Now is the time to have a real good look at what's what with your hives .. get a decent anti varroa treatment . One for each hive and start buying plain sugar for making the 1:1 feeds.
Aim to have each hive stocked in the brood boxes and at least one super full of stores.
Check this physically , don't rely on " hefting the hives" unless you have years of multiple experience at doing it .
The bees will also soon be bringing in lots of Ivy pollen ( Our ivy is about to come into bloom) any honey with a strong ivy nectar content can give you evil head aches, so perhaps now is the time to stop trying to get anymore honey this year and start preparing your bees for a long wet winter and a long wet spring.
Natural supercession usually starts to take place this time of the year & so long as there is enough fine weather the new queen will begin laying enough winter replacement bees before she slows.
Then by Christmas day she will start laying large numbers of eggs. Come March she will be laying her own weight of eggs per day .
So if you want to re queen with little chance of the stock swarming , mid August is the time to start making your preparations for your own intentional re queening .
Mid August is the time to set up a neuc box and grow your queens ,by slicing off a two inch wide strip out of a frame that contains fresh brood in the bottom two & a half inches , so that there are fresh eggs stood on their ends in cut open cells . A Stanley knife with a brand new blade oiled both sided with a tiny drop of olive oil is great for this exercise .
Put the neuc box in the place where a weak hive was so the bees from it will go to the neuc and fill it with helpers ( workers turn back into to nurse bees if the need arises ).
Revitalize the weak hive with a frame of emerging frame of brood from several other hives & move it a good 10 yards a way at the rate of a yard every quarter of an hour on a barrow in daylight or take the complete weak hive three miles away all in one go .
Slip this cut frame back in the middle of the neuc box , the workers moving to the Neuc box will draw out several queen cells .
Once the cells are sealed , you can carefully remove the cell by cutting out some of the comb that holds it in pace & put it in a hive in a hole you have cutout in the brood comb to accept it , using a paper clip as a hanger .....taking care not to puncture the queen space after putting the old queens to death .
The hive now being queen less still sees the bees foraging and tending the hive as they sense a new queen is in the offing . Then as there are still drones being in the hive she will go on a very successful mating flight .
I used to also keep the neuc rearing boxes going with a new queen once I'd take the ones for re queening .
Sometimes even making up several neuc boxes ( I had 50 over wintering hives a total of 103 working summer hives so it was easy for me to play like this ) with new queens , as you can always unite them to a weaker hive before the end of the first week of September using a single broadsheet of newspaper with a few pin holes poked in it .
This is because sometimes a queen gets killed on her mating flight , you can then re pace the missing queen & unite any extra bees you have left from the neuc to give a late nectar gathering boost to the weakest hives .
Finally about 16 days after re queening physically check all your hives , to see that eggs are being laid in a decent patten & there is plenty of stores ..enough for along cold wet winter and a spring that's much of the same .
To me it much better to spend money from your profits on bringing a hive through winter & into spring in tip top condition than losing one to starvation & disease .
Topic: What are your bee stock producing and how full are the hives ? (Read 3532 times)
