AT THE APIAR IN JULY
Although the days have slowly begun to shorten, the beekeeping season is in full swing. The time has come about which people say that summer day feeds the year . Therefore, the beekeeper now has not only a day, but also every hour on the register - he would not forget anything, he would do everything on time.
Although swarming peak has already passed, the hives cannot be left without a daily external inspection, especially before lunch.
In normally functioning colonies, the brood part of the hive does not need to be disassembled before the autumn inspection. Usually at this time only honey frames or honey stores are manipulated. Moreover, only frames with dry land are placed for expansion during the main honey harvest period. If frames with foundation are placed on the expansion, then the bees engaged in the construction of honeycombs will not be able to fully use the potential honey collection.
At the beginning of the main honey harvest, it is advisable to begin creating reserves of honey, which will later be used when assembling nests for the winter and as a safety food fund for the spring of next year. For this purpose, full-copper, well-sealed frames are selected at a rate of at least 2-3 pieces. for each family that will be left in the winter.
In the first half of July it is still possible continue collecting pollenusing pollen collectors. In the second half of July, this is no longer recommended because it is necessary to give the bees the opportunity to begin accumulating beebread in the hive for the autumn growth of bees and to create winter reserves. And on top of everything else, in the second half of summer the number of pollen carriers in nature decreases and its consumer standards decrease.
July - it's time to pump out the honey. There are many views on how this should be done. We will talk about how most beekeepers do it. First of all, during the season this operation should be carried out as few times as possible, since after collecting honey the family reduces flight activity in bringing honey for at least 2-3 days. If the selection of honey coincides with the peak of flowering of the main honey plant, then the loss of commercial honey will be noticeable.
Only those honey frames that are sealed at least halfway are selected for pumping. If sushi supplies are limited and honey collection continues, then the pumped out frames are put back into empty stores to be filled with honey. If the honey flow decreases sharply, then the empty frames are given to the bees to dry overnight, and then they, along with the stores, are taken away and stored until the next honey flow.
WORK OF A BEEKEEPER AT THE APIAR IN JULY
The largest productive bribe during the summer is called the main bribe. Usually the main bribe falls in July. Bees should be prepared for it in May - early June. Swarming must be extinguished, old and unproductive queens replaced, layering done, nests expanded.
When all this work is done, all that remains is to monitor the honey collection and pump out the honey on time.
Honey begins to be pumped out when all the combs are full and most of them are sealed. Frames with honey from single-hull hives or stores are selected after 5 - 8 days. The best nesting combs are not pumped out, but are left until winter, in case the bees need feeding.
Honey is pumped out of two-tier, multi-body and sunbed hives only after the main bribe. After all, the capacities here are not limited: they can always be increased.
It is better to pump out honey in the evening in order to disturb the bees less during their work. Immediately after pumping out, the frames and half-frames are placed in their place in the hive. Honey is poured into duralumin flasks and linden tubs. For small packaging, honey is poured into porcelain or glass containers. Store honey in a cool room at a temperature of 5 - 8 °C
Read about the work of a beekeeper by month:
If the beekeeper notices bees walking strangely at the entrance, which try to penetrate the hive not in a straight path (as their bees do), but in a zigzag manner, not in the center of the entrance, but from the edge. And also an open bee fight near the entrances - this needs to be taken urgently
Signs of the weather. If January is frosty and dry, then summer is hot and dry; if there are frequent snowstorms and snowfalls, then in July there will be frequent rains (“Mesyatseslov” by Dahl).
1-31 . Caring for wintering bees: , listening (barely audible humming of bees - safe wintering, noise - stuffiness in the hive, you need to open the entrances wider, adjust the ventilation), ; If winter is bad, give them kandi.
1-20 . Check inspection of individual pallets; if there is any debris, free the lower entrances from it; by the type of debris, determine whether there are mice in the hive. Replace damp insulation.
11-20 . Checking the condition of bee colonies for the presence of hive litter and dead bodies on mesh pallets:
19. Baptism. Cold and clear weather means a dry summer, snowy and cloudy weather means a bountiful harvest.
1-31 . Preparation for the beekeeping season: inspection of beekeeping equipment, repair and production of hives, cases, store extensions, insulating pillows, feeders, insulating dividing boards, drinking bowls, frames; studying literature on beekeeping.
