Work on an apiary at the end of a bribe and making nests for a winter
Before the end of the honey collection, it is necessary to immediately begin to organize the hives and prevent the theft of bees, which can occur when the bribe breaks.
Measures against the attack of bees.
Bees, carried away by honey, when stopping a bribe can not remain idle. They search everywhere for food, and therefore the defective beehives can easily be looted.
Therefore at the end of a bribe you need:
1. immediately lower the hives to the bottom, if they were raised from the front during the bribe to form a wide tap;
2.to reduce the strength of the family to the width of the tap:
3. Look at the hives to see if there are any crevices that can be penetrated by thieves;
4. at this time it is best to work in the mornings and at night; if it is necessary to inspect the hives during the day, then it is necessary to do the work quickly and not only honey ones, but even empty frames not near the hive, but certainly – in a well-closed box;
5. if you have to take the honey after a bribe, then on large apiaries arrange special tents to isolate the hive during the inspection;
6. Do not spill honey near the hives, do not scatter and leave wax raw materials available to bees.
The main autumn audit of bee colonies.
At the beginning of the period of preparation of bees for wintering, the main autumn audit of bee colonies is carried out, during which the identified shortcomings are clarified and corrected. At the same time, special attention is paid to the determination of the quantity and quality of food reserves in the hives and the provision of bees with honey reserves, create conditions for intensive growth of young bees for the winter and, finally, make nests of bee colonies.
After the honey collection, we must immediately begin a detailed examination of the families, or the main autumn audit, which is just as important
Swarming families led out the queens: one or the other of them could get lost on the original, or remain unfertilized. Selecting honey, they could take it more than it should, etc.
Therefore, at the end of a bribe, it is necessary to find out the state of families as soon as possible in order to have time to correct the discovered shortcomings.
The time for the main autumn audit depends mainly on the local conditions of the bribe. In most areas of Ukraine it is conducted in the first half of August.
During the main autumn audit, attention should be paid to the quality of the queens. If a droned uterus meets the examination, it is immediately destroyed, and the bees are given a spare fetal uterus. For unfertilized uteri continue to follow.
At the same time, during the audit, the amount of honey reserves and their quality is revealed, the missing quantity of stocks is supplemented with additional feeding.
At revision pay attention to a condition of nests and an arrangement of honey stocks. To later it was convenient to make nests for the winter, we must start preparing them immediately after the bribe.
For this purpose, the framework without brood and with insignificant supplies of honey should be printed and put behind the pluggable board. The bees will carry the honey into the nest. But in a number of cases, such a framework is best preserved until the spring: the low-copper frames are good for the spring expansion of the nests. A sparse frame, but with brood it is best to put it on the edge of the nest in order that they can be removed after the brood.
Very old and drone honeycombs also move to the edge of the nest. After such preliminary preparation, it is usually easy afterwards to make nests for hibernation.
Determination of the quantity and quality of honey stocks in hives and standards for providing bees with honey.
After carrying out an audit after the main bribe, they simultaneously find out the availability of honey reserves, as well as their quality.
In order for the bees to have enough forage not only for the whole winter, but also for the spring, it is necessary to have from 18 to 20 kg of good printed flower (not padevoy) honey, and in the northern regions of our country, even more. Of the indicated amount of honey, 14-16 kg is left in the hives (at a rate of 1.5-2 kg per street of bees), and the rest are stored indoors for use in the spring.
In addition, a renewable insurance fund should be kept in the storage room of the economy at a rate of 5 kg per family of bees.
It should be borne in mind that bees will eat a lot of honey in the fall, until wintering, while brood rearing. Then comes winter consumption and, finally, spring. Especially a lot of honey will be needed in the spring, with the emergence of brood, when every day the feed intake progressively grows, and so continues until a significant bribe occurs. Without abundant fodder stocks, it is impossible to grow strong families. You should not limit yourself to scanty (“hungry”) rations, if only the bees held out to the exhibition, but they must fully satisfy their need for food.
Do not be afraid to leave bees in the winter a little extra honey. Bees will not waste a single drop of it in vain, but all winter you can be calm, knowing that bees do not starve. In addition, in the spring, they will not be afraid of bad weather from the winter hut. Egg laying by the uterus and brood rearing will occur normally and will not have to mess with feeding in cold weather. In general, a large supply of food is the key to success in beekeeping. Only benign honey should be allowed to hibernate, not prone to crystallization and without admixture of pade substances. The honey collected from the colors of winter rape, mustard, rape, should not be left in the nests in the winter, so how it can quickly crystallize.
