Dear Beekeepers,

     Well, it's almost summer!  This info is from my new 50th birthday (June 17!) software, called CyberSky: 

Seasons Data:

 Location

    Name                     USA, NH, Alstead

    Coordinates              072° 21' 13" W 43° 04' 53" N

Spring

    Local time               20/03/2001 08:28:16

    Universal time           20/03/2001 13:28:16

    Julian date              2451989.061296

    Duration                 92.75 days

Summer

    Local time               21/06/2001 02:34:37

    Universal time           21/06/2001 07:34:37

    Julian date              2452081.815706

    Duration                 93.64 days

Fall

    Local time               22/09/2001 18:01:34

    Universal time           22/09/2001 23:01:34

    Julian date              2452175.459421

    Duration                 89.85 days

Winter

    Local time               21/12/2001 14:19:31

    Universal time           21/12/2001 19:19:31

    Julian date              2452265.305220

    Duration                 89.00 days

    Perhaps you noted that summer is the longest season, and winter the shortest!  It pays to bee positive, especially when it comes to beekeeping!  When in doubt, super!  The big one could be just around the corner.  That's why I recommend 3 medium supers per colony as a minimum, and 2-3 deeps, depending on how much you like feeding your bees.  Never get behind with your bees, and you will get something out of them!  Bee prepared!

    Last year I ran out of supers, and figured the flow was about over July 21, as it historically is, so didn't start extracting.  Big mistake!  The basswood flow dragged on, followed by the mystery flow (light, like basswood), and it didn't end until August 3, so as a result I lost a few swarms and who knows how many buckets of honey!  Bees don't work as hard if they have no place to put it!  They hang out on the stoop and think of eloping!

    If you came to my workshop on July 23, 2000, you were treated to a swarm in the birch tree on arrival, and then the bottom half of the same 2-queener took off later in the session, settling on the same branch that the other one had occupied earlier, before returning due to a clipped queen.  Unfortunately the second one never returned, as it had a virgin!  Live and learn, one hopes!

    Well, all my equalizing and requeening and broodnest optimizing is paying off.  It's much easier to find those nicely capped deep brood frames now, and bees are plentiful!  I'm also glad I started on my weight training on my return from Brasil on March 8th and began bicycling in April.  The supers are getting heavier and putting that upper brood box back on is not so easy now!  I need lots of energy to keep up with the bees, and what makes a huge difference is the cup or two of bee pollen I consume daily at breakfast and on return from pollen collecting/scale-hive weighing, often after 19:00.

    If you don't know about pollen, it is the most complete food found in nature, packed with vitamins, minerals, and protein.  Pollen is known for alleviating allergies, has cancer-fighting properties, as it is an immune system booster, and is delicious!  Contact me for all the pollen specs.  The B-vitamin content is remarkable, and there is no pun intended!  These vitamins are responsible for metabolism of calories, and you will believe it when you try it!  Take a look at the send time of this document and you will understand better!

    I learned about collecting pollen in 1981, in Captain Cook, HI, when I worked at Kona Queen Company, in HI, raising queen bees.  Gus Rouse's wife Barrie had collected it in CA and brought some traps to HI, and started a pollen business.  We got hooked quickly on the Kona coffee pollen, so sweet and energizing!  Patrick, from Quebec, had his brother Stefan, of the handlebar mustache, bring out an OAC (Ontario Agricultural College) trap, which was bottom mounted and a considerable improvement on the USDA front-mounted trap.  We set it up on a side-by-side half-length nuc-body 2-queen hive on the roof outside the kitchen window, for easy snacking!  Just slid out the tray at the back, conveniently facing the window!  There was a Caucasian queen in one half, and an Italian on the other side.  No racial slurs, as far as we could discern!  We had excluders above and below the brood area to prevent the queen encounters.  We got up to a cup and a half of pollen per day, not bad for a hive we set up in February!  Of course we boosted it plenty in the beginning with "left over" bulk bees after making up nucs.  It was a rainy year with plenty of mushrooms, but that is another story!  I'll never forget Patat the Frenchman's laughing!  We played some great music together on the porch watching the endless Hawaiian sunset under the big mango tree!  He played guitar, I played banjo, and occasionally a French Canadian woman would stop by with her concertina!  French was the language that year!

    That summer, I began collecting pollen from my bees in the Connecticut River Valley in Walpole, New Hampshire, and Westminster, Vermont.  I started with USDA type traps but another year made some OAC traps.  Later, I got an Amish fellow from PA to make me some traps with inner cone bee escapes to let the drones out.  Before, I had to staple them on an augur hole in a hive body, but the sun was hard on the plastic.  David would make me a trap, then I would test it, and later send back recommendations for improvements.

    Eventually, the traps evolved, using heavy stainless screen in the pollen drawer, to be food grade, and allow for daily scraping of the screen as nectar drips down from above sometimes!  I requested the cones, which increased from 3 to 10, be left out until after I parafinned them, which prevents warping and possible leaks, which means the bees can bypass the screens.  Now the cones are made of screen, so I can wax away at 250°+.  David came up with some other innovations, such as beeways to distribute the pollen, and a lauan trash deflector above the 5/"mesh stripping screens, but I found little use for these "improvements," as the beeways only pile the pollen up on the outer sides of the tray, and the trash deflector prevents varroa trapping, a great side benefit!  David still custom makes traps for me, and you will see his style (unwaxed) for sale in most of the catalogs for $65.  I use 7/ and 8/" mesh to sift out chalkbrood mummies and such.

