By
Steve Parise -
Inspector's Report -
As I write this report in mid-
I was able to go through my hives way back in early February. In general, they were in good shape, some even having a few frames with brood. At that time, I moved honey around in several hives, and made a note of hives that had surplus honey. This will be important now as some hives are probably getting low, and will need additional feed. So, as soon as weather conditions permit, try to do a brief check of your hives. What you want to determine now is which are alive, their relative strength, the location of the clusters, the location and amount of honey remaining, and supplying combs of honey to those in need. Carefully check any dead hives or very weak ones to try to determine what caused their demise. Assuming you don’t find any indications of AFB, it should be O.K. to use some of the honey from these hives to feed others. When feeding combs of honey, I will often scratch the comb surface exposing the honey and place this comb face towards the cluster so they can access it immediately. Just be careful to not place full combs of honey on both sides of the cluster as this may impede their cluster expansion. Ideally, there will be partial combs of honey that you can place next to the clusters for feed. Another option if the colony is strong, but light on stores, is to place honey immediately above the cluster, so they can move up into it. It is not necessary to check for brood now since if they have made it this far, there is probably some limited brood rearing occurring. However, if you are like me, I like to spot check a few, just to see what is happening. If you do this, just be very careful when separating and lifting out frames of brood and bees. It would be unfortunate if you accidentally harmed or killed the queen at this point in time. If you plan to feed any pollen substitute, it will soon be time to put it on the hives. I will be trying some pollen substitute patties I bought from Mann Lake this spring, to see if it helps get the bees jump started.
On the Varroa control front, there will be several registered products available
to use this season. Apistan, ApiLife VAR, and Sucrocide will be registered for use.
The company that makes Mite-
As a reminder, if you are purchasing nucs, be sure to ask the supplier some questions. These should include the disease history of the operation, exactly what you are going to get in terms of bees, brood, strain of queens, brood pattern, amount of honey, condition of combs, presence of minor brood diseases such as Chalkbrood, Sacbrood, etc. How long has the queen been out and laying? Still in the cage, one week, two weeks??? Are there any Varroa or small hive beetles in the nucs? Have the nucs or source colonies been inspected? If you are getting nucs from outside Vermont, make sure you get a Health Certificate from the state of origin, and again, ask questions! Also, don’t forget to register your bees with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. You can get a registration form on the Apiary Page.
Good luck this spring, and contact me if you have any questions at steve.parise@state.vt.us.
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If you are new to beekeeping you must register your hives with the Vermont Agency
of Agriculture. This is a one time requirement and only needs to be updated when
you add new bee yards, change your address or phone number, or get out of bees. There
are a number of documents including a registration form available on the Apiary Page
at the Agency website. Go to www.vermontagriculture.com, select "Subject Listing"
on the opening page, go to the "a" page, scroll down to "Apiary Information and Registration",
click and go to the apiary page. There are numerous items to download and links to
other sites. You can also e-
