May 2024 Monthly Buzz

[@phpnotasp]

"It's yellow; we're beekeepers and we love yellow" 🐝🤣

[@saintjohncoleman8602]

I’ve found queen excluders slow my bees from populating the honey supers, especially in the flow hives. I’ve had good luck both ways depending on the strength of the hive and the strength of the nectar flow, so yeah, it’s a hive by hive and year to year decision.

[@TerryRichard-x2i]

Blake so this year I’m trying to run some of my colonies in single brood management. So I’ve heard the Queen needs 9 and a half frames of space but I didn’t count for the pollen. Right now I have about 25 colonies under a Q.E. And I’m thinking I should take the Q.E out and let em use two deeps for brood chamber. I still have a couple weeks before my major flow starts. I’m in central Louisiana

[@thebeesupply]

Good question- running single story hives is done successfully by a lot of beekeepers. It is enough room for the queen to lay. But, you do need to pay closer attention to honey stores and you will need to add supers faster. Plus, you will need to feed and add another brood box immediately after you harvest honey. In general, singles take more work and attention, but they do yield more honey!

[@TerryRichard-x2i]

The mistake I made was April 28th I seen the tassels on the tallow trees so I prepared my colonies with each having 6frames of brood and i put the Q.Ers on. And two honey supers on top .Honestly I’m worried they’ll swarm. It’ll be horrible if I second guess myself and change my plan. But on the other hand if I don’t give my Queen enough space to stretch her legs she’ll leave me.. you think I should just let it go the way it is and see what happens?

[@thebeesupply]

If you have plenty of room in your honey supers, your hive should not swarm. As long as she has at least 1 deep box available to lay brood in, and you have 1-2 supers with extra space above, you should be just fine.

[@framcesmoore]

Blake I did the dameree method on 20 of my hives to keep them strong with no swarming have u tryed this and what are your ideas. I have went back on some of them and mover yhe qe up 2 boxes for fear that they would filling the bottom box they would not go past the excluder like they were told to do. brood is /was in the top boxes. Just to explain what I did. I took a empty deep put the queen and 1 frame of brood in the bottom with rest drawn comb excluder on top and 2 empty med them the 2 deep brood boxes goes on top of that. they were filling the botton with nector the brood in the top is emerging and they are back filling that some what. they are not touching the med boxes above the excluder. so it scared me so I moved the excluder on top of the med suppers. you thoughts please and thanks

[@TheFamilyFarmHomestead]

What you need to do is start notifying your customer when you can not ship the queens ordered instead of sending a substitute queens. I ordered 6 Cordoven Queens and got your regular Italian queens. You were recommended to me by another beekeeper, I won't take a recommendation from him again nor will be ordering anything else from you. On the other hand, your videos are good.

[@thebeesupply]

Thank you for sharing- so sorry about that! You should have gotten that notification, but we may have missed you! So sorry. We had a late freeze kill hundreds of our golden cordovan queens unexpectedly and to ensure everyone was taken care of, we substituted them with some really gentle italians. But, you certainly should have been notified ahead of time! If there is anything we can do to help make it right, please let us know at [e-mail].

[@TheFamilyFarmHomestead]

@@thebeesupply An Email would had been nice, I did however get an email on the previous Wednesday reminding me to pick up my golden cordovan queens. The lady at the store told me I should have gotten the email and that I needed to check my spam folder, I did and there was nothing.

[@framcesmoore]

Ha this was really good thanks for doing this. Hope you have a blessed week

[@saintjohncoleman8602]

Nectar Flow status: SE coastal VA-May 7-maples started in January, pears and apples are already done, we’re right in the middle of the blackberry bloom, the brood boxes are about 4-8 frames of brood, and first honey supers are already full, privet is just starting, second and third supers are on, Hogg Halfcombs and Flow supers are getting filled, white clover is everywhere, dead nettle has been on since December, splits are done and very strong.

[@thebeesupply]

Thanks for the update! Sounds amazing.:)

[@framcesmoore]

Question for you if u do not mind. you have capped brood it is emerging in 21 days how long before they become forgers. our mane flow starts this month if the weather behaves. It is over in june and that is over for the year.

[@thebeesupply]

Good question! Foraging is usually the last stage of work before a bee dies, so it can be anywhere from 4-8 weeks before they become a forager. That being said, if the hive is short on foragers, they can shift bees to that role even sooner.

[@TerryRichard-x2i]

Thank you very much for putting it back on. You help me more then you know

[@thebeesupply]

So great to hear! You are welcome!