Particularly destructive for bees during wintering is padovy honey.
Some beekeepers believe that honey with a significant admixture of vinegar substances can be fairly easily determined by the color, the taste of the viscosity, and also by the fact that the honey bees do not seal this honey. However, this is not always the case. Pade substances can be very diverse in their composition and properties. In most cases honey with an admixture of vascular substances is more dark, but sometimes it can be light; in some cases it is not prone to crystallization, but some honeydew honey crystallize very quickly. Often bees seal honey with an admixture of vascular substances as readily as benign floral honey. Therefore, one can not rely on the possibility of determining the palliation of honey by its external characteristics, but it is necessary to check the quality of honey by chemical means, using certain reactions.
Determination of pade substances in honey is carried out by alcohol and lime reaction. 10 parts of rectified alcohol are added to a solution of honey consisting of one part of distilled (or rain) water and one part of honey. In the presence of the padi, turbidity occurs. However, this reaction is not completely reliable, because when analyzing good buckwheat honey, cloudiness of the solution is also observed.
Lime reaction is put this way. Dilute honey with water (distilled) in a 1: 1 ratio, then add 2 parts of lime water (a saturated solution of freshly lime) and heat to boiling. In the presence of padi flakes are formed, which precipitate. There is a way to detect the padi in honey using a solution of lead acetate. By means of reagents and instruments in a specially designed convenient marching laboratory, it is possible to determine not only the presence of a pad in honey, but also its approximate amount.
In the event that honey is of poor quality, it should be pumped out, and bees provide a thick sugar syrup.
Growing young bees for the winter.
In the system of measures for the preparation of bee colonies for wintering, the autumn build-up of bees is of particular importance.
It is established that the stronger the bee colonies, the better they will overwinter. Therefore, it is always necessary to build the work so that bee families go to wintering strong, that is, they had 10 or more streets of bees. But the importance of not only the number of bees in families. Of exceptional importance is the quality of the bees, which depends, first of all, on the conditions of growing bees and their age at the onset of wintering.
The Ukrainian research station of beekeeping in one of the experiments revealed the following. In the conditions of the Kharkov region, the bees, which were bred before July 20 and partly participated in the honey, were wintering very badly: more than half of them died during the wintering period, and those who survived until the spring “dispersed” in the first days after the exhibition from the winter hunter.
The bees that reared in August and early September, wintered well and intensively fed brood in the spring.
The bees of a very late withdrawal, which did not manage to make a purification flight in the fall, wintered poorly and amounted to a considerable part of the submarine.
From these experiments it can be seen that the build-up of bees that will go into wintering should be made in some medium, best for the given locality terms.
Now it is revealed that bees of autumn withdrawal, grown in good conditions (in strong families and with abundant feeding), qualitatively differ from the bees of previous generations. In bees, withdrawn after the main bribe (in August and September), for example, the fat body is more developed and they are more vital. Of all the generations of bees, such bees are the most prepared for prolonged life and wintering. This, first of all, is due to the conditions of their cultivation, because they are deduced at a time when the manifestation of the instinct of brood rearing is not distracted by other factors (the presence of a large bribe, voskostroitelstvom, etc.). It is also known that the better conditions will be created in bee colonies during the autumn build-up of bees, the better will be prepared for the wintering of each bee family, the better it will winter.
Throughout the entire period of the autumn build-up of bees, conditions should be provided that are most favorable for laying eggs by the uterus and brood rearing by bees.
Among such conditions, first of all, include: feeding into the nest of feed (pollen nectars); a sufficient number of bees (the strength of the family) and the presence of full-fledged uterus, able to intensively produce eggs. Important conditions are the presence of a place (free cells) for egg laying by the uterus and appropriate warming of the nest.
The period of build-up of bees for wintering should be quite long, it lasts about a month and a half. If the buildup of bees will occur for a short time, then the bees will be taken out a little.
In different localities, the build-up of bees for wintering; not at the same time. So, for example, practice established that in the conditions of the Kiev region the best period of egg laying by the uterus in order to build up young bees in the winter is August and the first half of September. It is not necessary to start this period 1-2 weeks earlier with strong families, since the bees, taken from the eggs laid by the uterus in the second half of July, will have considerably time to grow old by the beginning of wintering. Especially do not postpone the build-up at a later time, as the bees, removed from eggs laid by the uterus in the second half of September, may not have time to fly around in the fall, because autumn overflights often end here in early October.
