The fee Line. Creating good and healthy beekeeping throughout MICHIANA. Published by the MICHIANA Beekeepers Association MAY 2011

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1 The fee Line Creating good and healthy beekeeping throughout MICHIANA Published by the MICHIANA Beekeepers Association MAY 2011 BEEKEEPERS AUCTION Saturday, May 21 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm Meet at the home of Norman Lehman, C. R. 16, one mile east of Middlebury next door to the Dutch Country Market Registration will begin at 8:30 am. Pay up your 2011 membership ($15 per family), get an auction number, buy a ticket for 1/2 a Port-A-Pit Chicken for $5.00 and a couple of raffle tickets. Enjoy coffee and Amish donuts, rolls and cookies while you catch up with other beekeepers and check out the items which will be auctioned off in the afternoon and register any items you brought to be auctioned off. At 9:00 President Bob Baughman will open the meeting and make announcements. If College does not keep her from us we will hear from our ISBA 2011 Honey Princess Alexandra Lesniak. Our guest speaker is Gary Reuter. A long time hobby beekeeper and trained in technology education, Gary began working with Dr. Marla Spivak when she moved to the University of Minnesota in Without his hard work, the program would not be what it is today. He maintains the research colonies, helps train and work with students in the field, designs and builds specialty equipment and speaks to beekeeping, student and civic groups. He plans the Extension short courses and together with Marla teaches beginning as well as experienced beekeepers. His humorous style of teaching helps the classes stay interested and enthusiastic about a sometimes challenging subject. He is a past president of both Minnesota Hobby Beekeepers Association and Wisconsin Honey Producers Association and a director of the American Beekeeping Federation, and remains active in these groups. He still finds time to manage his own colonies, while learning to blacksmith, maintaining an orchard, and helping his wife raise sheep. Gary is also involved in Dr. Spivak's Minnesota Hygienic Honeybee project. We may get a chance before lunch to check out Norman's hives so bring veil and gloves if you do. Noon will satisfy all of your hungers with Port-A-Pit chicken (buy your tickets at registration) and then enjoy the carry-in dinner. Bring a dish to pass, hot or cold, vegetable, salad or dessert. We usually have plates and plastic flatware for those who forget to bring their own. Then enjoy the wonderful food, as good as any church carry-in. Drinks will be provided. The auction begins at 1:00 pm. This auction is our main fund raising event for the year. It is not just about you buying, Page 1 Des Dutchman Essen Haus MBA CONTACTS PRESIDENT Bob Baughman bob.deb.baughman@sbcglobal.net VICE PRESIDENT AND RECORDING SECRETARY Tim Ives liquidgold2009@embarqmail.com TREASURER David Emerson emerson3434@verizon.net EDITOR Henry Harris henry4744@frontier.com Lehman Farm and Dutch Country Store

