Vinduska Apiaries

02/27/2023

Lessons from the Beehive
Unfortunately, many posts are appearing of beekeepers losing their bees. Late winter and early spring are very hard on the bees. Late February, March, and into April is when beekeepers lose a lot of hives. Starvation and sick weak colonies are usually the culprit. The sign of bees head first in cells has often been theorized that the bees could not find food and died of starvation. Licking the remaining crumbs from the bottom of the cells. In a healthy colony clustering bees, go head first in the cells. These are the heater bees, and they are the bottom layer of the cluster. Oftentimes, when one looks over a dead winter colony, they see these bees with their butts in the air and go they starved, and they don't dive any deeper looking for the root of the problem. Starvation has nothing to do with it, well kinda does, but there are things that happened beforehand. The saying cold doesn't kill bees is false. They do die in cold. I know beekeeprs that kill hot hives by leaving the tops off during artic fronts. This is what happened when a beekeeper sees their bees head first in the cells. They died because they got too cold. They could not warm themselves enough to move around. So, did they starve, or did the cold kill them? It's a never-ending debate like which came first the chicken or the egg? Instead of one trying to decide or argue over it, one needs to look at what led up to it. If the colony couldn't heat themselves up enough to even slightly move to food, then something else was going on. Were they too small of a cluster? Were they sick, high mite count? Was the equipment too big for the size of the cluster. Did one leave too much room on the hive? For the most part, I would say it's the colony size. They were simply too small to warm themselves up properly, and they died. If mites were high, they simply lost numbers over the winter, and the large colony became smaller and smaller. When a colony is smaller, they work harder to produce heat. Once they reach a certain threshold, they are too small, and they freeze in place over a few days.

06/13/2022

Washboarding

05/07/2021

This is a very informative discussion on laying workers written by Greg Hannaford.
Let’s talk about laying workers for a moment.
This is the time of year when we see them most commonly.
First, if you have laying workers, understand that there are many, not just one.
Second, your hive has been queenless for at least 3 weeks but probably about 4 or 5 weeks. That’s just basic bee biology, no need to argue the point.

Now what to do about it?
Well, the first thing most newer beeks want to do is save the hive. Yes, you can do that. Put a frame of Larvae in the hive once a week for 3 weeks. The last frame should have eggs on it. The open larvae will suppress any new laying workers while the existing laying workers age out to become foragers. By this time, you will have new nurse bees that can produce a viable queen cell from the eggs, —-at this point, you could introduce a mated queen—-. Or you could let them raise their own from young larvae on the last frame. 2 weeks later you “may” have a virgin queen in your hive. Now you have to wait 2 to 3 weeks for a laying queen. Now we are up to 5 or 6 weeks.
This works, but it is a waste of time and resources. You could take those frames of brood and some more new nurse bees and put them with a mated queen and have a new hive up and running in about 2 weeks.
One thing I didn’t mention above, if you try to salvage a laying worker hive by adding brood, the laying workers will continue to ruin your good drawn comb.
The moral of this diatribe is if you have laying workers, don’t try to salvage the hive. Shake out all of the bees and use your resources to make a new hive.

02/13/2021

12/23/2020

Fun with honey in space

12/11/2020

A sampling of our honey products that are available.

11/21/2020

Don’t do it!!!
But there’s always room for 1 more hive!

Me tho 😂