It is known that the growth of bees is most intense: it occurs when there is even a small bribe. With regular, daily admission to the nest of the family of nectar and pollen of the uterus, the eggs are heavily deposited, and the bees feed the brood. Therefore, it is necessary to plan in advance and produce a late sowing of the honey plants near the location of the apiary especially for the build-up of bees. In most areas of Ukraine, such buckwheat may be buckwheat and mustard seed crops, as well as late sowing of the feces.
In those areas where there are late wild-growing honey-plants (for example, the otava of a white clover growing on meadows), it is useful to drive apiaries to these honeybees during the growing period of bees.
If the bribe is not at this time or it can not be properly used due to bad weather, and if the existing bribe is too small, the feeding of bee colonies during the autumn build-up is mandatory. Such a top dressing is most expedient to produce sugar, giving it in the form of sugar syrup of medium density (1 part of sugar one part of water).
To feed bees follows a warm fodder, giving each family one-and-a-half glasses of sugar syrup daily; pour it into the feeding troughs at night, trying as little as possible to disturb the bees.
For one bee family of medium strength follows for the entire period of fertilizing (in the absence of a bribe) give, approximately, 4-5 kilograms of sugar.
In the impotent period, care should be taken to ensure that there are enough pergis in the nests of bee colonies.
Sometimes fed bees are fed full of honey (also 1: 1), but this is only allowed in those apiaries where neither in this nor in previous seasons there was even a suspicion of infectious diseases of brood or bees.
The feeding of honey bees must be avoided also because the smell of fed honey can cause bees to steal and attack.
Some beekeepers in the impotent period achieve an increased build-up of bees by periodically (in a day or two) they print honey on a low-copper framework, which they put up for the pluggable board. However, practice has shown that it is much more profitable to fertilize bees with sugar syrup, and use small-medium frames in the spring, with the expansion of the nests of bee colonies.
For the successful growth of bees, the strength of the family is of great importance. Weak families little increase the number of young bees; bees in such families are much faster “triggered,” the autumnal generation of bees grown in them is qualitatively worse than grown in strong families. All this, together with other reasons, leads to the fact that weak families are less prepared for wintering than stronger ones, they are worse than winterers. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that during the entire period of autumn growth of bees, bee colonies are sufficiently strong. That is why it is not possible to limit the laying of eggs to eggs for a month and a half before the period of autumn build-up. In the case of small families (for example, late layers), who have to spend the winter, it is necessary to take timely measures to facilitate their rapid development,
The quality of the queens and their age are of great importance in the matter of the autumn build-up of bees. It is noticed that the better the uterus is taken out, the more intensive they lay eggs in autumn and summer, and in autumn. In addition, the uterus of this year’s output produces egg laying in the fall more intensively and significantly longer than the last year’s uterus. Therefore, in most cases it is advantageous to organize a change of queens with such a calculation that in most of the main families of the apiaries during the growth of young bees for wintering there were young uterus. Given the great importance of building as many bees as possible in the autumn period, some beekeepers use the latter for autumn laying of eggs (that is, as autumn “matron assistants”) before selecting good two-year-old queens.
Throughout the time of the bees’ build-up, the uterus should have enough space (free cells) to lay eggs, and this place should be approximately in the center of the nest and at the same time near the tap. If for some reason such a place in the middle of the nest is not enough, then it is necessary to put good, not old (light brown) honeycombs into the nest in a timely manner.
It is necessary to ensure that in each family during the autumn build-up of bees the brood is located on the 5-6 framework, or, in the full frame, the family had at least 3-3.5 brood frames, and in the first half of the period – and more.
If there is not enough brood in any family and the build-up of bees is slow, then it is urgent to find out the causes of this lag in development and to eliminate them. If such a cause is a deficiency of Perga, then it must be given, taking a frame or two from other quite healthy families; if the fault of the backbone is a bad uterus, it must be changed; When there is a shortage of empty cells, the well-tuned honeycomb should be placed in the socket; If the nest is not warm enough, then. it must be insulated, etc. Sometimes, in hot, dry weather, which often happens in August, the reason for the delay in building up bees is lower humidity, air in the nest. In this case, even such a simple measure, as staging a hive of young honeycomb with water (next to the extreme frame of the nest) can sometimes greatly help the cause.
We must always remember that the better it will be, the growth of young bees in the winter, the more they will be in such families in the spring; if other favorable conditions exist, they will develop faster and can give more production.
Making nests for the winter.
The main concern of the beekeeper in the autumn period is to provide the bees with the proper wintering conditions, for which it is necessary to make nests correctly so that the bees have sufficient and properly located food reserves.
