June 2012 President s Message June 2012 Richard Ellis The month of June is nearly gone. If you are one of those whose hive survived the winter and has not swarmed then your hive should be full of bees and you should have a honey super on it. We still need to check the hive regulary to make sure they do not swarm. It is are responsibility as beekeepers to do our best to keep our hives from swarming. The swarm period is possible until mid July. With this hot weather we will see bees on the front of the hive getting cool. As I check the bees in my observation hive I see them bringing in a lot of pollen, which is a good sign. I am hoping we will have a good honey season. NEWSLETTER Beekeeping as a Successful Hobby? Hopefully we have a feeling and an association with our bees and yet realize they are not our children and we are not going to make major changes in their basic behavior and function. I enjoy reading about bees and try to keep up on news and additional information I might gain about bees. Bees have a tough time dealing with insecticides, mites, foulbrood and many other obstacles. As a small suburban beekeeper I can not control corn seed treatment or the placement of cell towers. Beekeeping should be a calming, satisfying hobby. Worrying and getting wound up over processes and problems out of my control defeats the joys of keeping bees. If we decide what we want from our bees and then let the bees do their thing we can have great satisfaction from beekeeping. Personally I want to get the most honey from the few hives I have and get pleasure from sharing my honey with friends and neighbors. The goal of collecting pollen, harvesting propolis or having a pollinator for the neighborhood are all good objectives. Decide what you want and then work toward that goal. If you don t have realistic goals your chance of success will be limited. In nature, bees will live in a tree or cavity for several years and then because of a failed queen or other problem the hive will die. Other hives will rob the honey, wax moths will come and cleanup the comb and in a year or two a swarm will move in and takeover the old hive. Sometimes hives die, that s life. We try to keep the hive going through good management practices but sometimes they die. Accept the challenge, learn and have a good time with our friends. This time of year the bees are working hard and it is a pleasant time to take my chair out by the hives and watch them work. This is so much better than chasing a little ball around and try to make it fall in a little hole. Have a great Summer ~Jerry Lynn Vice-President Wasatch Beekeepers Association Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. ~Albert Einstein
Good Books on Honey Honey Recipe Book Review - A Connoisseur s Guide with Recipes As a honey enthusiast, you may be often looking for a good honey recipe or more instructions and tips on how to best make use of the different floral honey varieties in cooking. Here s a book which I personally have gained a lot of insights on the versatility of honey in cooking Honey a Connoisseur s Guide with Recipes. With 130 pages in all, it contains more than 80 delightful ways of using over 50 different floral varieties of honey in breads, muffins, fruits, veggies, desserts, toppings, pies, tarts, cakes and cookies, with occasional vibrant shots of the resulted foods. I am particularly attracted to the really simple recipes which require only minimal effort and easily accessible ingredients such as the Milk and Honey Loaf, Walnut Honey Bread, Refreshing fruit Smoothie, Sweet and Sour Cole Law, Honey Mustard Glaze, Pork Loin Roasted with Orange and Ginger, Fat Honey Cookies, Italian Pine Nut Cookies and the Fresh Blueberry Muffin honey recipe. And if you like traditional Christmas cookies, there are quite a few recipes on these cookies in various styles such as German, Polish, and Swiss. But to prepare the relatively huge amount of European ingredients for some of these recipes, I personally find it quite a challenge for people like me who reside in Asia. Its author Gene Opton not only passionately describes specifically the taste and character of each of the common honey varieties (Buckwheat, Blueberry, Pine, Sourwood, etc) she uses in her recipes and explains when to use dark colored honey and when to use a light colored one, she also goes on to classify honey into those that have a flavor so refined and subtle that is best appreciated by eating directed from a spoon - silver spoon selection and those that are so unique and distinctive and appeal a lot to the sophisticated palate - connoisseur selection. What I find especially enlightening is her vivid detailing on how the honey bees would choose a certain flower and concentrate on a single nectar source, and how one could explore the taste of a honey like a honey connoisseur by first appreciating the aroma of the honey in the jar, slowly using the front of the tongue to dissolve the honey, smacking your