Author: beesatctk

This season, we have elected to increase the number of colonies using the old-fashioned beekeeping techniques of luring and trapping swarms, relocating colonies from undesirable locations, and by dividing our colonies. The goal is to double the number of colonies we have with an aim of producing 300 pounds of honey this year and 500# next year.

If you are at the Church and look to the north, you will see a white swarm trap in a tree at the edge of the parking lot. This trap is made up of a box of a size and configuration thought to be desirable to swarming bees. Inside we have placed some old honeycomb and some new empty frames. We have also placed a scent lure inside. The hope is that scout bees from any swarms in the area will find the box, go inside, and decide to go and tell the rest of the swarm that they have found a new home.

 We have also undertaken to remove one colony from a home in Manassas this weekend. The colony had made its home in the basement ceiling and had been there for several years. Using our new DIY bee vacuum we were able to collect 90+ percent of the bees in the colony and relocate them to our apiary. With a little luck, these bees will acclimate to their new surroundings, and we will have a new productive colony. These bees bring new genetic diversity to the area around our apiary. This is a good thing because they were both gentle and had managed to survive and thrive without pest treatments.  Here is a picture of the colony before removal.

All our colonies are thriving and growing quickly despite the on again, off again warm weather with lots of rain. We are expecting that they will do what healthy bees do, and that is swarm. To prevent our bees from wandering off, we will preemptively divide the colonies when we see signs that the bees are preparing to swarm.  These signs include increased drone populations, and preparations for making a replacement queen.

…and best wishes to everyone for a happy and prosperous new year. Christ the King’s Bee Ministry is happy to welcome in 2024. We have plans for a full season starting in February or Early March depending on the weather. We are going to do some youth outreach early in the season with the highlight of having the kids decorate some of our new woodenware. A quick peak last week revealed that all 6 colonies are alive and strong so far. We are expecting colder temperatures before it gets warmer, but the colonies are big enough and sufficiently provisioned with resources to survive the winter unless something unsual happens.

.We will be starting a second bee yard with the goal of managing our program to end 2024 with 10 strong colonies going into winter. We also are planning to make a few small nucleus colonies which we hope to over winter as well.

All this means we are looking for more volunteers interested in learning about how beekeeping, helps improve polination outcomes in the area around our apiary, the process of managing bees to improve both their health and honey production, and about processing honey from the hive into high quality raw honey.

During the fall and winter, our main focus is on monitoring our bee’s health and food supply. We do this by tracking weather patterns, testing for pests and inspecting the apiary. We have stopped weekly hive inspections and have replace them with limited observations when weather permits.

The unusually warm and dry fall has set up a potential food shortage for our bees in late winter. Earlier this fall, we fed our bees to make up for the sparse fall flower bloom because of the dry weather and got our hives well set for fall. Because the weather has continued to be warmer than usual our bees have keep making brood and foraged for resources much more than they otherwise might have. Checking on our hives last week, we found that they have used up more of their food resources than we expected for this time of year and we are now concerned about them having enough food to make it through the winter. To address this, we made up candy boards this week and will place them in the coming days on the hives.

Candy boards are frames filled with a block of sugar. We set them on top of the hives below the outer cover. They provide needed carbohydrates the bees use to keep warm through the winter and adsorb excess moisture inside.

For the past three weeks we have been treating our hives for Varroa Mites with Oxalic Acid vaporization.  We have also been using “Swiffer” sheets to entrap and remove small hive beetles that have exploded on population.  For our efforts so far, we have managed to stabilize and make small gains against the Varroa and Small Hive Beetle infestations.  We were hoping for better management of these pests, so we have now pivoted to a strategy that adds additional treatment to our hives.

For small hive beetles, we have deployed additional “Swiffer” strips in each hive and added more “beetle blaster” style traps.

For Varroa, we are going to add Formic Pro strips to hives that have more than 3 mites per 250 bees as determined by alcohol wash assay. 

Lastly, with our help, the bees have managed to put enough resources on the hives to over winter.  We are going to leave the hive top feeders on but not feed for the next week and then decide if we are going to remove them for the season or if we are going to give the bees on last feeding before winter.

For the past month, the bees have been experiencing a “dearth” of nectar because of a seasonal lack of flowers that accompanies the heat of summer.  All bees during this time become more aggressive and will steal resources from weaker colonies.  To ward off these attacks, bees also become more defensive.  This combination makes the beekeeper’s job more challenging.  To prevent robbing, we need to work more quickly to prevent robbing, and we need to smoke more and move deliberately, to prevent antagonizing the bees.  It can be a delicate balance and no matter what, by the time we are in the last hive doing inspections, there are just a lot of “spicy” bees swirling around the apiary!

This week we continued to feed the bees.  We changed out three jar feeders for three new hive top pan feeders from Mann Lake Beekeeping Supplies, Inc.  These feeders allow us to place more feed at once on the hives and only go out once per week to feed and inspect.  We also reduced hive 2 down to one deep and two medium boxes.  This hive is bulging with bees such that we will likely take some more out and place them in hives 3 and 4 to equalize the numbers of bees in all our hives later in the season.