How To Create And Maintain A Strong Bee Colony

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

In connection with the unusually warm winter of this year, nature has made adjustments to the development of bee colonies in the North-West of Russia

The queen bee, the ancestor of the family, very early started laying eggs in the cells of the brood nest combs, which led to a very early build-up of the family. By the beginning of May, drones had already appeared in many families, where there were significant reserves of honey and bee bread, and this is a sure indicator that the time for natural reproduction of bees will soon come, i.e. swarming.

Favorable spring days, when the worker bees managed to significantly replenish their food reserves with fresh nectar and pollen, only accelerated the manifestation of this natural instinct. Anyone who closely followed the work of bees in April and early May could have assumed in advance that the swarming of bees this year should be expected at an earlier date.

Those beekeepers who could not timely control this process of bee development had undesirable results in the form of super-early unexpected swarms that took off already in the second half of May - during the period when the bird cherry blossoms began, although the gardens were still practically "bare", some of them had just begun to bloom. stone fruits - cherry plum, cherry, plum.

Could this have been avoided? Oh sure. Experienced beekeepers, using the favorable days of April, when the temperature in the shade was more than 12 ° C, tried to remedy the situation by timely implementation of a set of anti-fighting measures. For this, the nest is expanded for the full load of bees of all ages, and most importantly, it is necessary to create conditions for the queen's constant work on laying eggs in free cells of combs.

Thanks to these techniques, uncontrolled swarming and the loss of a significant mass of worker bees, which are so necessary for creating strong families, are excluded. All their energy is directed to the rapid collection of naturally occurring nectar with its subsequent processing into honey.

But if time is lost, and the bee colony has started actively preparing the swarming, then this process cannot be stopped. Therefore, you should prepare to catch the first swarm and immediately take all measures to prevent subsequent uncontrolled swarming. Otherwise, only a handful of bees may remain in the mother's family, and all hopes for obtaining any honey reserves will not come true. In the best case, having lost the swarms, you will have to make a lot of efforts to save the bees, feed them and prepare them for the winter period.

Before giving any recommendations on caring for a bee family, it is necessary to have accurate data on the number of streets densely populated by bees, on the activity of their summer for nectar, pollen, etc.

In our Northwest region, where weather conditions can change several times a day, and the activity of bees in strong colonies can also manifest itself cyclically. The quick and rapid departure from the hive and then the active arrival of worker bees, clearly heavy with the burden, indicates the presence of a stable bribe in nature. It happens that even a light rain does not stop their work. As evidenced by long-term observations of experienced beekeepers, a favorable season in beekeeping can be predicted if the weather is relatively warm during the day, and at night the temperature is not lower than 12 ° C, and if the sun does not burn and the sky is not bright blue, but covered with a whitish haze, and if precipitation periodically falls. And if they are plentiful, then they happen at night. Under such conditions, in nature, plants not only actively bloom,but they also emit an increased amount of nectar, which will be collected by the bees, delivered to the hive and processed into honey, sealed with wax caps for future storage, since there are not always favorable years, and then the family will be forced to use these reserves.

All activities of a beekeeper in caring for bees in the spring-summer period should be aimed at round-the-clock loading of bees with work and creating a favorable thermal regime for them.

With sufficiently cold nights, the insulation in the hive should be maintained, and when the first signs of overheating appear, when the bees at the entrance begin to actively work with their wings, staying in place, that is, performing ventilation of the nest, it is necessary to urgently remove excessive insulation or bend part of the canvas to ensure intensive ventilation of the hive. And in the future, it is already necessary to act depending on the behavior of the bees and weather conditions. But in the early spring, when there are sharp changes in temperature, it seems that you should heed the advice of old beekeepers. And they say: "In the spring, keep the bee warm. Bees, like children, love warmth."

As I have already noted, a warm winter led to the very early laying of eggs by the queen, and contributed to the appearance of young bees in the family 21 days later. And from day to day they became more and more. They were actively involved in the work of raising an increasing number of larvae that hatched from eggs laid by the uterus. But the activity of the uterus also increases during oviposition, and it is already capable of laying more than 1000 eggs. And this process is constantly increasing if all favorable conditions exist for it.

