www.lancastercountyhoneyproducers.org also LCHP@yahoogroups.com Summer 2010 Officers President: Dan Chambers 58 River Road Pequea, PA 17565 717-284-3418 danielchambers@verizon.net Vice President: David Fontaine, Jr. 1205 E. Newport Rd. Lititz, PA 17543 717-626-0421 RetMDV@ptd.net Secretary: Christina Seldomridge 150 Riveredge Dr. Leola, PA 17540 717-656-2019 seldomchris@comcast.net Treasurer: Robert Singer 58 Saint John Circle Lititz, PA 17543 717-626-1103 romer@dejazzd.com Newsletter: Jim Pinkerton 127 Park Avenue Mount Joy, PA 17552 717-653-5911 jim@gatheringplacemj.com Membership in the Lancaster County Honey Producers is $10.00 per family per year and should be sent to Bob Singer, Treasurer Meetings for 2010 *********************** Feb 27 9:00am to Noon Introduction to Bees and Beekeeping Workshop 24 people attended March 16 Lancaster County Honey Producer s Banquet 51 people attended April 20, 6:30pm Environmental Center in the Lancaster County Park May 18, 7:00pm Meeting at James Strickler Home August 10 Picnic at Strickler s Home See official invitation on other page. August 21 National Honey Bee Awareness Day Display table and volunteers at Central Market Sept 21, 7:00pm Location TBA Oct. 19, 7:00pm Honey Roundup and meeting at Dutch Gold Honey
Feeding Bees from Beeworks.com Feeding. The means of supplementing or stimulating a hive at various times of the year, to improve its viability. After the honey crop has been removed it is vital that the bees have sufficient stores to carry them through winter into early spring, otherwise they will starve, one of the biggest failures of a wintered hive. In our area we find the hives need approximately 100 lbs of stores. Translated into easy maths, each frame (standard deep) will hold approximately 7 lbs, so a hive examined in late fall should have at least 14 plus frames of sealed stores. If not then they should be fed, quickly. For winter feed A 2-1 sugar syrup in a hive top feeder should be fed early enough for the bees to convert and seal off ready for winter. It should be remembered that bees need warmth to work and a reasonable daytime temperature is essential to allow them time to convert. With fall feeding it should be a lot in a short time If it should be dragged out by only supplying small amounts the danger of stimulating new brood is very possible, quite the reverse of what is needed. By feeding large amounts quickly any cells becoming empty in the upper super from late emerging brood will be filled, forcing the queen into the bottom box. The perfect position to start the winter. An interesting question? Is sugar better than honey for feed? The simple answer, yes, sugar is better. It seems there are fewer solids in sugar; therefore the bees have fewer feces to vent during cleansing flights. It is possible to feed honey drippings etc. from the fall extracting, but it should be stressed not to use heated honey in any form, otherwise dysentery is almost guaranteed. The alternative thinking to using sugar, it has little nutritional value, so honey is really the better winter feed. Spring Feeding. A misnomer in fact. If fall feeding was carried out correctly then spring feeding should not be necessary. The term should really be 'spring stimulation' because that is what is being attempted. Incoming nectar is the trigger to most hive functions, without it the queen will stop laying, brood production goes into a decline, and hive activity slows down. Now add a slow drip of nectar, (sugar syrup), and suddenly activity increases. We add on top of the inner cover a jar, about a quart size, approximately 6 holes, 1/16th in diameter drilled through the lid. Fill with 1-1 sugar syrup and invert over the inner cover hole. The vacuum created holds the liquid in place and allowing the bees access to take it down will stimulate the hive into believing a flow has started. Working backwards from when the real first flow starts, we stimulate to produce bees for this flow by adding syrup 6 weeks ahead. Remember:- Do not overfeed in the spring. The danger being a honey bound brood area, nowhere for the queen to lay, leading to early swarming. Nucs and Splits. We make a good number of splits or nucs (nucleus hives) every year, and the one thing that gets them off to a good start is feeding. On making up a split there are a few points worth repeating. First, a split, after a couple of days will have lost most if not all of its foraging bees, so therefore there is no nectar coming in. In these circumstances the queen will lay, only if there are open stores. On making up the split, crack open sealed stores with a hive tool, and then feed using the spring stimulation method. Finally, remember! Bees will only draw foundation during a flow, so feed heavily if adding foundation even more so if you intend to use plastic foundation.