It is necessary to think about collecting pollen and feeding bees (especially when using bees in greenhouses). Pollen is a source of protein food for bees. Its deficiency or absence leads to protein starvation (protein dystrophy) and the death of bees. Without pollen, brood cannot develop. Preparatory work: inspection and repair of pollen collectors, preparation of places for drying and storing pollen, determining the timing of its collection, methods of feeding to bees. Bees should not be allowed to feed pollen from sick colonies.
25. Tatiana's day. If the sun shines on Tatyana, the birds will arrive early; if it snows on Tatyana, it will be a rainy summer.
28 . If the branches of the trees bend under the weight of snow, there will be a good harvest and bees will swarm well. If the wind is damp the year.
1. Macarius Day (Makariy). If it's clear, it's early spring.
1-28 . Caring for wintering bees: visiting bees more often than in January; listening to bee colonies; cleaning individual bottoms from waste.
Checking the condition of bee colonies for the presence of hive litter and dead bodies on mesh pallets:
Feed bees only in exceptional cases, as this will disturb nearby colonies. It’s better to take such a family aside and feed it.
Preparation for the new beekeeping season: checking and equipping bodies and store extensions with honeycombs and foundation, making beekeeping equipment, etc.; studying literature on beekeeping.
15. Meeting. Winter meets spring. First meeting of spring. What the weather is like at Candlemas, so will spring.
21-28 . Harvesting pine needles and buds to prepare an infusion is a good remedy for treating varroatosis and stimulating the development of bees. Preparation technology: dry the tips of pine needle branches (40 mm) and buds in a shaded, ventilated place and store in paper bags in a cold room. Grind the needles with buds with a chop or an ax, pour boiling water over them. For 1 kg of crushed mass - 4 liters of boiling water. Cover the container and leave until cooled, strain, one glass of the resulting infusion per 3 liters of syrup, you can also add it to kandi.
Store the infusion for no more than two days. During the beekeeping season, periodically fumigate the bees with pine needle smoke. They put pine needles into a lit smoker and fumigate the hives, giving 15-20 puffs of smoke each.
In the end of the month. Brood appears in the nests, the queen begins to lay eggs. Families need a large supply of fresh air. If necessary, clear the front walls of the hives from snow and shields. Possible during a thaw, which needs to be promoted.
In the apiary, the spring period of work is decisive. The foundations for creating efficient, strong and productive families are laid at this time.
The beekeeping season begins with the first flight of bees.
The general rule that apiary owners should (if possible) follow during the beekeeping season is daily (in the morning or in the afternoon): conduct an external inspection of bee colonies, pay attention to the behavior of bees at the entrances, near the hives, to the fact that they take out of the hive, whether there is heaping, weakening of summer, the size of the entrances, the presence of drinking bowls, the expulsion of drones, the general condition of the apiary, etc. Identified deficiencies must be eliminated. The work carried out to care for bee colonies must be recorded in the apiary logbook (beekeeper's notebook, record cards, control hive diary).
1-10. If necessary, continue harvesting pine needles and buds.
5-6. (In the wild) Distribution to Kandi bee colonies. Adjustment of entrances to improve ventilation of nests.
11-20. Preparing points for bees to fly around; very early flight possible. Monitor the flight of bees and provide assistance to disadvantaged families.
11-20. (In the pavilion) Open the external entrances to 510 cm, clear the pallets of waste, remove the ventilation. carry out in sunny, calm weather, when at 10 o’clock in the shade +6-8 °C. To complete this work you need:
14. Day of Evdokia. Evdokia is red - and spring is red. Snow on Evdokia - for the harvest, a warm wind - for a rainy summer, a north wind - the summer will be cold. Willow flower buds are exposed.
14-20. There are several sunny warm days, they should be used to remove bees from the winter hut if they... Open the entrances and observe the flight pattern. On the same day, if the temperature is not lower than +8°C in the shade, conduct a quick inspection of bee colonies and eliminate signs of unfavorable wintering.
April 25-28 and until April 4. Bee exhibition. Open the lower entrance completely from 13:00 to 15:00. Provide all hives with side boards.
The hives are warming up. In sunny weather, bees fly around at +6°C.
