Keeping Bees in July 2023

posted in: Honey Bee Management | 0

Rosanna asked me to do the tips again. So I get to write and say hello to everyone again. Hello. Maybe I will see you at our picnic on July 8!

I’m writing this on June 9. I used the last of my honey supers yesterday. I need more. Never have I had so many full supers at this time of year. If this continues, our early summer honey totals will be impressive, and then dearth will come long and hard.

Our weather has been such a seesaw, merry-go-round, yo-yo the last three years. 2021? June heat dome culminating with a 116 degree roast on June 29.  2022? Almost 2 inches of snow fell at the Portland airport April 11 and 12, the latest spring accumulation on record, followed by the wettest May since 1941. This year, May will go down as the warmest on record which brought rain-free skies which continued into June. We also had a number of days with hot, dry east winds. A bit disconcerting!

How has this affected the bees so far? How many swarms have you caught this year? If you were a dry land farmer, would you have planted a crop this May? Seems bees and humans think alike.   

Late July brings the end of the nectar flow and the beginning of dearth for most areas. This year it may start earlier. 

Typically by late July or early August all supers should be off and hives configured for winter.

Removing supers during dearth can elicit robbing behavior. IT IS better to skip a tiny increase, if that, in honey yield and remove supers before full-blown dearth. The bees will appreciate the extra honey. It’s no fun running with a full super to get it away from robber bees! Albeit, you could make this a form of exercise and skip out on gym dues.

Reduce entrances, especially on weak hives and ones being fed. This will allow them to adequately defend themselves against robbing and reduce yellowjacket predation. For example, instead of 16 inches of an opening, make it 3 or 4 inches.

At this time of year, I am looking at consolidation and addressing underperforming hives. Folding up hives and allocating their resources to better prospects probably isn’t a bad idea.

Varroa

I am always thinking about Varroa and managing them throughout the year. It’s a yearly treatment plan, which occurs at different times of the year. Skip one crucial time to treat and Varroa can go the wrong direction. Or it goes the wrong direction regardless . . . Randy Oliver has been my absentee mentor­—never in person but through his web site. Lately Randy has been preaching rotation of treatment types. Clearly he regrets saying Varroa become more vulnerable to oxalic the more they are exposed to it, or using the washing hands with soap/bugs haven’t developed resistance yet analogy . . .

So, I recommend that for you, too. Rotate.

I’ve been an oxalic, formic, and an amitraz applicator (I have applied ONE application of blue shop towels with amitraz generally in August the last 3 years, cheap). I’m also always looking for Varroa (sampling with Randy’s cups with Dawn soap, looking at open drone cells, etc.). Find those outlier mite bomb hives early that for whatever reason have elevated Varroa and treat with a formic application or something along these lines. Wipe out the Varroa in mite bomb hives. An aside, I prefer queen cells over mated queens for brood break treatments with an oxalic and glycerin (never sugar for me) dribble. You can undoubtably do the same with purchased queens with a bit more effort.    

At this time, brood production is decreasing and Varroa production is most likely increasing. In the past I have used the tsunami wave analogy—the initial wave is the initial Varroa infestation wave, then through robbing and bee drift there can be repeat waves of Varroa infestation. 

I believe how well you take care of your bees in the third quarter (July, August, September/early October) to a great extent decides the fate of your hives.

Keep Varroa in check until fall rains come and the robbing season ends. I know it is not easy. I’ve heard stories of extremely competent beekeepers who’ve struggled and had to use multiple treatments and were still unsuccessful in getting Varroa below threshold levels. They tried.

Let’s go back to what Carolyn Breece wrote a few years ago. What she wrote sums it up nicely: “I treat our OSU hives immediately after honey harvest (late July). Some years, our post-treatment mite counts reveal that we still have a mite problem and we need to treat again. So, we treat again in August/early September, but our options are usually limited due to high temperatures. Some years, we have had to treat yet again in late September/October because our mite levels STILL were not in our comfort zone. Why? Was it an ineffective product? Do we have rogue neighbors that don’t treat their bees? I don’t know the answer, but what I do know for sure is that if I hadn’t taken post-treatment samples, I would have thought the bees were just fine after the first round in late July. I would have relaxed all autumn thinking my bees are OK. And then, without a doubt, I would be devastated to find that my hives crashed in winter. Post-treatment sampling is everything!”

Todd Balsiger