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  • What do you do to get your bees ready for winter and did it work?

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More advanced beekeeping discussion forum.
 #2328  by Chrisbarlow
 13 Mar 2019, 06:49
very interesting to know. couple of questions then

Mick, what do you use to measure brood temps?

and what feeder type are you all using? frame, rapid, miller, contact?
 #2332  by AdamD
 13 Mar 2019, 15:01
As long as bees can get out; syrup is fine. Some local to me feed syrup towards the end of Feb to encourage colonies to grow for OSR. However I have seen some OSR about to flower now so it is coming early this year.
 #2344  by MickBBKA
 13 Mar 2019, 22:36
I use a digital probe to measure colony temp and just ease it into the centre of the colony through the feed hole. I am using rapid feeders but only filling halfway.
We often get what looks to be OSR covering whole fields at this time of year. Our local farmers call it Runt and I think its a self seeded crop. It gets ploughed in and sown over with something else later.
Amazed to see the bees bringing in masses of pollen today in 45mph winds that have pushed my 8x6 green house a yard across my allotment.

Cheers, Mick.
 #2349  by Patrick
 14 Mar 2019, 13:59
OSR has a quite prolonged flowering period and for a variety of reasons may lose a significant quantity of seed due to pod shatter before being combined, therefore early the following season you quite often get a "volunteer" crop (never heard it referred to as Runt before Chris, nice one).

It obviously often looks to the casual eye very similar to the previous seasons's planted crop. But it won't fit with an intended rotation with wheat / beans whatever and allows pests such as flea beetle to persist longer and so reduce the effectiveness of intended rotations on pest populations, so would need to be ploughed in before the next crop is drilled. If the field were to be left fallow however, its more tricky and expensive to manage,
 #2715  by Chrisbarlow
 05 May 2019, 18:42
It ended up being a very good winter. My loss rate was 13% in the end. The colonies that came out seemed very strong indeed, however reading other forums, Facebook and you tube this seems common and not just in the uk either. I think the biggest thing I need to work on is knocking down small nucs and colonies in september and merging with stronger stock.
 #4520  by Japey Edge
 15 Aug 2019, 11:12
Thanks for reviving this Chris, it's really useful for me!

Some points and questions:
  • 1. Treat swarms for Varroa straight away - I haven't done this and this colony is the most likely to give me honey so I am unsure what to do at this point
    2. Re-queening old queens or swarms. I have a red marked queen from last year, and an unknown queen in this swarm.
    I guess I need a plan.
    3. Mouse guards - any tips for Abelo poly hives and Maisies nucs? Plastic entrances OK or metal/mesh?
    4. Times for feeding, treating etc. are vague wherever I look. I should probably look to make a timeline for myself to make sure I get this all right
    5. 50lbs of stores per hive. How do you know what is 50lbs? I plan on taking whatever honey I can from the super and leaving them what's left. Will feed if need be.
    6. Where is best to get invert from?
 #4521  by Chrisbarlow
 15 Aug 2019, 12:08
1. Treat swarms for Varroa straight away - I haven't done this and this colony is the most likely to give me honey so I am unsure what to do at this point
maybe use MAQS now, as you can use it with honey on
2. Re-queening old queens or swarms. I have a red marked queen from last year, and an unknown queen in this swarm.
I guess I need a plan.
red should be fine, the other who knows, I know that when I started using queens I knew the age off and new queens, my winter losses went down
3. Mouse guards - any tips for Abelo poly hives and Maisies nucs? Plastic entrances OK or metal/mesh? Poly nucs, put QE disc bit in. The abelo floors have an attachment you can buy, it's a small plastic thing part of the entrance
4. Times for feeding, treating etc. are vague wherever I look. I should probably look to make a timeline for myself to make sure I get this all right .
if your not taking honey off I would feed up starting now
5. 50lbs of stores per hive. How do you know what is 50lbs? I plan on taking whatever honey I can from the super and leaving them what's left. Will feed if need be. if your unsure , buy 25*1kg bags of sugar and feed it all to the same colony
6. Where is best to get invert from? dunno
 #4528  by Japey Edge
 15 Aug 2019, 14:09
Cheers Chris that's really helpful I appreciate it :)

I haven't MAQS at the moment - just Apitraz. Honey may be coming off this weekend unless I feel there's still plenty of forage. I've been keeping an eye out and there doesn't seem to be a great deal on offer.
Once I've taken what I can, I'll give them the frames back to clean up. After that I'm not sure whether to leave the super on and remove the QE, or just take the super off and store for winter, partially filled or whatever. Any tips?

The swarm queen, the unknown beast - is the angry queen. May be a two birds with one stone situation if I just buy a nice lovely Buckfast or Carnie queen in...

Entrances - good stuff I'm sorted there thanks :-)

Good shout with 50lbs thing. When do you stop liquid feeding?