Last year was my personal best as far as beekeeping goes. I answered 20+ swarm calls, had no dead outs, and harvested the most honey since I started in 2008. 2015’s goal was to get all my hives into a standard-sized hive body with new Freeman Beetle Trap bottoms, and replace any comb of poor quality or over 5 years old. Sounds simple enough.
Winter is time to repair and replace equipment. I spent hours scraping off old, hard, dirty comb, and replacing it with nice, clean, fresh, soft {pesticide free} wax. January is also time to pay your NJBA dues, renew your Jersey Fresh license, and update your status at the NJ Dept of Agriculture: this update, the NJBA believes, should include your availability to answer swarm calls. Great! I have all this new wax to be drawn out and feral swarms are terrifically motivated comb builders.
Building out comb is a lot of work. My plan was to get the swarms to draw out my new foundations and slowly integrate it into my existing hives that were busy pollinating, raising young, etc. Eventually leaving the swarms with their own space. Sounds simple.
I answered over 25 calls this spring all for something other than honeybees; carpenter bees and digger bees, and a few hornets. Okay, I don’t mind a little public service; hopefully I taught a few people about how to live with pollinators. Ironically the only real swarm call I got was from Miriam Schwartz about my OWN hive in Lumberton!
Spring was spent performing my own swarm management, and weeding; weeding and more weeding, and pruning. I`ve had hives at Lumberton since 2009, Medford in 2010 and I`ve noticed the landscapers are not cutting the grass very close anymore. Not so much in Lumberton but in Medford. So I spent a lot of time with hand clippers trying to keep the grass down in front, and dragging my own trash cans of mulch on top to keep the grass down. The further I moved the mulch the further away they cut. The weeds under those beautiful cedars were relentlessly reaching up and pulling down the branches one by one. So I started pruning, and weeding more.
Medford in April, I noticed chemical beads on the hives. All over the mulch and even on the “landing pads“ of the hive bodies themselves. There were pellets even behind in the cedars. I can`t understand why they could get that close to distribute those chemical beads, but not close enough to pull a weed or cut the grass. After 5 years the cedars had grown quite a bit too, and they were shading the hives a lot earlier in the day than was ideal. So I planted the seed for a new location.
The bees were madder and madder every time I went to inspect. Then I realized the sprinklers were coming on every day at around 4-5 and aimed right at them. So now they have been in the shade since 2, and getting wet. No wonder they were mad. With Debbie in the driver`s seat we chose the new area; lots of sun, sprinklers don’t reach, and the grass hardly grows in front. Perfect spot, but just in time for late summer dearth. They are slow to bounce back.
The hives in Lumberton were doing well, I managed to get them in the right size bodies with nice new wax. One was in the shade a little earlier in the day than it could have been so I moved that one out in front and she seems to have appreciated it. One hive is a show off, overachiever, and residents were concerned that a lot of them were hanging around outside. Tim Schuler, the state apiarist, describes it as a summer afternoon with a big family and no air conditioning; you wouldn’t be inside either, you`d be out on the porch in the shade. Since I had also begun weeding the area and bringing my own mulch, I decided to make use of the space and planted a few milkweed plants and saw at least 4 caterpillars. Hopefully they are now on their way to Mexico.
Having not achieved everything I had planned I am still pleased with this season. Lumberton will give us one more good honey harvest. After which I will get them set up for winter; leaving them with a small upstairs area for any emergency treatment, and much needed ventilation to combat the condensation resulting from extreme temperature fluctuations, which are already starting. New Jersey is one of the most difficult state for a honeybee; sometimes 25⁰ change in less than 24 hours.
Medford Leas will need a little more attention. In the new location they have shown significant improvement, but one last inspection will determine whether we can keep all three, or perhaps merge the weakest one with the other two. I hope now that there are no bees near those beautiful bald cedars, they will receive the attention they need to thrive without the weight of those invasive vines.
See you next season and as always, thanks for supporting your local farmers. It is more important than ever to know exactly where your food is coming from.
“Unique among all God`s creatures, only the honeybee improves the environment and preys not upon another species.”