Working Away

[idg]

Hi All - I need some advice.
I have 10 national hives and 1 nuc coming through the winter. They were well fed going into winter, and vapourised last month so I am hopeful most will do ok and I'm looking forward to spring.
I have been told that I need to go and work abroad from 9th June for approximately 12 weeks, so my beekeeping season has been smashed. I am not a member of any association, and the only person who knows anything about beekeeping is my 11 year old daughter who loves to help me.

My question is:- How should I approach this time. Is there anything I can do coming up to June to minimise damage from swarming. How should I try and set up the hives. Should I try and seek help. (The lady who gave me tuition in the first place is relatively local).

Plan B would be to walk away from them and leave them alone for 12 weeks. My daughter could place supers on (with guidance from mom) at periodic intervals, but this would be done blind as it were. i.e not knowing whether they needed a super or not.

Any advice greatly received.

 

[viridens]

Quick thoughts
1. The bees will get on with it with or without you.
2. You are likely to lose some honey yield and some bees. Not the end of the world.
3. If you are happy for your mentor to take over, and she is willing, this is likely the best option.
Otherwise:
4. Put on supers before you go. You should see where they are needed by 9 June.
5. Put out a few bait hives with foundation or starter strips if possible.
6. Your daughter can monitor the bait hives and super them if they are occupied, but don't put too much pressure on that little helper!
I hope your work is somewhere pleasant and goes well. See you in September.

 

[REDWOOD]

Buy 10 new queens and double brood, stack lots of honey boxes on top before you go.

 

[Anduril]

Buy 10 new queens and double brood, stack lots of honey boxes on top before you go.

Is that with queen excluder between the brood boxes, £300 expense for queens!
I'm with Viridens on this one.

 

[Stiffy]

Buy 10 new queens and double brood, stack lots of honey boxes on top before you go.

If you are happy with the bees you have, produce your own (10) queens. If you are unhappy with them, take this sojourn as a good opportunity to replace with some good quality queens.

Of course you could just let them get on without you but you will no doubt risk losing most of your bees and cause other beekeepers the hassle of collecting swarms issued from your stock.
S

 

[For want of a better word]

I'm with Viridens on this one too.

I would approach your old mentor.... I am sure your young lass will enjoy caring for the bees and learn a lot by working with her.

Bait hives are a good idea in any apiary.

If you are happy with the queens you have, why would you want to requeen?
There is no guarantee that a new queen would not swarm... particularly if purchased unwittingly from one of the more swarm prone varieties.

Make up your nuc into a hive....... leave plenty of supers made up!!

Do not forget the SunScreen !

Yeghes da

 

[bjosephd]

You clearly have more experience than me... but my gut instinct is similar to many above.

Double brood them with no queen excluder, not even below the supers - the bees will eventually migrate to the lower part of the hive as they backfill with honey. But you can be sure that at least Queeny won't run out of laying apace - that would be a needless way to lose a swarm.

And YES... LOTS of lovely smelling bait hives - as many as you can muster!

With all those bait hives, if you're (un?) lucky, you'll return to 20 colonies!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[idg]

Do not forget the SunScreen !

Yeghes da

Sun Screen might be appropriate! Bahrain with 50+ degrees C temperatures!!

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't though of the requeen / double brood option. I guess I have time to analyse after winter and make that call. Would I get queens in late May to make the necessary introductions by 2nd week in June?
Do you think combining weaker hives would help, or make situations worse?

 

[Poly Hive]

Park the queens you have in nucs before you go.

Excluders off and as others have said let them run free. Between getting the queens mated and having loads of room, say 4 sups per colony if you can you should be ok. It's not perfect but at least you will have some spare queens on your return to work with if needed.

If you tell people where you are as the "Midlands" is a huge area you might manage to organise a bee buddy to help you out.

PH

 

[bjosephd]

Indeed... first thing I did was look where in the country you were... midlands probably a bit far however low and west it is sadly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[kevrhcfag]

Standard national, double brood, 14 x 12?