2 it is also about you selling. Search through your equipment and bring that frame lifter you never use or that spare smoker. Did you switch to plastic frames and foundation? Bring in the wood frames, nails, wire and foundation you no longer have use for. Do you make something you really find handy? Make another one or two and bring them to be auctioned off. The MBA splits 50/50 with the seller unless you bring in a really expensive item, a honey tank, an extractor, your car, then we can make other arrangements for a split. Donations are welcome too. Come, eat well, laugh, talk, meet old friends and make new ones, share your wisdom and experiences and collect some help and advise from other beekeepers and our guest speaker and have a good time. Oh, and take home some new or used treasures. We were sorry to hear of the passing of two former long time MICHIANA beekeepers over the past winter. Ray Burkholder from the Nappanee area and Cecil Swarztendmberfrom Goshen. St ve pie meeting rotes. I counted 47 present at Christo's Banquet Hall in April. Cathy Myers displayed a kit for sending dead bee samples to the Beltsville Bee Lab for disease or virus examination. The kits comes with an instruction sheet and a vial containing alcohol to preserve the bees while in transit. The kits will be available at meetings. Cathy Steve Lesniak reported that the final tally of children and adults attending the St. Joe County AG Days in March was around 6,500! Steve also spoke of the possibility of an association apiary at Unity Gardens in South Bend. An association apiary may help with youth directed beekeeping activities. There will be more discussion of the MBA providing financial and mentoring help for young beekeepers. Mike Ross talked about making, stocking and placing swam boxes. Mike favors a five frame nuc style box with one old comb in the center and 2 foundation frames on each side. Drill a hole in the bottom of the box to be sure water drains out. Danny Slabaugh talked of using a commercially produced molded paper product trap demonstrating in the picture the height he prefers it to hang. Pheromone lures were recommended. Lemon pledge sprayed in a swarm trap is supposed to help draw swarms, comb will likely be destroyed by wax moth and honey stollen by ants and other insects. Check traps often because swarms do have a habit of drawing out comb very rapidly. Clean your dead outs and store them in a dry place. Shake or brush loose bees out but do not worry about bees down in the cells. When you put the combs on an active colony they will remove the dead bees and clean up the mold. Christine Jacobson from Grand Rapids spoke on behalf of the American Apitherapy Society. Apitherapy is not just bee sting therapy, it embraces the use of all hive products. To get in touch with the society go to apitherapy.org. Put an empty frame in the brood nest of each of your colonies every time you open it. Move r-is cobso an existing frame of brood to the outside to replace a frame of honey which you put in your freezer to give back to the bees this fall or next spring in stead of sugar syrup. In Spring this can help reduce swarming. Later in the year you can use this method to remove old combs from the hive. No em 1/4" frames? Use a frame of foundation. 1/2" If you have the chance to retrieve a swarm but do not have covers and bottom boards for an extra hive you can put the 1/4" swarm in a supper over a double screen on an existing colony. A double screen is a 1/2" deep frame with 1/8" or smaller screen stapled both above and below and 1/4" rims nailed above and below. The 1/2" center keeps the swarm bees and colony bees from touching which could result in one of the queens being killed. 0 I, If you would like to be on a list to receive swarm calls Bob Baughman (see r MBA Contacts on front page) and tell him so. Page 2

3 Wa-Keteri-Ag W1494, akt, 014, 7-imnzr by Henry Harris Last year I was rhapsodizing about the beautiful weather and how swarming was progressing. We were about two weeks ahead of normal in floral development and had plenty rain. This year we are still having March weather in late April with snow on the 18th! We talked about package and nuc installation at the March meeting in Nappanee. We talked about swarm prevention and hiving swarms at the April meeting in Plymouth. Since the season seems to be behind schedule I thought I would go over some more on both subjects this month. Last Spring I started 10 nucs with mated, caged queens. I left 2 of these as nues for backup and use in my observation hive and built the other 8 into colonies. Each nuc was made of 5 frames with bees, the caged uueen, and extra bees shaken in. 1. Two frames of honey with at least some of the honey open (un- i capped). If the honey is all capped, scratch or' crush about, 10% of the cell cappings so honey is open and ready to consume. Put one of the combs on each outside position (the 1 and 5 positions). 2. One frame of fresh pollen is put next to one of the honey frames. Fresh pollen will be bright colored and dry looking. Pollen from over winter will be darker and usually have a wet look from the honey used to preserve it. 3. Next put two frames of the oldest capped brood you can find between the pollen frame and the remaining honey frame. The oldest brood should have open cells in the center where bees have been emerging. Page 3 Brood emerging from the center out. If you have no brood frames with brood hatching then look at the outside edges of frames with capped brood. If 11 in I; 0000 IMO listin See 40 -apir capped brood or, as at you can choose between two types of frame here, as at left, there are young larvae and eggs around the edges of the right, t he capped brood runs right out to the edge of the frame, take the bottom one because they are the older capped brood and will hatch sooner to build up your nuc. 4. I suspended my queens between the frames in their cages and left them there corked up for five days after which I checked the frames for queen cells and finding none I let the queens out because there was no aggression from the workers on the cages and the queens had been fed well and increased in size and would be ready to lay eggs soon. I had 100% acceptance and all built up strong. 5. The last thing to do is to shake two or three frames of extra bees into the nuc. If you can not move the nucs two miles away forager bees included in the nucs will return to their parent hive leaving the nuc popula - tion smaller than you might think it is and unable to keep all of its brood warm. Shake these extra bees from frames with open brood. Most of the bees on open brood will be nurse