From April 28 to April 10. Spring inspection of bee colonies. It is carried out in order to determine the quality of wintering, in order to create optimal conditions for the development of families and the intensive increase in the strength of families for the main bribe. Produce as early as possible, when the air warms up to +8°C.
During the audit, determine:
There is no more serious mistake in beekeeping than leaving bees without abundant food supplies in the spring.
Carry out sanitary treatment of nests, create the best thermal conditions in the hive: replace moldy, dirty and worn frames. Clean the frames with brood and leave them in the nest, remove the petrified beebread, cut off the top of the moldy beebread and remove it. If there is a little bee bread in the frame, then cut out a section of the honeycomb, moisten it with warm water and place it on the bottom of the hive near the outer frame. Remove the rejected honeycombs for remelting.
Clean nests or transfer colonies to clean hives. Clean the donya or replace it with clean ones. Fry the mesh trays over a fire and rinse. Replace damp insulation. Place side insulation (pillows or insulating boards) and top insulation in liners or magazine extensions. Place 3-4 layers of paper, cardboard or film on the canvas (ceiling), with a pillow on top.
Reduce the entrances in all hives to 1-1.5 cm, close the top ones. During the cold period, you can install drinking bowls in the hives or pour warm water into the honeycombs without disturbing the bees.
Remove the lower hive bodies and lower the upper ones onto a clean bottom.
If diseases are detected, take samples of bees and part of the hive litter and send them to a veterinary laboratory (for nosematosis, add fumagillin to candy or spray the bees with nosemate).
Allowable time for an audit (examination of families) is 10 minutes, 3-6 minutes for subsequent work. With longer inspections, the brood will harden and die, which can cause theft and embitter the bees. In the pavilion, the audit can be carried out for a longer period of time.
Record the results of the spring audit in the apiary register (in a card, beekeeper’s notebook), draw up a spring audit sheet and a spring inspection report for the apiary.
21-31. Place a drinking bowl with water (one or several) in a sunny place and a drinking bowl with salted water (a tablespoon of table salt per bucket of water). Rinse the drinkers with water each time you fill them.
From April 31 to April 15. Hatching of early drones. Place the drone comb in the nest in the fall or immediately after the spring flight, or keep the queen on the drone comb in a frame insulator for two or three. The family should have 8 honeycombs, 10 kg of honey, two frames of beebread. It is necessary to give the bees honey cakes and liquid food. After 16-18 days, begin removing the queens. Have an approximate schedule of work on hatching queens.
From April 31 to April 12 in warm weather. Carry out sanitary treatment of bee colony nests and preventive disinfection: clean the bottom and walls of the hive bodies, dividing and ceiling boards, frames from mold, traces of diarrhea, propolis. Remove honeycombs with a large number of diarrhea spots. Wash the hives with ash lye and burn with a blowtorch or torch.
Carry out preventive disinfection of equipment, pavilions, winter huts, pre-entry areas, storage areas, etc.
1-30 . Daily - external inspection of bee colonies.
1-12 . Association of bee families. Reasons for unification: queenless colony (without polypore bees), weak colony (less than 300-500 g of bees), poor egg production of the queen in the presence of food reserves, no spare queens.
Association to produce at the end of the day, it is better to have a prosperous family to a queenless one. Place the uterus in a cage, place the frames in the nest in the same order, remove the excess ones. Families sprinkle with liquid syrup or syrup. In sunbeds, when combined, place them side by side, in double- and multi-hulled ones - on top.
6-12 . Whitewashing of honeycombs is an indicator of the abundant supply of nectar to the nest, a signal to expand the volume of the bees’ nest and to install frames with artificial foundation for building up the honeycombs.
15-20 . Leveling the strength of bee colonies (45-50 days before the main bribe). In donor families there are 10-12 cells, 7-8 combs of brood. Select 1-3 combs of printed brood with bees, place them in the center of the nest of a weak family, and shake off the bees here as well. Sprinkle the nest with syrup or satiated. Carry out work in warm weather.
* Winter bees are leaving.
15-20 . Second expansion of the nest. Place 2-3 frames with wax and a splash of syrup (1:1).
1-12. Fourth expansion of the nest.
Raspberries are blooming. After about 40 days - .