It will as always all come down to the weather but since you are not going to be here if it was me I would probably.

See where they are before you go.
Make sure have more than enough supers on, if some are full take out frames and replace.
If you have equipment make up a couple or 3 nucs with brood and bees from the hives and give them some foundation to work on/ add a brood box.
Sort the carnage on your return.

 

[bjosephd]

Here's another thought...

Use the season up until June to get as much new comb/foundation drawn as possible. Use this season as comb drawing prep for next season.

If you keep removing a fair percentage of newly drawn comb it will also keep them very busy.

This freshly drawn comb will also be perfect for kitting out all those bait hives you're going to be surrounding your apiary with! Since bees love moving into a show-home fully-furnished rather than having to take a trip to Ikea once they move in.

So on last inspection before leaving you can go through once more and bung in a fair amount of foundation, or foundationless frames even, to keep them busy.

Pulling a few queens/nucs at the same time might also be a witty move so their main aim is drawing comb and re-queening, rather than swarming.

My question is... how much can a June-Pulled nuc develop/increase in 12 weeks high season? How soon at this time of year would one need to graduated to a full hive?

 

[For want of a better word]

Sun Screen might be appropriate! Bahrain with 50+ degrees C temperatures!!

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't though of the requeen / double brood option. I guess I have time to analyse after winter and make that call. Would I get queens in late May to make the necessary introductions by 2nd week in June?
Do you think combining weaker hives would help, or make situations worse?

Bahrain..... take an empty fold up suitcase for all the really inexpensive goodies you will buy!
T shirts ... pref cotton with long sleeves.
Keep out of Sun
Do not take codene into the country.
Been there... (and Dubai) would not go back!

You have a few months to think about your beekeeping strategy.
In late May making up a nuc with the existing queen ... one frame of brood and one of food and further three or four drawn comb or foundation + keep feeder topped up... for each of the strong colonies + a couple of supers on each of the strong colonies, should suffice.
I chopped a finger to bits a couple or three seasons ago... and probably due to the fact I could not get to the colonies... they all did very well!!

Oh... and a few greetings in Arabic will get you a long way!

Yeghes da

 

[Briarfield]

Some thoughts. Any reason you won't join an association?

Would your daughter be ok with a super on a tall stack?

What about neighbours and swarming?

What about nearby Beekeepers and disease/SBI access.

All these would worry me. (And more!)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Barbarian]

Well spotted Briarfield.

I was wondering too.

Started 101 threads and 272 posts.... joined 2014

 

[viridens]

Well spotted Briarfield.

I was wondering too.

Started 101 threads and 272 posts.... joined 2014

I don't feel very comfortable about comments like that.
I seems that big brother is alive and lurking.

 

[Nige.Coll]

If the weather is good you should get chance to split them before you go.
Fingers crossed when you return you'll still have more queens than you need.
As so many have said nucs with the old queens in and your daughter hasn't got to struggle with 5 ft high stacks. Give the colonies loads of space and hope for the best.
Nucs with mated queens will build up quite fast, I don't think they will buy you 12 weeks even if you added a second brood to them.

It's times like this when beekeeper friends are worth their weight in gold, been there, had surgery April last year couldn't do anything til mid June.

Where are you in the midlands and what puts you off associations ?
Your missing some very interesting stuff not being in one.
It's a tough situation.
Worst case split them all and set up bait hives and come back to a bit of a mess.

 

[Nige.Coll]

Started 101 threads and 272 posts.... joined 2014

This is irrelevant of no help and pointless.

 

[Anduril]

Started 101 threads and 272 posts.... joined 2014

This is irrelevant of no help and pointless.

He is a beekeeper asking for help not a pariah!

 

[Tindog]

Why not approach your local association, even though you are not a member. I'm sure someone will give you a hand. Pm me with your location, the Midlands is a large geographic area.
Andy