You're scaring me!
 
    (Sigh)  I guess I'd better store up some adrenalin.  Next spring's
package season is going to bee! another manic session.
 
    All you guys in good fall honey country that are removing supers to treat
for mites.  Do you realize what you are doing?
 
   You are shutting down the queens, at least a month early.  As soon as all
those bees are jammed into the brood nest, and fall nectar is filling empty
cells, the queen will have nowhere to lay.
 
    How are they goina' make the young bees that are needed for the winter
cluster? They'll be going into winter with OLD bees.    - A guaranteed
prescription for heavy winter loss.
 
   I mentioned this a week or so ago, without any response.  So I bring it up
again, more clearly, more forcefully.  THINK!
 
    Now I know there won't be a response from those who are quietly making
the fall crop......with Apistan strips in place.  They're not gonna' have
this problem, though they may have others......
 
    But all you guys who are making this drastic management change.....
without testing..... on advice from folks who, by and large, don't keep bees,
or at least don't require them for their livelihood.  THINK!
 
    If I were in your shoes right now (and I've kept bees in the north), I'd
sure have supers on.  If not, I'm throwing away a resource, and endangering
my bees to boot.
 
    Now I didn't say, extract it and sell it, did I?    Surely you have some
deadouts, or extra deeps around.  Maybe you can get some foundation drawn.  I
think deeps would be preferable to shallows, as you can then put the frames
right into a brood nest later.  But if you use shallows,  take a spray can
and paint a big red dot on the ends of a few supers.  That will remind you
not to extract those.
 
    Get all the honey you can, in whatever form you can, and save it; don't
extract it.
Next March, put supers of these onto your light hives.  Then when the weather
warms, and your bees are building nicely, take three frames of brood and make
nucs.  Put deep frames of honey on either side of the brood, and let them
raise a queen, or give them one.  Now, they are better fed than they could
ever be with syrup.  Shucks, give them syrup, too.   - Get's them going fast!
 
   If you didn't get your honey in deep frames, then put an excluder over
your three frames of brood in the brood chamber and put on a super.  You can
stretch it, by putting five frames of honey directly over the bees, rather
than a full one.  If you are not able to keep track of them using it up, take
a permanant marker and put an x on the top bar, so you won't extract that
frame.
 
    In the spring I promise to say "I told you so!" if you let the brood
chambers plug up this fall, and die over winter.
 
   Varroa mites will kill bees.  But it also makes a nice whipping boy, when
poor management kills bees.   Let's not panic, folks.  Think!
 
    I'd like to sell some packages come spring.  But I don't want to fill my
pockets, from someone else's *unnecessary* losses.
 
[log in to unmask]    Dave Green,  PO Box 1200,  Hemingway,  SC
29554
 
Practical Pollination Home Page            Dave & Janice Green
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