This gives you some tips on when to open your hive, what to look for and how to work with your bees -- how to get familiar with the calendar year when working with your bee hive so that you know what you are looking at

1. Week Three: Managing and Working
with the Bees
Dara K. Dimitrov
dkd4@waikato.ac.nz

2. When to look in the hive
 You need to learn to inspect your hives REGULARLY but
the calendar year is important
 Spring
 Summer
 Autumn
 Winter

3. Time of Day
 Try to Open the hive in the middle of the day
 If the weather is too cool – the bees will be agitated
 If it is late in the day – it will be too cold
 Or they have been annoyed too often
Bees can inherit defensive behavioural traits – species of bees
Stinging readily may mean you have to smoke them

4. What you are looking for in the
hive (Brood box)
 The number of bees in the hives
 What types of bees are there
 If the bee numbers are low – the queen might be failing
 The number of frames of brood
 We can if there is continuity in the bee production
 Eggs, larvae, capped brood
 Honey stores?? - have the bees got food
 Examine the brood – and the patterns
 Looking for disease (we will cover this later)

6. Spring – September to December
 You will open the boxes more regularly as the weather
warms up
 Health of the colony
 Smell the hive box – Unpleasant smell?
 Sound of the hive – loud and agitated – probably queen-less
 The condition of its queen (looking for eggs – brood)
 Varroa Mite Strips go in (and out before honey boxes go on)
This is the time to take corrective action if you think the hive has
problems

8. Spring
 The number of the bees increase quite quickly
 The hive needs to have adequate food – if not naturally
– then you have to feed them (a bit on this later)
 The hive will begin to build queen cells
 This is the natural way that the hive will reproduce itself
 Hive splitting can be done now – more successful than in
autumn
 The Queen Excluder is VERY important
 It is used to separate the brood from the honey boxes
 The size allows the bees to pass but prevents the queen
and drones

10. If there is a problem
can see it
--- You
 Queen fails - No Queen --- no eggs or larvae

11. Hive has low bee numbers
 Low Brood numbers - No brood – queen has failed or
died
 Low honey – No honey –You can’t see any in the frames
 No pollen?
The bees will be starving – and you will need to feed them
You may have to re-queen the hive if there is low brood
numbers (more on this next week)

12. Summer -- Dec to March
(Honey)
 The bees basically take care of themselves – the less
you disturb them – the happier they are
 Checking them regularly (every 2 weeks – weekly if you
think there is a problem)
 Checking the honey flow – the bees shoot out of the
hive like they have been fired from a gun
 There are flowers everywhere – blooms and trees

14. Summer
 Checking how much available space is in the hive
 This is the time you begin to put honey supers on (the
honey boxes go on one at a time)
 You entice the bees up into the honey supers by putting a
couple of frames of honey into the Honey super
 Extra room stimulates the bees to store more honey
 Remember the WEIGHT OF THE HIVE –
 Full depth supers can weigh as much as 40 kilos
 ¾ depth supers can weigh as much as 25 kilos

16. Honey Supers
 Important to put the first one as soon as the bee
numbers build up
 Put the second one on when the first one is half fill (put
a frame up in the second one to entice the bees up)
 As you get higher – put the filled boxes at the top and
the empty boxes above the brood (easier for the bees to
get to the empty supers)
 This is called Top Supering – you just keep adding
supers until the honey flow stops
 You can begin to harvest the honey

17. Autumn – March - June
 The peak of the honey flow has passed
 Take the honey supers off but leave enough for over
wintering Varroa Mite strips go back in
 Check the queen and the brood (eggs, larvae) – the
queen slows down the egg laying
 Can split the hives now too
 Reduce the entrance to the hive to keep the warmth in
 Can put on extra hive protection (like carpet above the
hive matt) to give the hives extra warmth protection

19. Winter – June – August (early
September)
 The queen will slow right down on laying eggs
 There is no food about for the bees so they usually
cluster in the hive
 Basically a ball of bees in the middle of the hive (the size of
the ball depends on the number of bees in the hive)
 The ball is heated to around 35 Celsius (no matter what the
temperature is outside the hive
 The cluster is layers of bees lined up side by side which
creates a thermal barrier
 The bees can still move about and eat a little honey
 IF the cluster loses heat – the hive will die

20.  If there are too few bees in the hive and the outer shell
of the cluster loses heat – the hive will die even if there
is honey in the hive
 The bees can’t leave the cluster to go eat – there can be
several ‘shells’ of the cluster
 Keeping the hive warm is paramount
 Cluster can cover 8-9 frames on a strong hive
 Very cold – cluster will be reduced to 2-3 frames

21. Never open the Hive
 When it is raining, cold, or windy
 WHY?
 Chilled brood – the bee larvae and capped brood die
 Dead bees still STINK
 You have to remove the frames and clean out the hive box
 The bees have to work harder to draw out the wax
 The hive will become weak – and will probably die out over the
winter

22. Bee Temperatures
 35 Celsius – is the optimum core temp in the hive
 18 Celsius – the bees will begin to cluster
 14 Celsius – the bees will become motionless in the
outer cluster shell – even though the bees inside the
cluster may still move about

23. Feeding the Hives (or they
starve)
 This is the time of the year when the bees run out of
stored honey –
 This can happening from mid – winter to early spring
 The weather is too cold for the bees to break cluster
 You feed the hives from inside the hive (dripping syrup into
the hive sometimes help if the hive is weak)
 If the winter is very cold – your nucs will die off as they
can’t maintain cluster and feed (too few bees) ---you may
have to put them on top of a stronger hive to save them)

24. Feeding bees -
 Pollen Patties – protein source for the bees (I make my
own up) – see hand-out
 Sugar Syrup – you need sugar feeders –
 Sugar Fondant – sets (so not syrup) – treat it like a
pattier

25. Sugar Syrup in Zip Lock bags

28. Questions?????