Dear Beekeeper,

Happy Memorial Day! I got the garden planted over the weekend, and turned on the sprinkler, as the rain missed here, except a quick shower.

Wow, I was concerned that I had lost my address book! It came up with 0 entries and only 173 kb, as opposed to the usual 2513 kb! Checking my backed up copies on CD-RW I found the same. Then somehow I found a backed-up copy on the same disk with all 2067 entries! Figure that one out! I opened it by clicking on it, and then had to go to File: Export file: to its usual place, see next. To save your Windows address book: Copy C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\address book file to a floppy diskette or CD-RW. I do this daily to prevent problems, on alternating Cds, just in case!

Finally got some decent weather for the tail end of the dandelion flow. Hives were making up to about 7 lbs. per day, which is typical for a good flow. The best seen on dandelion was 17.75 lbs. way back when I had bees near Route 12 just into Westmoreland, NH. I have heard of 20# from Lawrence Pelton, formerly of Langdon, NH. He also saw this amount during the smooth sumac flow one July in South Charlestown, NH.

Lawrence made all his equipment from pine he sawed at his mill. He gave me my first slatted rack, and from it I made them for the rest of my colonies. If you are not familiar with the slatted rack, it was invented by Dr. C. C. Miller early in the 20th century. It increases ventilation and brood rearing in the bottom super, and prevents gnawing and propolizing near the entrance due to the recessed entrance. By keeping the bee space of 3/8ths inch under the frames, the rack also prevents building of ladder comb on the bottom of the frames, so it's much easier to reverse with no scraping of the tough drone comb. You'll note that there is more brood and honey in the bottom super with a rack. The slats of most of mine are perpendicular to the frames. There are some newer models that have them parallel to the frames, to enhance varroa mite collection under a varroa screen, which goes between slatted rack and bottom board. However, they are made for 10 frames, and most people use 9 frames, as it is easier to manipulate the frames with less breakage of end bars, which can become glued to one another very quickly with propolis. I stock a nice tool for spacing 9 frames, which you can use after frames are drawn or built, using 10 frames with foundation. A clever beekeeper in Ludlow, VT, made a magnesium 8-frame spacer from a concrete screed tool which I use for my honey supers to get nice fat combs for easy uncapping at extracting time. Jim Powers, who I met next door to Kona Queen Co. in Captain Cook, HI, in the late 70's, had special Powers frames with wide end bars to run 8 in all his supers. He also had a nifty extractor that spun out several whole supers at a time!

Last week saw a string of fine days excellent for finding brood for my nucleus customers. Yes, I'm still taking orders, for late June now. See below for upcoming weekend customer list. I found 15 nucs worth of brood this past week, about a frame per hive. I reinvested quite a few frames of brood to bring up some of the weaker units to production. I found a strong hive with low honey stores. This is not surprising due to the long period of poor foraging weather. The bees are more pleasant to work with when they settle in to a good flow. It's quite amazing how the new combs get that yellow-orange hue from the orange dandelion pollen! Celandine (Chelidonium majus, Poppy family) also was blooming. This is strictly a pollen plant; you'll see no dipping for nectar with this yellow flower which produces yellow pollen. Sometimes when there is a good basswood flow you will see yellow around the upper augur hole entrances. Soon, I'll have the new edition of Plants for Beekeeping in Canada and the Northern USA, by Jane Ramsey. It has an index of common, French, and Latin names. It is arranged by annuals, biennials, perennials, and trees and shrubs. It has hardiness rating, time and duration of bloom, height range, whether nectar, pollen, or honeydew is available, value for honey (yields per colony, nectar sugar concentration, etc.,) value for pollen, honey characteristics, and cultural requirements, etc. Contact me if you would like to reserve a copy.

I'm getting excited about starting pollen collection! Honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) produces some of the tastiest pollen of the season, and it is open now. This flow typically produces 5#/day gains on good colonies. It's followed by blackberry, which has gray pollen. I've had my traps on for some time, but on free-flight mode, where bees can come in without going through the two 5 per inch mesh screens that strip about 2/3rds of the pollen. In about 3 days after engaging the traps, the bees accommodate to the traps, collecting 3 times as much pollen to make up for the trap. What's good about the open-top traps is that they also catch live falling varroa mites from the brood nest above. I get my traps custom made from the same Amish man that makes the Sundance trap, which unfortunately has a luaun piece over the 5/" mesh. This is to deflect trash such as chalkbrood mummies. I use 7/" mesh sifter and even 8/ and 10/" sifters to get this trash out and catch mites, too. There is evidence that the depth of varroa screens does allow some mites to crawl back up to the cluster. However, the depth to which mites fall is at least double with my traps. I have a number of new ones which I recently paraffinned (cooked in paraffin to prevent warping and rotting) that I sell for $65. I make a 7/" sifter available for $10. I have a good selection of bee equipment in stock, please contact me for prices.

I've heard lots of reports of bear damage this year. I lost 6 nucs to bears myself on the May 13 behind my house, where I have had no damage for years, although in the late 80's I had some damage here. NH Fish and Game will loan you a fence and charger for the season, perhaps other states do the same. Believe me, I had the fence up that day, as the bear often comes back the following night for leftovers! No problems since. I have in stock the Critter Gitter which is effective at repelling bears and skunks. Supposedly, skunks do more damage nationwide than bears, although is it not as noticeable. It does make the bees pretty nasty, as the skunk comes most every night to eat bees from the entrance. Scratch and munch! You will see the scratches on the bottom board and combed grass in front of the hive. Apparently, if you have your land posted against hunting, you can't file for a bear damage claim in NH and VT. You also can claim panther damage in NH; same law of the 1930's and 40's!

I found one hive with 3 queens! One was laying in a honey super, between the 2 brood nests of my 2-queen colonies. I thought one section was queenless, so had introduced another queen! I removed the extra queen; she'll go with a nuc. Perfect brood pattern. In general, the new Carniolan queens are laying well.

For the next weekend, the higher you are on the list, the more likely I'll have your nucleus ready:

JRH

EJB

PO

MB

SWH

I guess that's all for now. Happy beekeeping!

On the flow,    

Charles Frederic Andros
Linden Apiaries since 1973
Speaker, Eastern Apicultural Society Conference 2001, on Propolis and Pollen Production
NH/VT Apiary Inspector 1978-1989
POB 165, 18 McLean Road
Walpole, NH 03608-0165
603-756-9056 home
[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, Bee Complex facial, propolis tincture, beeswax, candles, apitherapy, nuclei, pollination, workshops, and supplies, plus my own American Ginseng


"Learn, experiment, innovate, educate!"