Gonna do the sugar shake

[Cindi]

So now all my colonies have screeened bottomboards installed.  I checked through all the hives, no queen cells, all queen right and we are good to go.  The mite counts were quite low when I performed this 72 hour natural drop a short time ago, but we are going to keep them low  :roll:.  Last year was such a colony loss due to negligence of mite control on my part.  Lost 10 colonies due to swarming and varroa mite issues -- and I will not repeat this mistake.

I inspected my only overwintered hive last night that I had done a cut down split with on Thursday, May 17.  This colony had had the old queen removed to go into the split and was allowed to continue with rearing a queen. 

I saw the new queen walking over the comb last night, putting her head into cells to check them out.  That was a nice sight to see.  I didn't take time to look for eggs, but I am sure that she has been mated.  I saw the makings of the queen cell being torn down and another queen cell that this queen must have killed the queen that was in there.  I wanted to investigate this queen cell, so I brought it into the house and it was empty.  Good.  this overwintered old colony is doing fabulous and tomorrow they will get another box, it is pretty full of bees.  Gonna have a busy day.  Great life, love the life you're livin'.  Cindi

[deerhunter]

Can you do the sugar shake during the honey flow with out hurting the honey?

[Brian D. Bray]

You can do a sugar shake without hurting the bees.  But powered sugar can be mixed with water by the bees and converted to a type of nectar that would be considered adulterated honey by purist.  I would wait to do a sugar shake until the honey flow is over and then do as series. Then let them go into the fall flow with the mite load reduced and then another series before winter.

[Cindi]

About the honey flow, we are just really getting into it now, the bees have not been storing much honey, yet.  These are packages and nucs that I have and they are still only in one box.  Not for long though, I am adding their second brood boxes over the next few days.  If I get any honey from these bees, any honey that may be adulterated by the small amount of (and I mean small) icing sugar that they would be mixing in with honey, would be microscopic anyways.

I removed the newspaper from the under the hives about an hour after the shake and most of the sugar had fallen through.  What remained on the bees could probably hardly even be something that I would worry about.  I am removing the sticky boards this morning that I put in after the newspaper removal and see if there are any mites.  Time will tell that tale.  Have a wonderful day.  Great life, Cindi