Lancaster County Honey Producers Summer Picnic Our club will be having a summer picnic on Tuesday, August 10th. Papa James, Fern, Peter, James & Christian Strickler have graciously invited us to have the picnic at their home at 1855 Stony Battery Road, just outside Mountville. You can begin arriving at 5:00 and we will begin eating at 6:00. The club will supply paper products and plastic ware, James says they will supply ice water and punch. There will be folding chairs available, but if you like you can bring your favorite lawn chair. There is a pond and Papa James says the kids can bring their fishing gear (maybe they can catch their supper). No business meeting, just bring a covered dish and enjoy an evening conversing with members and their families. There are plenty of shade trees and of course the pond, a beautiful location for a summer evening picnic. RSVP to jim@gatheringplacemj.com or phone 653-5911. Summer schedules can be hectic. If you have last minute changes, we would still enjoy your company. Other Summer Dates to keep in mind. PSBA Summer Picnic Will be held Friday and Saturday, July 23, 24 at the Asbury Woods Nature Center, Erie, PA. www.ashburywoods.org Also see the State Newsletter for more information. 7 th Annual Beekeeping Picnic.Saturday, July 31.. Hosted by, Shawn Moyer (Oxbow Apiaries) and Mike Thomas (Bjorn Apiaries), Located 180 Century Lane, Dillsburg, PA 17019..Be there by Noon! Earlier if you want to help or socialize. RSVP if possible, but last minute attendees welcome. (717) 938-0444. National Honey Bee Awareness Day August 21 A table outside the Central Market in Lancaster, with honey bee information, an observation hive and volunteers to talk to the public is what is planned. Lori Stahl will be the contact for this event. lori@stahlgallery.com or (717) 656-2825
This is a copy of the first meeting of our organization in 1876.
Beekeeping Fallacies By Michael Bush: I'm sure some people believe these and will disagree, but here are some ideas that I consider myths of beekeeping: You have to move hives two feet or two miles or you will lose a lot of bees. I hear this one a lot.. I move bees all the time fifty, a hundred yards or more. The trick is to put a branch in front of the entrance to trigger reorientation. If you do this it works well. If you don't do this most of the field bees will go back to the old location. You have to extract. The beginner beekeepers all seem to think they have to have an extractor. You don't. I had bees for 26 years without one. You can make cut comb or crush and strain with little investment and no more work than extracting. Drones are bad. Drones, of course are normal. A normal healthy hive will have a population in the spring of somewhere around 15% drones. The argument for almost a century or more (really just a selling point for foundation) was that drones eat honey, use energy and don't provide anything to the hive, therefore controlling the drone comb and therefore the number of drones will make a hive more productive. All the research I've heard of says the opposite is true. If you try to limit the number of drones your production will decrease. Bees have an instinctive need to make a certain number and fighting that is a waste of effort. Other research I've seen says that you will end up with the same number of drones no matter what you, the beekeeper do anyway. Queen cells are bad and the beekeeper should destroy queen cells if they find them. It seems like most of the books I've read convince beginning beekeepers that queen cells should always be destroyed. The bees are either going to swarm, or you want to stop them, or they are trying to replace that precious store-bought queen with a queen of unknown lineage mated with those awful feral drones. Most of the time when you destroy queen cells the bees swarm anyway, or they already swarmed before you destroyed them, and they not only swarm, but also end up queenless. I see swarm cells as free queens of the highest quality. I put each frame that has queen cells on it, in its own nuc. Usually I try to leave one with the original hive and the old queen in a nuc. That way I've made a bunch of small splits and left the hive thinking it's swarmed already. With supersedure cells, I leave them because the bees apparently have found the queen wanting and I trust the bees. Destroying a supersedure cell is also likely to leave them queenless. The queen is probably about to fail, or she's already failed or died and you just removed their only hope of a queen. Beekeepers should buy queens because mating with the local bees is bad. Of course this one goes with the above reasons given for why supersedures are bad. I think mating with the local bees is the preferred method. You get bees that are surviving in your area. I do know a lot of people who buy queens all the time because of this fallacy. The supersedure rate has grown over the years to the point that a typical introduced queen is almost instantly superseded. If that's true (and some of the experts tell me it is) then you'll have a home grown queen anyway, so why waste your money? There is a lot of research on how much better the quality of a queen is if you let her continue to lay from when she starts instead of banking her right after she starts laying. When you buy a commercial queen, you get one that was banked right after she started to lay. I have serious doubts that you can buy a better queen than you can raise yourself, especially if you have clean wax, and most especially if you've been collecting swarms from bees that live in your climate. Feeding can't hurt anything. I hear this one a lot. But I think feeding CAN hurt a lot. Feeding is one of the leading causes of problems. It attracts pests like ants, it sets off robbing, it often drowns a large number of bees, and worst, it often results in a nectar bound brood nest and swarming. If the hive is light in the fall, the beekeeper should feed. If the bees are starving, feed. If you're installing a new package or a swarm, feed until they get a little stores. Once they have a little stored and there's a flow, let them do what bees do. Gather nectar. A good rule of thumb is that they should have at least some capped comb and a flow before you stop feeding. If there is no brood there is no queen. There are many reasons you might find a hive with no brood even though there is a queen. First, in my climate at least, from October to April there may or may not be brood because they stop in October and then raise little batches of brood with broodless periods in between. Second, some frugal bees will shut down brood rearing in a dearth. Third, a hive that has lost a queen and raised an emergency queen often is broodless because by the time the new queen has emerged, hardened, mated and started to lay 25 or more days have passed and ALL the brood has emerged. Fourth a hive can swarm and the new queen isn't laying yet. She won't be laying for probably two weeks after the hive swarmed. Many a beginner (or even a veteran) beekeeper has found a hive in this state, ordered a queen, introduced her and had her killed, ordered another queen, introduced her and had her killed and finally noticed there were eggs. Unmarked virgin queens are very hard to find even by the most experienced beekeeper. A frame of eggs and brood would have been a better insurance policy. That way IF the hive is queenless they can raise one, and if they aren't it won't hurt anything and you'll know the answer to the question.