I hope that everyone that made it to D's Field Day found it fun and informative. Thank-you D! I didn't attend because I had scheduled Saturday morning to do hive checks in my home apiary. Unfortunately, with a day job and life's other obligations, I can only participate in so many activities.
My strongest colonies are making honey, and I was able to rob them of 6 capped frames. 4 came from Hive 4, the survivor colony that I had made a 1:1 walk-away split from at the end of April, and 2 came from hive 8, the split. My other two survivor colonies, and two package colonies (Buckfasts), have a good number of 55% - 85% capped frames so I'm hoping to be able to do a small extraction in about a week. We are having great honey-making weather. Hot and dry. My records show we had similar weather in 2012, and I extracted 240 lbs. ((20) gallons) from my lone Langstroth hive that year. It was my first year with a Langstroth, and I started it with a 3 lb. package with a Carniolan queen. We haven't had a repeat of that weather until now. May it last. (And I haven't had a repeat of that kind of harvest.) Honey has to be at 17% moisture content, or less, when bottled in order to prevent fermentation. That's the moisture level the bees cap honey at, so if you extract fully capped frames your honey should be fine. (I sometimes take frames at 95% capped as long as I have a majority of frames at 100%, and have never had a problem.) But if you really want to know the moisture level of your honey, the ECWBA owns two refractometers that can be checked out from member Mark Ingram. I'm not sure how to bring the moisture level down if it's too high, but at the end of the season when I have "unripe" honey, I give it away to people that I know will consume it before it has time to ferment. (And I tell them it's not ripe and to use it up quickly. No one has yet refused.) Just for fun, let's do a little math. It takes 2,000,000 blossoms to make 1 lb. of honey. There's 3 lbs. of honey in a quart, so 6,000,000 blossoms are required to produce a quart of honey. An average honey bee can produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. There's 192 teaspoons in a quart. So it takes the lives of 2,306 honey bees to produce that same quart of honey. And this doesn't take into account all of the honey that was produced and consumed to raise the brood, power all of those bees, and build comb. At any given moment, a strong hive has around 50,000 honey bees in residence at the height of summer. Around 30% - 40% of those bees are foragers, but not all are gathering nectar for honey. Some are foraging for water, some for pollen, some for propolis, and some for substances that we don't know what they are.....yet. So it takes a strong, healthy colony to be able to produce "excess" honey which we can harvest, leaving enough for them for winter. Back to D's Field Day. Apparently the State Inspector found some brood that tested positive for American Foul Brood (AFB). It was at a low level and MAYBE could have been turned around with oxytetracycline (requires a prescription from a veterinarian), but D wasn't going to take a chance of it gaining strength and spreading to her other colonies, so she did a burning. I don't know the details, but D said she'll write the story out for us, which I will pass along. AFB is rare today. It was more our grandfather's nemesis than ours. We have Varroa. AFB spores are easily spreadable and can wipe out an entire apiary quickly, and can remain viable for 50 years. Once the spores are in a hive, the nurse bees inadvertently feed them to the larvae which then rot into mush. (AFB only affects larvae.) As the spore count increases and spreads, more larvae succumb, and eventually there's not enough adult bees emerging to carry on and the colony collapses. And as bees come in contact with other bees from other hives, the spores are spread colony to colony. If you see dark, sunken brood cappings, or perforated cappings, and detect a "foul" odor during your inspections, you can either do the "rope test" with a toothpick or call the State Apiary Inspector to check it out. AFB is truly nothing to ignore. It is a devastating disease and won't cure itself. It is also a reportable disease and any incidences must be reported to the State Apiary Inspector. So where did it come from? Perhaps it was carried with the package bees that D started the colony with, perhaps it was from contact with a bee from another apiary. We may never know for sure, but hopefully Dan, the State Apiary Inspector that was at D's Field Day, will trace it back to the source. Next Saturday, July 14, is the Wisconsin Honey Producers Association summer meeting and everyone is invited. There is a $20.00 charge which includes lunch. Sign-in starts at 8:00 a.m. with the proceedings beginning at 9:00 a.m.. The meeting will be held at Lions Hall, 145 Dearborn Street, Redgranite, WI. The keynote speaker is Dr. Dennis van Englesdorp from the University of Maryland and he will be speaking on bee health and Varroa control. For further information visit: https://www.wihoney.org/meetings-and-events/spring-district-meetings/meetings-events/ Also on July 14, Honey Bee Ware is sponsoring a Customer Appreciation picnic at Lions Park, N1089 Municipal Drive, Grennville, WI, 54942 from 11 - 3. It's a family thing, so bring the kids and grandkids if you decide to attend. July 21 we will be returning to our regular meeting schedule on the third Saturday of the month at Caestecker Library in Green Lake at 9:30 a.m. We will have general beekeeping discussions and organizing for the Green Lake County Fair. We will discuss what this year's booth will look like, and Laurie will have a signup sheet available for members to sign up for time slots. There's no limit as to how many you can take. August 2 - 5 is the Green Lake County Fair, and the ECWBA will be there! See you on the 21st! Gerard
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ECWBA NewsletterSince 2009 Archives
March 2019
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