Hello everybody,
 
Well finally a day with out snow! Here in southeastern Ontario we have
had between 123 and 150cm of snow ( not including drifts).  But today
the sun is shinning and its incredibly warm out.  My thermometer is
reading 10c or 50f.  So I tramped out to check the hives.  Well they
were pretty much buried up to the top hole so I dug down to the entrance
and cleaned it out of the ice and dead bees.  Well, with the sun shining
a few of my girls came out to greet me.  The hives seem well. I took the
lid off and the was a nice gentle hum coming from down in the hive. So
with the warm weather I started to think about spring.  I was wondering
about how many different ways beekeepers have for swarm control! I tried
a method last year that I read from a magazine. I placed the apistan
strips in in march.  I also removed the tar paper covering.  After the
aloted time pasted for the Apistan I removed them and put on a super(
around the last week of April). This worked well as this hive didn't
swarm and gave me a great amount of honey.  I also made a split from
this hive later on in July. Now I know this is hardly proof that this is
a workable system but I'm going to try it again this year.  How about
anyone else?
--
Kent Stienburg
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