Preparing for nesting begins immediately after the selection of honey. The final compilation of nests is best done in early September, and in the south of Ukraine, at the end of September. By this time, the number of brood in the nests will greatly decrease. True, some families do not easily make a nest right away. In such cases, the nest is arranged so that at the end of September it is possible to remove excess frames or replace small-medium ones, without particularly disturbing the bees. In bad years in honey production, it is necessary to finish the assembly of the nest sooner, in time to be able to feed the bees in time.
To properly make a nest, you need to know how bees are arranged for wintering in those cases when a person does not interfere with their life and does not violate it.
Ordinarily, the frames that stand against the tap hole are almost completely covered with brood in the summer. On more distant frames or parts of the framework, the number of broods decreases and, finally, it does not turn out at all. As the harvest continues, the distant frames gradually begin to fill with honey, making the uterus empty for egg laying. The last brood concentrates usually near the tap; by the autumn it will come out, and here on empty honeycombs the bees will gather for the winter club. On honey, they can not sit, because it is very cold in winter.
The club of bees resembles a ball. Bees thickly fill the streets (spaces) between the frames, and also climb into empty cells. The middle 2-3 streets are the most filled with bees. Then in every street there are fewer and fewer bees.
In the winter, as the honey is consumed, the bees move behind it. At first the club of bees rises upwards, but, having reached the ceiling, it must move somewhere, looking at the width of the nest and the frames, either to the back wall or to some side. If there are a lot of honey in the hive, so wherever the bees go, there will always be so much stock that it will last till spring, they will not suffer from hunger. But if bees eat honey in any part of the nest and they have to search for food through empty honeycombs in the other direction, where there is honey, they can not do this before the appearance of brood and sometimes die with starvation, in spite of the fact that in Nest are significant stocks of honey.
In natural conditions, bees nest predominantly in hollows of trees. The honeycombs there are very long (high), but narrow. Above, they are usually occupied with honey, and below the nest. Club of bees in winter there is only one way – to move behind honey. There are no other ways that could put bees in difficult conditions. That is why wild bees for centuries lived well and now live in forests and suffer even harsh winters.
Bees, bred by man, live in the hives of this or that system. Depending on the type of hive, the position of the tap and the location of honey stocks, the movement of the club of bees is not the same. Let us consider several cases of such movements.
For example, in a hive with a narrow-high frame – Ukrainian with a warm drift or a hive of the Levitsky type – the location of honey reserves and nests are such that the bees move first upwards, and then have to move to the rear frames, which can not always be done; neither the right nor the left can not be moved here, since the frames are narrow and the bees grab them all the way across.
In the same hives, but with a cold drift, the bees can first move up, and then will have to migrate to the left or to the right. But in such cases, bees sometimes fall into a difficult situation, resulting in the death of the whole family, because they can not go through empty cells in cold winter time and they will die of starvation, despite the fact that there will be a significant supply of honey in the hive.
In a beehive with a low-wide frame and a cold drift with a small amount of honey, the club’s movement will be as follows.
First, the bees will move up, mainly on the front of the frame (near the tap). To reach the top edge of the frames, they do not need much time if in the low frame there is only a narrow strip of honey at the top, in the back part of the frame there is more. Therefore, the bees, reaching the ceiling, will move to the rear wall of the hive on the same frames. When honey is eaten, the bees will have to move to the right or left on the honey frames, which in winter they can not do. Therefore, here, too, family anxiety, a sharp rise in temperature in the club, an increase in the talus of bees, a bearing, and in some cases the death of a family, can occur.
From the considered positions it can be seen that the bees will not suffer if there is enough honey in the hive and it will be located so that the bees do not have to go through the empty honeycombs. This is the most important thing in making nests.
The general rules that need to be followed when designing nests are:
When preparing bees for wintering in winter huts, it is best to leave as many frames in the hives as the bee club captures plus 1-2 frames from the outer sides, on which the bees do not sit in winter. With a reduced nest, bees will be warmer, and therefore they will eat less food, therefore, their bowels will overflow. b) “When the winter is cold (in the yard), the nest should be more compressed, where only the outer borders on the outside can stay for the winter without bees.
Since distant and not occupied by bees frames, especially the extreme ones, are often damp and moldy, some beekeepers from the edges of the nest put the worst frames, for example, with a drone or very old honeycomb. In the spring, these frames are removed from the hive and re-poured onto the wax. The advanced beekeeper PM Osaulenko does differently. It places the young honey frames, in which the brood was not hatched, and there is no perga. Such a framework is not moldy and well preserved.
