Southern IL All-A-Buzz March 2018 Volume 6, Issue 1 Editor s Note By Diane Bayer As always, our club is very active teaching others about bees. Jess Will took the mobile bee display to the Maplefest on February 24th and 25th. He and numerous club volunteers shared information and answered questions with those in attendance. On March 3rd, Scott Martin, Brian Thieje and Jess Will had a swarm box building event at the extension office barn. 9 people attended and 3 boxes were assembled on site. Another 20 or so were cut out and taken home with attendees to put together. The swarm box design used has been very effective in catching swarms. Pam and Joann Rizkallah have been speaking to clubs across southern Illinois about genetics. They also have two classes they are presenting on Queen Rearing and a Beekeeping Explorer s class. Please see more information on these classes elsewhere in this newsletter. Saturday, March 10th, Scott Martin, Angie Kuehl, Jess Will, and Pam & Joann Rizkallah presented 2 beginning beekeeping classes at Plantscape Nursery in Carterville. The classes again this year had very good attendance with 65 interested people. Upcoming on March 27th is the Sparta Primary School s Science Fair. Members will be attending with the mobile bee display to share with kids of all ages. Thanks to all our club volunteers for sharing their time and knowledge to promote bees. If you are interested in helping educate about bees, please contact any club officer to volunteer! In This Issue: Editor s Note.........1 Various News Items.1 Beekeeping Classes..2 Membership and Contact Info....3 Swarm Season is Coming!.....3&4 For Sale or Trade...5 Upcoming Meeting Schedule. 5 Club Secretary We are in need of a club secretary! If you or anyone you know is interested and willing, please let us know. Requirements are meeting attendance, pretty good hearing, minimal writing skills and reading minutes at business meetings. We need you! March Meeting Room Change Due to a small scheduling conflict with the facility, we have a meeting room change at the Extension Office on March 19th. The meeting room is being used for the Tuesday election and will be set up the day before for early morning voting. To accommodate that, we will be meeting in the basement on March 19th. You can enter as normal using the front door or you can use the basement entrance on the parking lot side of the building. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Beekeeping Classes Page 2 Club members Pam and Joann Rizkallah, of Egyptian Queen Breeding, have 2 upcoming classes they will be teaching. The topics are Queen Rearing and an introductory class on Beekeeping. There are several dates and locations for these classes. Please see pictures of flyers below for class information. Contact Pam or Joann at 618-967-1069 to sign up. Pam and Joann are breeding mite resistant stock and have queens and nucs available to sell. You can visit their Egyptian Queen Breeding FB page for prices and more information. Have a question about beekeeping? We have a wealth of experienced beekeepers in our club! Come to the meetings to learn from local beekeepers.
Membership Information Individual S.I. All-A-Buzz Dues $10.00 Plus ISBA Dues $10.00 Individual $20.00 Family S.I. All-A-Buzz Dues $15.00 Plus ISBA Dues $10.00 Family $25.00 ISBA Illinois State Beekeepers Association ISBA dues are optional. Only one ISBA membership per family required. If additional ISBA memberships are desired, $10.00 per member. Dues are payable in December. Please pay dues at meeting or mail to: S.I. All-A-Buzz PO Box 75 Campbell Hill, IL 62916 Contact List President Kenny Fisher 618-534-0203 ponddux@frontier.com Vice-Pres Scott Martin 618-559-0766 soilcon@mchsi.com Secretary Position Open Treasurer Mary Brown 618-534-9771 coconuts4@outlook.com Newsletter Editor Diane Bayer 618-615-1132 dianebayer@yahoo.com Webpage Admin Pam & Joann Rizkallah 618-967-3634 prizkallah@hotmail.com State Bee Inspector Peter Hanson 815-341-0248 peterbeekeep@gmail.com Swarm Season is Coming! Page 3 By Scott Martin There is still time to build more bait boxes to attract the many swarms of bees that are sure to be leaving their current hives in search of new homes. Our job is two-fold; 1) don't let any of our own colonies swarm and 2) catch swarms from other colonies. Last year I caught 19 swarms in bait boxes. Five of them came from my own hives and the other 14 came from feral colonies. Swarming is the process by which a new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees. One way to control the natural swarming instinct in your