A year in a treatment free apiary in

Nebraska

Presentations online

Before you take copious notes, all these presentations are online here:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beespresentations.htm

Bee Camp

http://www.bushfarms.com/beescamp.htm

“Everything works if you let it”

––James "Big Boy" Medlin

April

• Check weight of hives (brood rearing can burn a lot of stores)

• Mark dead outs and check for causes.

• If dead outs are heavy redistribute stores to light hives so they don’t have to be robbed out.

• Check “boomers” to make sure they aren’t going to run out of room.

May• Check for drones flying so we can decide

when to do splits and queen rearing.

• Mid-may do splits of hives that have filled four boxes.

• Start looking for swarm cells and open brood nests or split booming hives.

• Start queen rearing when drones are flying.

June• Seriously into queen rearing.

• For the first two weeks still keeping an eye on swarming.

• Mid-June stack on the supers for the main flow

• Late-June start shipping queens.

• Clean up after tornadoes...

July• Continue queen rearing and queen shipping.• Split mating nucs that are getting too strong.• Break up hives that are languishing into nucs

and give them queen cells.• If the flow continues, put more supers on.• If the flow lets up, reduce entrances, watch for

robbing and start feeding mating nucs a small amount at night to keep the queens mating.

• Go fishing

August• Continue queen rearing and queen shipping.

• Split mating nucs that are getting too strong.

• Watch space and if there is still a flow, keep adding supers. If there is not keep an eye on the robbing situation and the food situation.

• If you have to feed (rare), reduce all entrances and feed all hives.

September• Weather and flow can vary a lot. Usually

asters and goldenrod are the main flow at this time, with chicory filling in if those are in short supply.

• If you see bees working sawdust and coffee grounds and feed dust (signs of a pollen dearth), open feed pollen for a last batch of young brood.

October• Weather and flow can vary a lot. We may get a hard

freeze early or late in October. Once there is a freeze the year is over.

• If the weather is still warm and there has been no killing frost, continue to keep an eye on pollen needs.

• If the weather is around 40°F in the mornings, start harvesting and leaving stores.

• After harvest put wets back on for cleanup

• Get all the nucs clustered together for winter

• Get all the hives clustered together for winter

• Consolidate mating nucs into nucs or queen banks.

November• Finish up any of the October projects that are

not done or have been postponed because of warm weather.

• If we have finished harvest and if the wets are cleaned up, get them off and stacked so the mice can’t get in.

• Put insulation on the covers.

December• Leave them alone...

• Good news will keep. Bad news won’t go away.

• Work on equipment

Sevareid's Law:

“The leading cause of problems is solutions.”

Bush's Law of Problems and Solutions:

“Most problems are imaginary and most solutions are

illusions”

January• Leave them alone...

• Work on equipment

February• Leave them alone...

• Work on equipment

March• Depending on the weather, either leave them

alone or take a peek to see how some of them are faring.

• Heft them for weight.

• If any are light to the point of being worrisome, steal honey from dead outs for them.

• Deliver foals...

Further Readinghttp://www.bushfarms.com/beesspring.htm

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesspace.htm

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeswinter.htm

Contact Info

Michael Bush

bees at bushfarms dot com

www.bushfarms.comBook: The Practical Beekeeper