Brett, when harvesting, after you get the supers home, make new colonies by using the bees from the honey supers. Simply put 3-4 full size honey supers on a box of foundation or even drawn comb with a bee escape on it and put a caged mated queen in the new box below. The bees from the supers will move down over night (maybe two nights). You can take away the supers the next day and start extracting. Re-do again with 3-4 more supers on same box with queen, and this way you can treat with oxalic acid before there is sealed brood in the new colonies. move back to apiary and feed them 1 gallon 1:1 or even 2:1 Syrup and a pollen patty. Depending on the number of bees they will draw out an entire box. Within 2 Weeks each colony will have 4 Frames of brood and be nice mite free colonies going into winter. OBTW I used to have bees hanging on my truck before I started doing this. It's an easy way to add a dozen new colonies before winter. Happy bees make happy beekeepers. Cheers, james
I'd be throwing resources at a losing gamble, I think. I think I have about 4 weeks until cluster time up here. Otherwise yeah, I would definitely do something like that. What I ended up doing was waiting for them to cluster on a lid and I popped 'em in a nuc box. The stragglers from the next two days naturally gravitated towards that nuc so now it's stacked. I don't have any extra mated queens and don't plan to make a colony out of it so when I go to feed a couple of split yards tomorrow I'm going to shake them out in those yards. Thanks for the cool idea though, I certainly appreciate it.
I only have 6 colonies and you are correct. Shaking and brushing the bees off is the easiest. Of course I realize that you can’t do that with your operation , so whether you use bee escapes or fume boards or blowers, i guess you are still gonna have a good number of bees to find a home for??
Right now it is. It wasn't at the end of last week when this video was made. I have 3 yards waiting for this upcoming weekend to get treated because of that. I'll install it on an 85 degree day though, I don't have a problem with that. It's this 90 91 stuff we're intermittently having that gives me pause.
On and off above 85 now. When I was installing the formic on day 1 and 2 it was like 79 or so. I had to wait for the third day, it was way too hot then. Generally though I don't usually have issues treating with formic in August, I certainly didn't think moving to the upper peninsula would pose any issues, and as luck would have it like I said I had to put off treating one yard last weekend because of high temps. Ah, I'll get formic on them as soon as they go down, which looks to be this upcoming weekend.
So….I’m guessing from your statement….that as long as it’s not to hot when you are applying it….it doesn’t hurt for the temperature to go back up after you have it on the hive…..that doesn’t make a lot of sense right now….I’ll have to experiment with Formic Pro….I’ve never used it….but you seem to have faith in it….so I trust your judgement…
You seem to be in a much brighter mood today!
Great video buddy!! Good luck getting them into a box. Looking forward to your extracting vids✅😁👍👍👍🏴☠️🏴☠️
Hope you end with a great season. Looks like it is working out so far . Keep it up.
Thanks, Kathy!
Brett, when harvesting, after you get the supers home, make new colonies by using the bees from the honey supers. Simply put 3-4 full size honey supers on a box of foundation or even drawn comb with a bee escape on it and put a caged mated queen in the new box below. The bees from the supers will move down over night (maybe two nights). You can take away the supers the next day and start extracting. Re-do again with 3-4 more supers on same box with queen, and this way you can treat with oxalic acid before there is sealed brood in the new colonies. move back to apiary and feed them 1 gallon 1:1 or even 2:1 Syrup and a pollen patty. Depending on the number of bees they will draw out an entire box. Within 2 Weeks each colony will have 4 Frames of brood and be nice mite free colonies going into winter. OBTW I used to have bees hanging on my truck before I started doing this. It's an easy way to add a dozen new colonies before winter. Happy bees make happy beekeepers. Cheers, james
I'd be throwing resources at a losing gamble, I think. I think I have about 4 weeks until cluster time up here. Otherwise yeah, I would definitely do something like that. What I ended up doing was waiting for them to cluster on a lid and I popped 'em in a nuc box. The stragglers from the next two days naturally gravitated towards that nuc so now it's stacked. I don't have any extra mated queens and don't plan to make a colony out of it so when I go to feed a couple of split yards tomorrow I'm going to shake them out in those yards. Thanks for the cool idea though, I certainly appreciate it.
I only have 6 colonies and you are correct. Shaking and brushing the bees off is the easiest. Of course I realize that you can’t do that with your operation , so whether you use bee escapes or fume boards or blowers, i guess you are still gonna have a good number of bees to find a home for??
You should include a honey label requierments part in your honey extration/bottling video 🤪.
I will. Thanks for the idea.
Hey Brett. It's been 80* to 85* deg here in Wisconsin do you think that's a little too warm to use formic pro now?
Right now it is. It wasn't at the end of last week when this video was made. I have 3 yards waiting for this upcoming weekend to get treated because of that. I'll install it on an 85 degree day though, I don't have a problem with that. It's this 90 91 stuff we're intermittently having that gives me pause.
What about adding Formic Pro …this early….what about the 85’ temperature limitation….isn’t it still to hot….
On and off above 85 now. When I was installing the formic on day 1 and 2 it was like 79 or so. I had to wait for the third day, it was way too hot then. Generally though I don't usually have issues treating with formic in August, I certainly didn't think moving to the upper peninsula would pose any issues, and as luck would have it like I said I had to put off treating one yard last weekend because of high temps. Ah, I'll get formic on them as soon as they go down, which looks to be this upcoming weekend.
So….I’m guessing from your statement….that as long as it’s not to hot when you are applying it….it doesn’t hurt for the temperature to go back up after you have it on the hive…..that doesn’t make a lot of sense right now….I’ll have to experiment with Formic Pro….I’ve never used it….but you seem to have faith in it….so I trust your judgement…
I use a backpack blower, works great
Is that all you use? What kind of nozzle on the end?
I took the tip off so its not to strong
It's a stihl backpack