problem. But knowing the value of asking smarter and more experienced beekeepers…I remembered Rusty Burlew* had just published a post to her website the week before on keeping honey bees out of hummingbird feeders – clearly making her the perfect person to get advice from on this issue. I submitted my question through her website’s Contact Me link and hoped I’d hear back from her. I also posted my question to the Facebook group Beekeeping Basics with more than 150,000 members, believing someone surely would have prior experience with this problem. My Facebook post started receiving comments pretty quickly and very soon after I realized my mistake. Mary Jo Gordon-Dowd commented, "It has to be yellowjackets - honey bees don’t behave that way.” And thirty five other members of the Facebook group said yellowjackets (or wasps) as well. My mistake was failing to consider that many people call all yellow stripey things “bees”, D’OH! The following morning I received a reply from Rusty Burlew. Not surprising, she suggested wasps are probably the problem, not bees. She had some excellent advice and graciously allowed me to include her reply in my article. Hi Lynne, It would be unusual, although not impossible, to have bees hanging around a concession stand. Bees are attracted to flowers and wouldn't like the smell of meat or most human food. However, wasps are a completely different issue. Wasps are very attracted to human foods and often interfere with picnic tables, barbecues, outdoor restaurant seating, concession stands, and food courts. (The main difference is bees are vegetarians and wasps are meat-eaters.) I know it is difficult to tell the difference between a bee and a wasp if you're not an entomologist, so what I would do is assume they are wasps and do things to deter them. 1. Keeping the trash barrel away from the stand is a good idea. 2. Wiping up spills is good, too. If possible, occasionally hosing the ground around the stand might help because people frequently spill things. 3. I don't know if Honey-B-Gone repels wasps, but if honey bees are part of the problem, it works pretty well against honey bees. 4. Wasp nest decoys keep wasps from building nests in an area, but apparently, they don't keep wasps from eating in that area. 5. I think the best solution would be to hang wasp traps somewhere near the concession stands. Yes, they do kill wasps. But the wasps are lured to the traps by pheromones (scents), so they only attract wasps and not bees or other insects. A good brand is "Rescue!"But the best one to buy depends on your location (east vs west). Be sure to read the label. 6. You can also make homemade wasp traps from vinegar and brown sugar in a plastic bottle. Directions are here. You might advise your people to put up wasp traps and use the honey bee repellent, if that's in the budget. It will be a difficult job because wasps can smell the food from long distances. One other thing: don't put the wasp traps right on the concession stand, but off to one side. This is because the scent of the trap will draw wasps toward it. Hope that helps, Rusty So there you have it! The best advice for dealing with concession stand, picnic table, and other outdoor food-related activities when honey bees and yellowjackets become a nuisance.
What's the Buzz... Bees Bugging Concession Stands
If you have any other tried and true methods for dealing with this problem, I’d love to hear them.You can message me on Facebook or send an email to BrazosRiverHoney77474@gmail.com
*Rusty Burlew is a master beekeeper in Washington State, author of American Bee Journal’s The Curious Beekeeper column, and of blog posts going back 13 years on her website, Honey Bee Suite. She has posted on every bee and beekeeping topic you can think of and I follow her recipe for making sugar syrup to the tee.
PACKAGE BEES
Package Bees A Great Way to Grow your Bee Yard Utilizing Stored Comb Frames!
Watch as Blake shows you step-by-step how to install a package of bees
Package bees are growing more and more popular as beekeepers see the value in reusing drawn comb frames that are just sitting around collecting dust. An old adage, “drawn comb is like gold” rings true when utilizing a new package of bees! Not only does it speed up the package settling in to their new home – it gives them a huge head start on growth and expansion! New undrawn foundation can be used as well when utilizing these helpful tips: Apply a fresh coat of wax on the new frames (even if they come waxed). Doing so will give the bees inspiration and wax to work with to draw the new comb out. Some people prefer to put a small cut piece of plastic queen excluder over the entrance for a week or so to ensure the hive stays since there aren’t any resources inspiring them to stay. This can help but remove it after a week or so once the queen has evacuated the cage to prevent a backup of drones that can’t get out. Feed, Feed, Feed both drawn comb and new foundation frame boxes that have been installed with package bees. They need their wax glands to be stimulated as well as the food source the syrup will provide. Make this syrup a 1:1 mixture (1 part water, 1 part sugar). Be prepared as they will likely consume over a gallon a week. Leave them alone for at least a week before opening the hive. Check that the queen has been released from the cage, then watch the hive grow!
Ant Can't Having trouble with Ants in your Hive? Here is a safe - non-toxic product that WORKS!
QE Scraper
Featured Products!
ANT CAN'T
Designed to prevent ants from attaching and crawling on inclined surfaces. Simple and safe, spray or brush application. Dried coating is non-toxic. Pesticide-free: Does not kill ants - prevents ants from reaching a food source or other target destination. Easily cleaned and re-applied. Maintenance Free: Can last for up to a year on non-handled surfaces.
Caked up Queen Excluders? Too much burr comb wax and propolis will restrict your bees traveling from the brood nest into the honey supers. With this handy tool you will be able to easily clean all that burr comb off your queen excluder in no time!
Queen Excluder Scraper
HONEY-ORANGE GINGER FIZZ
YIELD: Makes 4 servings INGREDIENTS For Honey Berry Syrup: 1/2 cup - blueberry honey 1/2 cup - filtered cold water 2 cups - 100% orange juice 1/4 cup - fresh ginger root, peeled/minced 2 cups - fresh strawberries, thinly sliced 3 cups - sparkling water, chilled DIRECTIONS For Honey Berry Syrup:Place blueberry honey, filtered water, orange juice, ginger root and 2 cups sliced strawberries in a small sauce pot. Bring to a gentle boil then reduce to a simmer. Let simmer for approximately 5 minutes. Remove sauce pot from heat, then smash all the strawberries in the sauce pot to a pulp, with a spoon, and allow mixture to cool to room temperature. Once cooled, strain through a super fine mesh strainer or dampened cheesecloth into a bowl, using a spoon to push on the solids to extract as much of the liquid, color and flavor as possible. Place the honey berry syrup in the refrigerator to chill. Discard any solids in the strainer. Pour equal amounts of the chilled honey berry syrup into each of the 4 serving glasses, and then pour 3/4 cup sparkling water into each glass. Add one orange slice, 1/4 cup sliced strawberries and one fresh mint sprig to each glass and stir. Top off each glass with ice cubes. Serve and enjoy! Recipe courtesy of Chef Rob Corliss, made for the National Honey Board TIP The honey berry syrup can be prepared a day in advance, to simplify prep. Substitute fresh lime slices for garnish vs. orange slices. Use a lime or citrus-flavored sparkling water vs. standard sparkling water. You can easily turn this "mocktail" into a cocktail, by substituting champagne or prosecco for the sparkling water. For extra fun, freeze edible flowers (like pansies) in the ice cubes, used in the drink. Go fancy and add 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. of dried lavender to the honey berry syrup, in step 1.
For Garnish: 4 - fresh orange slices 1 cup - fresh strawberries, thinly sliced 4 - large fresh mint sprigs
Photo Credit: Kaleigh Clark
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