lips to discover the fullness of the flavor, and observing a lingering aftertaste in the mouth. Gene Opton s apparent passion and excitement in explaining the uses of honey varieties in cooking is very infectious and her clever innovations of honey recipes using herbs and spices such as cloves, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mustard, chives, and garlic, very inspiring. She leaves me the impression that all the recipes in the book are a result of her painstaking efforts in researching and exploring the best ways to combine different floral types of honey with different textured and flavored foods to obtain the best tastes. Though following certain sections of the introduction that describe the technical process of harvesting, packaging and selling honey and the activities of the bee and honey hall which the author has visited can be rather dry, for those who are keen on learning to savor the nuances of flavor in honey and discover the creative uses of honey varieties in cooking, this book is still a valuable read. Another book which you may want to check out -- Covered in Honey: Tha Amazing Flavors of Varietal Honey by Mani Niall. It contains more than 100 tantalizing recipes including breads, main courses, desserts, drinks and snacks using different honey varieties for its range and depth of flavor instead of mere sweetness. Certainly, a good find for healthy eaters who are searching for a honey recipe using natural sweeteners and for foodies who will appreciate the range of subtle flavors awaiting to delight their senses. http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-recipe-book.html
Honey Production Hello from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in central Illinois where the weather is hot and the bees are hard at work. We are David and Sheri Burns, beekeepers helping beekeepers. Most beekeepers are hoping to take off some honey from their hives. Honey has become a precious commodity. Prices for raw honey have soared through the roof. In most places, beekeepers can name their price and sell all the honey they can produce. I want to give you a few tips today on maximizing your honey production. This comes through these proper summer management techniques: 1) Strategically supering the hive 2) Mite and Disease control and 3) Maintaining a Prolific Queen. In this lesson we ll talk about strategically placing supers on the hive. A good practice is to over super (placing several honey supers on a hive) in late spring and early summer and to under super (limit the number of honey supers used) during late summer and early fall. Why? Over super in late spring and early summer because studies have shown that the more supers are on the hive in the spring, the more the bees will be motivated to go out and forage. And two or more supers on will make sure you have plenty of room for a harvest. However, in late summer and early fall, it is best to reduce the number of supers because at this time of the season the bees are consolidating their resources in preparation for winter. They are likely to transfer honey from a super above down into the brood nest area. How and when to add supers? When 6-8 frames in the existing box on the hive has been drawn out (the bees have added wax, built comb and are using the comb) then add the next honey super. How? The challenging aspect of adding a honey super is ensuring that the bees will draw out the comb on the frames. Some beekeepers have the luxury of adding already drawn comb, but most have to use undrawn foundation. A common mistake is to add a new, undrawn honey super on top of a queen excluder. This can be a mistake and slow or halt the progress of the bees from ever moving up into the honey super. So when your second deep hive body has 6-8 frames drawn out, place your undrawn honey super on as follows: 1) Spray all frames with 1:1 sugar water containing honey-b-healthy (follow the label). Make sure the sugar water has covered the frames well and is slightly dripping down off the new frames in the honey super. 2) Leave the queen excluder off for now. Place the honey super on and wait a week. In one week, examine to see if the bees have worked their way up into the honey super. You will likely see some progress. Keep checking every 3-5 days and when you see that 2-3 frames have been started, you can now add your queen excluder, but check first to make sure she is not up on the frames in the honey super. If she is, pick her up by her wings and set her down between the frames in the top deep. 3) Place on the queen excluder with the cross-ribs facing down. Place several supers on if it is early to mid summer. Use minimal supers if it is late summer to early fall. It is better to have too many supers on than not enough. However, if you see lots of small hive beetles in your hive, you may not want to over super as this will provide extra and unprotected space where the bees are not monitoring, giving freedom for SHB to spread.