4 bees feeding the open brood and will stay with vcair nuc. Iw alt of His be careful. uot to put or shake the pareut ctueeu frvto out of the vutcs. If you want to raise your own queens from splits you can use the same procedure as above but be sure one of the brood frames has eggs and young larvae on it. You need both eggs and young larvae because it can take the bees as much as a full day to decide they are queen less and need to make a new queen. If you only have young larvae they could pass beyond the proper age to successfully become queens. Eggs will hatch and give you larvae of the proper age. What's the big deal? Look at human young. You cannot feed a new born steaks and preteens will not develop healthily on baby formula. From the day an egg hatches nurse bees suit the mixture of brood food to the age, development and purpose of the larva they are feeding. A three day old worker larva is not fed the same mix of brood food that a three day old queen larva is. Many years back -double grafted - queens were widely advertised. One day old larvae were grafted into queen cups. After two or three days the larvae were fished out of the huge pool of royal jelly and discarded. A new batch of one day old larvae were then grafted into that big pool of royal jelly on the basis that if a little is good a lot is better. They did not understand that the big pool of royal jelly was not what that one day old larva needed to develop properly. The Page 4 article I read, a few years ago now, did not go so far as to say the second larva was hurt in any way by the royal jelly formulated for the older larva but the author stated it was wasted effort. It is probable that the nurse bees filled the area around the larva with the correct formula and just got on with raising their baby queen or if that big pool of older royal jelly did not loose its potency maybe the queen larvae were allowed to eat it when they reached that age of development. Don't forget to feed your packages and nucs. Feed them sugar syrup or your own honey and maybe also a protein supplement such as MegaBee or BeePro. You can take a peach and slice it thinly and lay the slices out in the sun or expose them to a warm dry breeze and the moisture will evaporate so you can keep those peach slices until the middle of winter then put them in warm water and reconstitute them but left alone the peach would rot. Honey is in many ways the same as dried fruit. Bees take nectar and evaporate the water from it to both reduce its volume and make it stable for storage. Bees do not eat honey straight, they dilute it with water. You can give extracted honey back to your bees either as it is or by diluting it with water. Because honey is so thick it takes more time for bees to take it up than diluted honey but the bees do not have to remove the water from it again before storing it. And the bees have to consume some of what you have given them to fuel this re-dehydration. On the other hand, if they need to eat it right away they will not have to dilute it so much first. Do not dilute too much or it may ferment before the bees use it up. Last month I showed a queen cell and mentioned that you can tell when it is almost ready to hatch by the removal of wax from the tip. This was first pointed out to us (the

5 MBA membership) in the 80's by former Bee Inspector Matt Cymbala at one of our bee yard meetings. A frame with several swarm cells hanging from the bottom was pulled from one of the hives. Matt pointed them out then told us the queens were ready to emerge. He then gently grasped the tip of one of the cells and pulled it off. The queen scurried out, Matt caught her and put her in a queen cage. I sorted through my pictures and found some other examples of queen cells both not ready to emerge and ready for the queen to emerge. Bees wax covering the tips of the two cells at right has been removed right down to the queen's cocoon. In black and white the cell above does not look ready but in color the area with the pointer is clearly minus its wax. Wax is removed so the queen can chew through the cocoon as she is doing in the circled area at bottom right. All of the cells above have been completed fairly recently. They are ell sculpted and the tips covered with beeswax. SWARMS Please remember that no swarm or the honey they might make for you in the next 100 years is worth getting hurt for. If you cannot safely hive it let it go. I know the lure of a swarm can be great and hard to walk away from but $75,000 in hospital Page 5 bills and being crippled for the rest of your life is just not worth it and you just might be "the other guy" that such things happen to this time. It was suggested at our meeting that we should not attempt to retrieve a swarm before about 6 pm or 7 pm no matter when you get the call especially if it is miles away. The reasoning here is that the swarm does not have to buy $4 a gallon gas and you do and until the approach of evening the swarm could decide to leave while you are on your way to get it. About 6 pm call your informant and find out if the swarm is still there. Some swarms involve just snipping off a limb and dropping them into a hive. Other swarms can present unique problems. It would be best to spray this swarm thoroughly and often with sugar water to keep the bees from flying while they are being brushed into a box. The swarm has certainly gorged itself on honey before leaving its hive but use sugar water on them anyway because it is stickier than plain water and will make it harder for the bees to fly. smoke 1.s of no l.t_se at ail in hiving a swarm.. Smoiee does two beneficial, things to bees in a hive: it masks the bees sense of smell. much as smoke in our nose does and drives bees to gorge them-saves on hoine. A swarm is alread1j gorged on honeu and smoke WILL ontu cause the bees to flkj around L14, a crowfused state making, hiving them more difficult. This swarm might best be hived by setting the box on the platform at the top of the slide and coaxing the bees to walk in by dropping a handful of them on the landing board in front of the entrance or just inside it. These bees will signal the others to go in the hive. Swarms are usually gentle but you will occasionally run into one that is aggressive. For this reason it is best not to encourage bystanders to get close.