We must carefully monitor that the nest does not leave an empty (without honey) frame, as well as frames on either side of the empty, or with a very insignificant amount of honey. The empty frame will be a septum in the nest through which bees will not pass in winter and may die of hunger, despite the fact that behind the empty frame there will be reserves of honey.
Frames, on which there is very little honey, must be carried beforehand in front of the pluggable board for drying bees or to pump out honey from them, and the bees to feed.
The most important and necessary condition for a good wintering of bees is to leave on each frame from 2 to 2.5 kg of honey, and then the bees will not need to move to other frames, since it will last for spring on each frame. Frames with perga should be placed within the club of bees, otherwise perg will be covered with mold. Outside the club of bees, you must leave only one full honey frame from both sides of the nest. All unnecessary frames are removed.
In the winter, families should go strong, occupying not less than 8 full streets and having queen output this year or last year.
Nesting must be done in early September, and south at the end of September, but a preliminary assembly of nests for the winter should be carried out during the main autumn audit.
This is done so. In a hive with a cold drift remove from the side of the plank 2 or 3 marginal frames and put in their place an insert board. Then near the board put one frame, half filled with honey. Next, place frames with brood, perga and honey. Wherein; it is necessary that in each of them there should be not less than 2 kg of honey sealed by bees.
This framework should be against the tap. On them; on the release of brood the club of bees will gather for the winter, for bees, as a rule, are located for the winter against a tap, but at the same time somewhat gravitate towards the warmer wall of the hive.
Beyond the brood and perga frames are framed with a little more honey.
Thus, with this method of making nests, the club of bees will itself settle for wintering against the tap. And it will be correct.
With a warm skid, it is also important that each frame; was half filled with honey. The club of bees is located near the tap and will move up.
By the end of wintering, the bees have a brood, which requires pear or pollen for the feeding, and then 2-3 such honey frames are left in the nest, in which there is pergola.
When folding the nests, attention is drawn to the quality of honey stocks. If honey beet is in the beehive, then it should be pumped out in a timely manner, and the bees are fed with sugar syrup.
Work after compilation of nests.
The most important works of the autumn season in the apiary end with the nests. In the future, we only have to monitor those families who have not completed this or that job. For example, in one hive it is necessary to take out the frame freed from the brood; in the other – add the missing amount of feed; in the third – to track the laying of eggs by the uterus, etc. After compiling the nests, it is no longer necessary to disturb the happy families with examinations. Bees themselves are actively preparing for the winter: they choose honey from the outer sides of the extreme framework and carry it to the nest; cover the ceiling, firmly glue the propolis frame to the grooves; cover up all the slots above the tap hole. In view of this, it is not necessary to destroy the work of bees in vain, because, for example, a hive with well-glued frames is not so dangerous when the hives are transported to the winter hut.
In early September, it is necessary to strengthen the heating of the nests, inserting, in addition to the upper, and side cushions. In this case, the bees will eat less of honey, and the uterus – longer to lay eggs.
When hibernating in the yard, the hives should be well protected from strong winds, for example, by high fences or thick plantations. Otherwise, winds and storms will cause great harm to the apiary. In addition, in unheated beehives in the last weeks before installing them in the winter quarters they eat more honey, as a result of which their intestines are more overloaded from autumn than in bees in warm hives located in sheltered places from the wind.
For a successful winter, it is very important to use warm days for late flight of bees, so if a warm day occurs for late birds in the late autumn, suitable for flying over the bees, but the bees do not fly out due to the onset of low life activity, they should be disturbed so that they circumnavigate on this warm day. In connection with this autumn, the general direction of the beacons of the hives should be to the south.
Reducing the nest and good warming (upper and side) are of great importance, especially in single-walled hives.
To save the reserve queens by spring, 2-3 small families with spare uterus should be placed in one hive, divided by plywood septa. Families will enjoy the common heat and mutually heat each other. When you put these seeds on three, it is very important that the extreme families are significantly stronger than the average.
Nuclei with spare uterus can also be placed behind a septum, next to a strong family.
It must be borne in mind that very small nucleuses are significantly worse than winter, so they should not be allowed to winter in less than 4 frames well covered with bees.
Families with few bees during wintering wear heavily. They have to spend more energy to maintain the necessary heat in the nest, and therefore the dying of wintering bees is rapidly dying in the spring. That is why strong families must go in the winter.
Weak families with six and less bee-streets should be placed in the winter for two in one hive, separated by a plywood partition. They will heat each other mutually and will winter better.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)Work on an apiary at the end of a bribe and making nests for a winter