Place the magazine almost simultaneously with placing the last (12th) frame in the slot. There are 4 frames with foundation in the store; lift one frame with young larvae from the nest there (to fight ticks).
Do this once a season. Insulate the store on the sides and top.
In the lower frames there should finally be 0.5-1.5 kg of honey. The frames in the upper body should be filled with honey almost to the bottom bar, and the total honey is 18-20 kg.
For all methods of assembling nests, install insulation behind the diaphragm to protect against dampness and mold. Where necessary, install ventilation pipes to create a vertical profile. For strong families with more than 8 cells - two ventilation tubes, for families with 5-6 cells - one. Finish feeding the bees with sugar syrup, giving in large portions. Each nest street should contain at least 2.5 kg of honey.
1-10. Treat bee colonies against.
7-10. Measures to stop the laying of eggs by the queen; after 5-6 days of feeding, remove the insulation from the buildings and increase ventilation in the hives. The hatching of late brood can lead to the forking of the club and the death of its lower part.
Insulation of the ceiling and late feeding can lead to the club being pressed against the ceiling and the bees dying from lack of food, although there is plenty of it below.
Reduce the tapholes to 4-5 cm and keep them open on the side to which the frames in the housings were moved. Provide vertical ventilation for bee nests.
14-21. Indian summer. A rainy Indian summer means a dry autumn; a rainy Indian summer means the fall will be stormy and cold.
Remove the bee colony registration cards, if they were stored in the hive, make final notes, mark the plans for assembling nests for the winter.
Artificial or extra-late flight of bees. On a windless and sunny day at +10-12 °C, the bees should be given 200-250 g of warm syrup. They go out for a flyby.
14. Pokrov day. What is the weather in Pokrov, so will the winter. Wind from the north - a cold winter; from the south - to a warm winter; western - for a snowy winter; if the wind is variable, winter will be unstable. From the first snow six weeks to the sleigh ride. If a leaf falls cleanly from a birch and oak tree, it will be a light year, but not a harsh winter.
11-20. Remove inventory, spare cases, magazine extensions for long-term storage, and carry out preventive disinfection.
20-21. Rodent control (deratization): installation of entrance barriers, mousetraps, traps, traps, poisonous mouse baits (ratfish, zoocoumarin, penocoumarin, etc.). Place the baits for 2-3 days in portions of 50-500 g. Protect the entrances from the wind and tits.
21-31. Processing of wax raw materials.
The beekeeping season is ending. The bees are in deep peace. Don’t rush to place the bees in the winter hut; even in November there are warm days and the bees can fly around. Families are taken away after frost and dry weather sets in.
Observe bee colonies.
1-21 . Fill the outer entrances with insulation and close tightly with entrance valves (when wintering in a pavilion), lay insulation pads, do not put roofs on the hives, put a mouse net instead.
Insulate the walls of the buildings and the tops of the hives, and place pillows between the hives.
If the bees are well prepared for winter, then no care will be required until almost mid-March.
Once a month, carefully remove the pallets and check the condition of the families using wax crumbs and other waste from the club’s wintering, and if necessary, provide them with assistance.
“Keeping bees is not lying in the cold”
It was not by chance that I placed this proverb at the beginning of the article. Summer is the busiest period in terms of the volume of apiary work. Summer work is carried out from June 1 to mid-August.
Next begins the first period of preparation for. In Siberia and other similar climatic zones, frosts occur in the last ten days of August. Our Siberian plant has only two weeks to pollinate and produce offspring.
It must adapt to these features of Siberian climatic and biological conditions. In the summer, the beekeeper cannot miss not only one day, but also one hour.
Here is just a small list of work that beekeepers have to perform during the summer:
The transition from spring to summer work is gradual; many seemingly summer tasks have to be completed in May; some techniques begun in the spring continue in June and even July. It all depends on the situation, tasks, weather conditions, and the specialization of the apiary. Let's say an apiary specializing in the sale of breeding queens and packages requires the removal of queen bees from spring to late summer.
The build-up continues in the summer. During the flowering season of gardens, meadows and fields, bee families grow right before our eyes. But it is necessary to create the best conditions for this, to eliminate all the shortcomings that interfere with intensive reproduction.
