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Note From Walt
Winter is a chill time for our honeybees
as they anxiously await the turning of the seasons,
and the beekeepers may well bee chillin’, having
done their best readying their bees for this season.
It is also a time for reflection of the past season
and preparation of the year to come.
The season of 2009 was as interesting
as a maiden roller coaster ride with its ups and downs.
The season began with a rising honey flow that then
fell to rainy weather, only to rise again with the arrival
of fall.
By stimulating our colonies very early
in the spring, our bees were ready when the first honey
flow presented itself. The populations were xtremely
strong, and we were adding honey supers to the hives
in a rather aggressive manner. The bees responded by
filling the supers with honey, and we kept adding supers
or “supering up” as need bee.
The hives grew into ‘towers’
as our super supplies dwindled, and we were left scrambling
for more honey supers. We were anticipating a record-breaking
year, and with hives that were bubbling over with bees,
we needed to stay focused on spring management. Our
preferred method of swarm prevention employs passive
‘splitting’ of the hives. This practice
increases our hive numbers, and consequently requires
additional brood supers. We purchase our woodenware
from Isaac Zook at Forest Hill Woodworking. The following
conversation portrays how this Amish woodworker beecame
my stock broker as we ascended. “Well, not so
much need for the honey supers that we ordered last
week, but instead double the brood supers that we talked
about.”
Life was good thru May, but then came
June, as it always does. However, June ’09 was
far wetter than any recent recollection. With massive
populations and minimal flight time, ‘the girls
got into mischief.’ Well, they needed food, and
their solution was to move up into the honey supers
of ‘surplus’ honey. The honey supers beecame
the nursery, and we spent most of June making corrections,
by reintroducing the queen down to the brood supers,
and inserting queen xcluders beelow the honey supers
for production. Queen xcluders beecame necessary far
earlier than expected during this tumultuous season,
but the roller coaster ride continued.
July and August in Chester County is normally
a time of nectar dearth; however, sufficient rainfall
extended the honey flow. We were very fortunate to harvest
an average yield of seventy-five pounds per hive during
a wetter than normal season. This is substantially lower
than the yields we have grown accustomed to. Such is
farming.
We did xtremely well with bee pollen production,
and plans are underway for increasing the number of
colonies in our pollen yards. Our marketing of fresh
bee pollen has extended coast to coast, and has been
endorsed by bee pollen enthusiasts nationwide.
We anxiously await to see what twenty
ten has in store for our beeloved honeybee.
The Swarmbuster
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