    In fact, trapping pollen is how I discovered I had varroa in Spring 1995, when I heard varroa crawling on the newspaper I had winnowed the unfrozen pollen over, eager for a taste of the fresh post-dandelion pollen that is my favorite.  Usually I freeze it for 2 days to kill ants and mites to allow winnowing.  They can't hang on to a pellet after a couple of days in the freezer!  About 40% of varroa mites fall while moving from one bee to another.  When they fall into the trap, they wait for a bee to come along, and none can reach them.  So they starve!  Tough luck, suckers!

    My pollen traps harvest about 2/3rds of the incoming pollen, but the bees collect 3 times as much in order to make up for the deficit.  Only stronger colonies are used for pollen production.  I feed strong-tasting pollen back to my 43 2-queen colonies of bees in the spring when there is a lack of pollen. As a lover of bee pollen, I quickly realized that bee pollen is very perishable.  Without refrigeration, the flavor and vitamins are quickly degraded due to the high enzyme content and moisture.  Therefore, I collect the pollen every day, as opposed to every 3-7 days in commercial operations.  

    The berries are history, now there's a good pollen flow, which allows the bees to clear out nectar from the brood area for the queen to lay more eggs.  You know, bees don't worry much about brood rearing during a good honey flow, or care much what queen is in there, you can switch a queen from one hive to another with impunity, especially if at a similar stage of egg-laying.  I've been doing considerable requeening during the flow, as there is always a queen suffering from May workout.  I tolerate them as long as there are no supersedure cells, but when the pattern never has a solid area of 2" plus, it's time for usurpation!  Acceptance has been excellent!  Sometimes chalkbrood makes it difficult to see a good capped brood pattern, then you have to look at unsealed brood.  I love Russians raised by Russians; can't you hear the balalaikas?

    My home hive #1 has been amazing, in my garden at 1150'.  So far I've pulled 9 frames of brood!  In May it gained 2.75#, while many others lost.  In June it has gained 32.25# so far, not counting the pollen I remove daily.  It has had better luck with the flows, which have been better timed in relation to the rains.  However, it didn't have as much black locust as the valley, where #34 made 41.25 this month and gained 13.25 in May, having come through the winter with 2 queens intact.  #33 is interesting: I made it up as a 2-queener on April 26, with 2 2-frame nucs.  It gained a pound in May and has gained 11 this month!

 Below see my pollen collection data:

2001

MAY LBS.          TOTAL          NOTES

27      .1          .1          8 TRAPS BUTTERNUT BROOK: RAINY WEATHER

28      .6          .7              22 TRAPS SHOWERS: CHALKY! (+ WILLIAMS YARD)

29      1.8          2.5          29 TRAPS (+ PAUL HARLOW YARD)

30      .5          3          29

31      .8          3.8          30    (+ HOME YARD)

JUNE

1        1.7          5.5          

4        3.2          8.7

5        3.6          12.3

6        3.8          16.1

7        3          19.1          35 (+TOM HARLOW YARD)

8        2.5          21.6

9        2.4          24

10      3.9          27.9

11      1     28.9     36    RAIN

12      4.3     33.2     ROSE STARTING!

13      7.5     40.7     NEW CONTAINERS FOR ROSE!

14      8.3     49     38 TRAPS (+ 3 WILLIAMS YARD)

15      7.6     56.6     

16      6.3     62.9

18      6.9     69.8     155 LBS. LAST YEAR THIS DATE!  109# 1999, 210.2# 1998, 60.5# 1997 (26 colonies in these latter years), 79.2# 1996, 162.4# 1995, 65.9# 1994

          Multifora rose (Rosa multiflora) is Japanese revenge!  We brought it in for natural fencing during the war to conserve steel for the war machine.  Like Knotweed, it has run rampant over the landscape, but I sure appreciate it as a pollen producer!  The bees gather huge pellets; I guess it doesn't have much nectar; they usually lose weight during its bloom.  This allows for the big loads!  Usually chalkbrood winds down during this flow, showing how important pollen is for the bees.  

          Today I saw sumac about ready to produce in Bellows Falls on a bank by the Connecticut!  This can be a heavy producer, so brace yourself for another nectar onslaught!  Keep me posted on your bee news!

          When in doubt.

                    Charles Frederic Andros
Linden Apiaries since 1973
Former NH/VT Apiary Inspector '78-'89
18 McLean Road
POB 165
Walpole, NH 03608-0165
603-756-9056
[log in to unmask]
Residence: Latitude 43° 04' 53" North, Longitude 72° 21' 13" West, Elevation 363 meters 
Keeper of 43 two-queen colonies for unheated honey, fresh-frozen pollen, propolis tincture, Bee Complex facial, pollination, nuclei, beeswax, candles, apitherapy, workshops, and supplies
"Learn, experiment, innovate, educate!"