At the same time, it is important to catch the moment of expansion of nests and changes in places. Carrying out these operations prematurely can disrupt the microclimate and slow down the development of the family. At the same time, being late in installing additional frames with dry soil and artificial foundation can lead to a swarming condition.
A good effect is achieved by the method of expanding the sockets, tested over many years of experience, by placing an additional housing in a cut between two housings. The essence of the method is that they do not like emptiness. Violation of the integrity of the nest brings the bee colony into an active state to eliminate the gap.
The silver-winged queens quickly master the new body, the queen is given unlimited opportunity to grow, the family continues to gain strength towards the main bribe.
It is very important in the summer during the main honey harvest to prevent a decrease in the strength of bee colonies. The fact is that when there is a good bribe, the bees mobilize all their forces to collect nectar and flood all the cells. The uterus may even have nowhere to lay eggs.
Often the beekeeper himself, using, limits the brood part. In the summer, flying bees quickly wear out and die. In summer, 3-4% of winged foragers die every day. The family is weakening because it does not receive enough young worker bees.
In this case, you can use young helper queens in a nearby hive, and after the decline in honey flow, both families can be combined, leaving the best queen. Thus, it is possible to solve several problems simultaneously tasks:
All this must be taken into account when planning and organizing summer work in the apiary.
Summer is the time to stock up on food and give gifts to people. That is why the apiary requires special care and diligent work.
I hope that the brief description of beekeeping in this article and in a series of subsequent articles on this topic will allow readers to imagine the importance summer work in the apiary.
July is the middle of summer and the hottest month of the year. Beekeepers receive commercial honey and create stocks of good-quality food for bees for the winter. In the first ten days of July, until our main honey plants - linden, fireweed, angelica and buckwheat - bloom, bees continue to swarm. Late swarms should not be returned to old families, but it is better to plant them two or more in hives with 20-24 frames, where they will build 15-20 frames with artificial foundation and produce a lot of honey.
Before the main honey plants begin to bloom, the beekeeper must create favorable conditions for the bees to work on the bribe and fully use them for the construction of honeycombs.
The family brings several kilograms of nectar to the hive every day, from which the volume of finished honey is 2-3 times less. For better evaporation of water from nectar, bees fill the cells only 1/3 of their volume. Therefore, to accommodate the spray, they will need about 6 times more space than for mature honey. Honey ripening in the hive takes five to six days, therefore, a large number of combs will be required to collect the nectar and process it into honey. With a daily nectar yield of 6-8 kilograms, the family should have 15-20 honeycombs to accommodate nectar and honey.
If during the bribe there are no free honeycombs in the hive, then the bees, having filled all the free cells with spray, will be inactive. Thus, the beekeeper will miss out on bribes and receive less honey, and if he rushes to pump it out in order to free up the honeycombs for the bees to work with, he will receive unripe honey, which will turn sour during storage.
To make fuller use of the family’s capabilities for collecting honey and building honeycombs, advanced beekeepers do the following:
If the hive faces the southeast, then the magazine extension is placed against the southwestern wall, since the bees in the nest will store honey towards the northeastern wall, and this is where the space free from the magazine should remain. It is covered with separate shelves and a pillow. During a bribe, honey is pumped out only from the store extension.
Multi-copper nesting frames prepared during the main harvest should not be pumped out by the beekeeper before the nests are assembled. After assembling the nests for the winter and creating a supply for the spring (3 frames per family), all low-copper frames removed from the nests can be pumped out.
During the main bribe, the entrances are opened to their entire width, including those at the second and subsequent buildings. As soon as the bribes are over, they are closed, except for the main one. Honey is pumped out in a bright, clean and warm room where bees cannot fly. Honey is easier to pump out when the frames have just been taken from the nest. If there are few bee colonies in the apiary, then it is better to select the frames in the afternoon in order to less disrupt the work of the bees. Instead of the removed frames, you need to immediately install spare ones, that is, without waiting for the taken frames to be pumped out. Honey is considered mature when half of it in the frame is sealed. Cooled honey from frames does not go well, so frames taken from the hives earlier are heated in a warm room at a temperature of 30-35° before pumping out. If the bribe is good, it is pumped out again after about 5-6 days.
The honey is left to stand for 3-4 days. During this time, all the impurities from it will float to the top. After removing this layer, the honey becomes quite marketable and of high quality.