6 Swarms are also usually very good at drawing out comb. If you hive a swarm give them lots of foundation to work on and feed them sugar syrup or diluted honey to keep them at it. If you use sugar syrup anything they store in those new combs will most likely contain sugar syrup. Sugar syrup, even when converted with enzymes, thickened and stored in capped cells is NOT honey, it is empty calories just as it was in granulated form, it has no vitamins, minerals or amino acids so plan on letting the swarm keep it as feed or use it to feed other colonies. DO NOT SELL IT AS HONEY!! HENBIT and DEADNETTLE Here at the end of April it has been so wet that farmers who did not plow last fall or early this spring are having to wait for their fields to dry out. A lot of those untilled fields are beautifully purple. In this picture is a sprig of Henbit on the left and Dead nettle on the right. They come from the same family and can be found growing together. The florets are shaped the same on each and run from pink to purple. On Henbit the leaves are short and kind of ragged looking coming out below the florets. The florets on Deadnettle peak out from beneath purplish/brownish, heart shaped leaves. Deadnettle leaves exchange their dark color for genuine green as they grow lower on the stalk. The bulk of the purple look of the fields comes from the upward pointed florets of Henbit. The florets have long slender bases in which the nectar is found. They have what appear to be lips hanging down and a hood over the opening. Looking straight on the blossom reminds me of a hippopotamus with its mouth wide open, though very much smaller. The anther and stamen are located in the hood. A honey bee going into the floret to get nectar pushes her forehead against the anthers and stamen accomplishing pollination for the plant and coming away with a red smudge across her face including her eyes. A few swipes with her middle legs removes the pollen everywhere except right between her antennae leaving what looks like a red dot between her eyes. New beekeepers are often concerned by this red dot. The pollen collected from Henbit and Deadnettle is deep red. Dandelions are also in bloom giving bright yellow pollen as well as forsythia and many other field weeds making for colorful deposits of pollen in the hives combs. / final/)' have bees again These last two months were the first time / have been wawut bees since 1978 and / really missed them, especially now that / can have them in my back yard Bob told me that through most of April the bees would expand the brood nest &rang the day and contract and /et the outer edges of the nest chill at night Bat last week real expansion took off and the colonies are growing rap/07 now / brought my nucs home with open screened bottom boards but once in place / dosed the bottom boards until the sacs are stronger and the nights consrstentrk warmer We no longer have a web site with Goshen College. The College has revised their system in some way and we are no longer included. We appreciate the many years Goshen College provided the site and allowed us to post our back issues of the Bee Line as well as photos from past meetings. If you have a Facebook account the MBA has a posting there courtesy of Steve Lesniak. Go to http: / /on. fb me/mi chi anabees We have been offered another location to be online and will let you know when we have more news and an online address.

7 Foraging Worker Bee with Red Forehead Deep Red Pollen Pellet from Henbit and Deadnettle on Forager's Pollen Basket. Field of Henbit and Deadnettle. Nectar Forager rubbing her head on the underside of the blossom hood. Slabaugh Apiaries Honey and Supply Local Honey Select Hive BodMs Select Deep and Medium Frames Screened IPM Bottom Boards Lanai Matted Queens, Queen Cells Danny Stabaugh County Road 52 Nappanee, IN Home (574) Cell (574) Honey Supers Telescoping Covers Inner Covers Candy Boards Pieroo Snap In Foundation Indiana 5 Frame Nous Proposed meeting schedule for 2011 Saturday, June 18 Linton's lawn and garden center east of Elkhart to learn about some bee friendly plants. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, July 7, 8, 9 Heartland Apicultural Society (HAS) meeting at Vincennes, IN Saturday, July 16 Bee Yard meeting at Earl Schmucker's in Nappanee, IN Saturday, August 20 Bee Yard meeting at LeRoy Kuhns near Nappanee, IN Saturday, September 17 Warsaw, Indiana Saturday, October 15 Banquet location to be announced. Page 7