And when a relatively stable bribe appears in nature, then a lot of bees, freed from internal work, actively switch to work on replenishing fodder stocks - honey and bee bread.

And during this period, a situation may occur when the queen is forced to suspend the laying of eggs due to the lack of free cells, and the newly appeared young bees experience forced idleness. And during this period, the swarming instinct can be provoked in the family. And this leads to the laying of many swarm queen cells - a kind of elongated plum-like processes of wax in place of one of the eggs in the comb. After sealing such a mother liquor, a young, infertile uterus will appear in 16 days.

Therefore, an experienced beekeeper is always on guard. And before the bee colony reaches its peak in development, he tries to provide it with free space for the involvement of all individuals of the colony with work. To do this, he installs additional frames with foundation or shops with half frames. And as soon as a steady bribe appears in nature, the family is ready for the full load. This means that more honey and pollen will be harvested for future use, which will allow us to survive unfavorable years, long droughts or long cold and rainy years, when it is impossible to procure enough honey and bee bread.

For those bees who are under the auspices of the beekeeper, it is easier to survive all the troubles associated with the lack of bribe in nature, due to feeding with carbohydrate feed (sugar syrup) or granulated sugar. He helps them to protect themselves from natural enemies: bears, martens, foxes and many others. It also helps to fight infectious and invasive diseases of bees and brood.

The main irritant and patron of bees is a man - a beekeeper, from whose statements it follows that bees never have "excess honey", and a beekeeper, while selecting this product of bees' activity, can always compensate it at critical moments by using a substitute or protein feed - yeast and deodorized soy flour or other substitutes.

But still the most valuable food for bees is the natural products of beekeeping - honey and bee bread.

Proper care of bees and successful work with them is unthinkable without minimal practical skills and some theoretical knowledge in this area. Achievement of positive results in beekeeping is facilitated by the constant increase in the stock of nesting honeycomb frames without honey and bee bread and shop frames with dry land. These are the frames on which the artificial foundation was originally fixed (thin sheets of wax, on both sides of which there are impressions of the hexagonal bases of the bee cells). One kg usually contains about 14-16 sheets of standard foundation with a size of 410x260 mm.

If you put frames with foundation in the nest of bees, when there are bribes in nature, and there are a lot of young bees in the family, then they quickly build up honeycombs in which the offspring are reared and stocks of food (honey and bee bread) are stored.

In a store for beekeepers, you can buy the required number of standard frames or make them yourself. For the strength of the structure, a metal wire 0.5 mm thick is pulled into the frame, to which an artificial foundation is fixed by rolling, previously attached to the upper bar of the frame.

The wire acts as a reinforcement for stiffening the structure, and the foundation helps to rebuild the combs of the correct shape, saving time and energy costs for bees to pull the combs on new frames.

Each beekeeper should have a sufficient number of rebuilt combs, which are successfully used in spring colony growth and when discarding old dark combs located in the nest, as brood hatches in them. On average, they hatch up to 6 generations of bees per year. And further use of these combs is undesirable, since parts of cocoons remain in the cells, and their volume decreases, and this leads to the appearance of smaller worker bees, and there is an increased risk of infectious diseases.

Experts recommend using them for no more than two years, and store-bought ones last much longer - up to 10 years or more.

For our region, such a phenomenon is very characteristic as the sudden onset of a free-for-take period. This may be due to the absence of a period of flowering of honey plants (rains or drought), and the newly created family does not yet have sufficient reserves of food. As a result, a sharp weakening of its strength may occur. And then, when favorable conditions appear in nature, for example, with the mass flowering of later honey plants, a weakened family will no longer be able to procure a sufficient amount of commercial honey. She will just begin to gain strength, and the honey flow and weather conditions will again become less favorable.

Therefore, with the onset of the free-for-take period, the beekeeper must take care of replenishing feed reserves in order to have a strong, efficient family, which, under the first favorable conditions, will be able to create significant stocks of honey in a few fine days, more than returning his costs to the beekeeper during the free-for-take period. In addition, strong families are easier to prepare for the coming winter period. Good honey yield can also be expected from them in the future.