Tending Colonies

[Joseph Clemens]

Our generous late summer rains have inspired a flow which seems to have begun in earnest today.

So this morning I went to my secondary apiary where all the colonies are local, feral, survivors; all produced by a succession of walk-away splits from an initial transferred feral colony.

I wanted to see how they were doing with the various kinds of small-cell foundation I have been using with them.

All the colonies in multiple medium supers did a fair to good job of drawing their all plastic small-cell, but an even better job with horizontal wired all-wax small-cell.

One colony was in a double deep with a medium on top. The bottom deep was horizontal wired all-wax small-cell and all were drawn very well and were filled with a very nice pattern of brood. The second deep was all plastic small-cell, but this colony had made a total mess of the plastic small-cell (all other colonies that were given deep plastic small-cell foundation did quite well), perhaps because I had failed to adjust the end bars to a 1-1/4" spacing. This colony had the bottom deep full of small-cell brood; the next super (also a deep) had 4 combs of honey built between sheets of all plastic small-cell foundation, (the majority were still untouched after more than a year); then a queen excluder and last was a medium super with mixed foundation, some Pierco one-piece frame/foundation, some Pierco foundation in wood, some all plastic small-cell -- all were completely full of honey.

I made walk-away splits of two of the colonies at this apiary leaving the queenless portion in the old locations with plenty of eggs and young larvae to raise their own replacement queens. Most likely this flow will be more than enough to get them off to a good start.

I spent 5 hours working them while wearing low cut suede shoes, white cotton socks, long pants with cuff straps, a long sleeve button dress shirt with a pith helmet and tie-on veil --- no gloves, while I carefully and methodically examined the colonies here I only received about 6 stings, most were on my fingers where I accidentally pinched some while manipulating frames and supers, one was on my right ankle through the sock. My smoker kept going out (I need to dry out some of my fuel -- rain got it wet), it was out more than it was burning, so I didn't get to administer much smoke. If these colonies are AHBs they really aren't very defensive. Though they sure are durable, I've never used any treatments at all and though I see a few mites once in awhile, they stay strong and produce well.

Most of this time was spent examining combs for Housel orientation and marking them with thumb tacks in the top bar for the potential to see if Housel Positioning may have a valid positive influence.

[Michael Bush]

I think the reports that the bees are all AHB in AZ are GROSSLY exagerated.

Dee Lusby collects feral swarms in Tuscon all the time.  They are much calmer than my Texas Buckfasts were when I had them last.

[Kirk-o]

I think a lot of Info on Africanized bees comes from the news media MERCHANTS OF CAOS very seldom do the put the facts out about bees or anything else for that matter.If you listened to the Media you would be afaid to do anything or going anywere let alone be keeping bees I think Mother Nature will help work things out if we let her
kirk0