Top Supering Or Bottom Supering This terminology refers to adding a new super on top of an existing super or under the existing super. In other words, when your first super is almost full of nectar, should you add your second honey super below that super or above it. This is a matter of opinion. Some bottom super because they feel the bees will have to walk through the new super to reach the one they were working. And while passing through the new one they will stop and pull out the wax. Others, like me, want a honey barrier and so we will use our first full honey super to serve as a honey barrier. By honey barrier I am referring to the limitations placed on the queen because she will not lay eggs in a cell which has honey in it. The queen is only looking for empty cells to lay eggs. When she reaches stored honey on the outer edges of the brood nest area, she will return to the area of opened cells. I leave the super just above the brood nest area full of nectar to hold down the queen and therefore I do not have to use a queen excluder. I place my new super on top of my nearly full super. This is known as top supering. ~http://basicbeekeeping.blogspot.com/2011/07/lesson-107-when-and-how-to-add-supers.html
Beekeepers Guide to Essential Oils Peppermint Peppermint oil is used as a general-purpose pheromone masking scent. It does not apparently mimic any known bee pheromones and is simply used to mask others. In theory any other strong scented essential oil would work the same. Essential oils are strongly scented oils that are created through the distillation of plant materials. Most commonly derived from the flowers, leaves or stems of a plant, they may also be derived from fruit or the skin of a fruit. Many of these oils have common uses in aroma theory and alternative medicine. Beekeepers however, also may have a used for a select few of these common oils Essential oils can often be found in health food stores or aromatherapy shops, the price may be high, but keep in mind that a little oil will go a long way. Commonly Used Oils There exist a wider variety of essential oils. In general, beekeepers are only interested in a few of them. The following is a list of some of the more common oils that may concern a beekeeper. Spearmint Spearmint oil is often used in conjunction with lemon grass oil during feeding to improve hive health and work as a recruiting scent. Spearmint and Lemon Grass Spearmint oil and lemon grass oil are two essential oils that are commonly used in conjunction to complete many tasks with bees. A simple general purpose essential oil mixture can be used for many things, including avoiding the reliance on smoke when opening hives. Banana Though it has been unconfirmed, reports state that banana oil seems to closely mimic the alarm pheromone of honeybees. Because of this it is advised against using banana oil, or other strong banana scented products near or around hives. It is unclear wheatear bananas can be safely eaten near honey bees, but it is likely that no adverse result would be seen. Lemon Grass Lemongrass works conveniently as well as the pheromone created by the honeybee s nasonov gland, also known as attractant pheromone. Because of this lemon grass oil can be used as a lure when trapping swarms or attempting to draw the attention of hived bees. Be warned, however, that lemon grass oil can cause a robbing behavior if it is used within or on a weak hive. Tea Tree Tea Tree oil is often used in grease patties for control of mites. It seems as if Tea Tree oil can be interchanged with wintergreen oil with no loss of effectiveness. Wintergreen Wintergreen oil is often used in grease patties for control of mites. It seems as if Tea Tree oil can be interchanged with wintergreen oil with no loss of effectiveness. Essential Oil Therapy Versus Mites Varroa Mites Essential oils, in regards to mite control, have two apparent modes of operation, primarily, direct toxicity. In the case of varroa mites, once a mite comes in to direct contact with an essential oils such as wintergreen or tea tree oil mixed into a grease patty they are usually killed within a few minutes. This however, requires that the infected bee actually
contact the grease patty. Due to this contact requirement, direct toxicity cannot eliminate mites, only aid in the control of mite levels. Secondly, it appears mite reproduction can be impaired when bees are fed a syrup containing essential oils. Essential oils are passed from feeding bees to other bees and larva through trophalaxis. Essential oils thereby pass to the brood and poison any female Varroa that attempt to parasitically feed on the larva. Tracheal Mites Bryant Weber-Program Director Wasatch Beekeepers Association June 2012 Similarly, essential oils appear to have an impact on the breeding and control of tracheal mites, however the effects of tracheal mites are difficult to observe and the mechanism that causes the control is in debate. It appears that the best therapy, in regards to tracheal mites and essential oils, is the usage of grease patties. Treatment It is recommended that that grease patties containing essential oils, and other medicaments as desired, are kept on the hives throughout the winter and any season when honey collection for human consumption is not taking place. Grease patties not containing any essential oils or medication should be kept on hives throughout the rest of the year. During times of the year that temperatures allow for flight, and honey is not to being collected for human consumption, colonies should be treated with syrup containing essential oils. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/beekeeping/guide_to_essential_oils