bee colonies is to split a hive. This is where a beekeeper will take ¼ to ½ of all the frames in a hive and place them in smaller boxes, referred to as nucs, to create other colonies of bees, called splits. Many beekeepers buy additional queen bees for the new splits from queen producers. Sources for these queens are local queen producers, Illinois Queen Initiative queen producers - https:// www.illinoisqueeninitiative.com/iqi-producers-page/, and the names of queen producers in bee publications like Bee Culture and American Bee Journal. Other beekeepers let the splits, that are queenless, create their own queen from manipulation of the cell walls of very tiny bee larvae. For this method, consult Mel Disselkoen s web site at http://www.mdasplitter.com/index.php Another method of controlling the swarming urge is to give the bees more space BEFORE the bees develop the urge to swarm. This can be as simple as reversing the position of boxes. During examination, if the entire brood cluster is located in the top deep box or top two medium boxes, moving the bottom brood box to the top will allow the queen to move upwards and lay eggs in empty comb. This method might only delay the swarming urge for a month but that can help if the beekeeper isn t ready to make a split right then. Still another method of controlling the swarm urge is to checkerboard the brood area with frames of empty comb or foundation. The Spring Management method is explained in detail at the following YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlnss9-or4&t=1352s Swarm Season is Coming! Continued on page 4...
...Swarm Season is Coming continued. Signs of swarm preparations in the Spring: Colonies won t swarm until there are some drones in the neighborhood. When examining a colony in March or April, note if there are any drone cells capped. Drone larvae are capped on day 9 and they take 24 days to hatch. Therefore, if no drone cells are found, there are likely 2-4 weeks before any swarm concerns. If there are capped drone cells only, then there is less time. If there are drones already hatched and walking around, like two of my strong colonies this past week, there is even a shorter period before possible swarming. Colonies also won t swarm without leaving several queen cells. This provides a replacement queen for the colony that remains when a swarm leaves the current home. Look for peanutlike queen cells at the lower part of frames in the middle part of the hive. In a 10 frame box, check the lower areas of frames 4, 5, 6, and 7 for the most likely location of queen cells. An open queen cell means that there is likely 4-6 days before a swarm leaves depending on weather. Page 4 Capped queen cells and a swarm may occur in a few days if the weather is warm and sunny. Before a queen can leave the hive and fly with a swarm, she needs to go from Sumo size to Welterweight size. The court of bees around the queen refuses to feed her. In addition, several trainer bees continually harass the queen so she keeps moving around the frames of comb expending energy. Both these actions over a 3 to 4 day period brings the queen down to flying weight. At the same time there are no new eggs laid in the cells of the drawn comb. Therefore, another sign of an impending swarm is the absence of eggs and tiny larvae in cells. Now is the time to get those swarm boxes ready and put up! Swarm season will soon be upon us. Bee prepared!
For Sale or Trade Page 5 Hive Supplies *Wax Foundation: Medium - with wire embedded, no hooks. Qty 125 Medium - no wire. Qty 75 *Wax Foundation: Shallow - with wire and hooks. Qty 250 Shallow - with wire, no hooks. Qty 70 *Plastic Foundation: Deep - Qty 20 Medium - Qty 10 *Pair of 9-frame spacers *Candy Board, Qty 5 *Pollen Patty Shims, Qty 4 *Queen Excluders: Wood Bound, Qty 5 Metal, Qty 3 Please call Mark Fletter, 618-559-2768 to make offer. Honey Bottles 10 cases of 250-1lb high density plastic skep honey bottles. Jess Will has purchased these in bulk so they should run only.20 to.30 cents per bottle. He is waiting to get invoice from company to confirm price. Prefers to sell by the case. Contact Jess at jcwill@midwest.com or phone/text 618-571-2716. Upcoming Meeting Schedule March Meeting March 19th, 2018 April Meeting April 16th, 2018 May Meeting May 21st, 2018 June Meeting June 18th, 2018 August Meeting August 20th, 2018 October Meeting October 15th, 2018 December Meeting and Christmas Potluck December 3rd, 2018 6pm! Unless otherwise noted, all meetings will be held at the Murphysboro Extension office. Hive opening 6pm-weather permitting, meeting 7pm.