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Monthly Tasks

• Review your goals for the month
• Plan your schedule
• JANUARY-ISH Overall, our three main tasks as beekeepers are to check our hives for pests, space and nutrition. In January, in Hamilton County, Ohio and the surrounding area it is winter. We are Zone B here. A is north. C is south. D is the southern tip of the continent. In Zone B we are on a bit of a break from most activity, yet we need to be mindful of a few things. Here are a few things you should have already done, and need to consider for the future. Fall Mouse Guards - We should already have on our mouse guards. Mice would love to have a warm home in your bee hive for the winter. They make a big mess and can kill your hive. Two alternatives to mouse guards are to: 1. Flip your bottom board if you have a solid bottom board that has a narrower shim around the edges of one of the sides. 2. Put on an entrance reducer that has the same narrower/short entrance. I like to peek in the entrance with a flashlight to see if there is a mess of grass and debris which could be an indication that a mouse has already moved in. Feeding - Hives should already be fed during the fall months with 2:1 sugar water if they did not have enough stored honey to make it through the winter. In this area 60-70 lbs should do it. Heft the back of your top box on a warmer day to see if it still is sufficiently heavy if you’re wondering. I bought a luggage scale to hook on the back to give me some hive-to-hive comparison. Candy Board – Some beekeepers add this in March or April, but a candy board is a good emergency winter food source for the bees in case they need it while you’re not watching. If the hive is well fed, they may not need it. Yet hard sugar will absorb water, so it may absorb excess moisture in the hive, so the bees don’t get wet. A good recipe for a candy board is 5 lbs granulated sugar mixed with ½ cup of water with a hand mixer. Vinegar or essential oils can be added if desired. Spread the sand-like sugar on a cookie sheet and score it in half or fourths, and bake it at 180 degrees F for 2-3 hours. Lay a piece of wax paper on top of the top box’s frames, smoking the bees off, and leaving space around the edges of the paper, place the sugar block on top of the wax paper. Air needs to be able to flow around the wax paper. Check periodically to make sure the bees still have some sugar as spring approaches. Some hives toss it out the front, some need it to survive. No need to mix in pollen powder with the sugar mixture since the queen won’t be brooding in the winter. The bees may not have a chance to have any elimination flights weather depending if they eat it. What they need in the winter is just sugar carbohydrates. Keep the pollen sub for the spring build up. Insulation - Each hive needs some insulation on top in the winter. My hives have 2 inches of insulation fit into a 2.5-inch shim on top. Or if you have a quilt board on instead, those wood chips should insulate it sufficiently. Or an even quicker way is to put some pink insulation board the size of the outer cover right on top of the hive, and place a heavy rock on top of it. Without insulation, warm air from the cluster will hit a cold lid causing condensation which would then rain droplets on the bees. Cold wet bees are dead bees. Wrapping hives is something some beekeepers do and others do not. Having insulation on top is the most necessary, wrapping is optional. In case you want to know how to do it, here is one way. Buy 18 inch reflective bubble insulation (for 2 deep box hive), and 2-48 inch bungie cords per 10 frame hive from the hardware store. Cut about a 6 ½ foot section of insulation, cover one side with black landscape paper, tar paper or a black plastic garbage bag and staple it. Wrap this around your hive and secure with a couple bungie cords. You can double the insulation if you like. The black color is to attract the sun in the winter and to prevent blindness from the reflection off the insulation. Ventilation - Keep the entrance open if it snows significantly. An upper entrance can be helpful in this case the bees needed to fly. Also an opening of some kind on top can create air flow, which pushes moist air to the side walls inside the hives, and keeps air flowing so it doesn’t accumulate on the top and rain on the bees. So, make sure the hive has some kind of hole in the inner cover, insulation shim or quilt board frame. Winter Oxalic Acid Treatment - To help your bees survive the winter and start the spring relatively varroa mite free, it is very important is to do an Oxalic Acid treatment or two on each hive during the winter. Now when the queen is not brooding is when OA works best, since it only kills mites that live on the bees and does not penetrate the cappings. Beekeepers will do this sometime in the end of December, and sometimes a second winter treatment in January or February, before the weather starts warming up. There are many websites on how to do this. Basically place 1 gram (1/4 teaspoon) Api-Bioxal Acid (oxalic acid) per hive in the sublimator tool, connect it to a battery, let it vaporize for 3-5 minutes, remove the tool and close up the hive for 10 minutes with a rag. Personal protective equipment is necessary. Honeybee Health Coalition has some instructions on how to do this on page 24. https://honeybeehealthcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/HBHC-Guide_Varroa-Mgmt_8thEd-082422.pdf Mann Lake or other bee supply companies have the tool and the acid. Dosage of Oxalic acid is controversial. Canada is allowed to use 2 grams per box. 1 gram per box has been proven in studies to not be as effective as 2 grams, yet both leave very low residue in the hive and cause very low harm to eggs and uncapped larvae. Yet we are bound to do what the label states. The label is the law. Entrance check – if it snows, watch that your entrances remain open. Brush off dead bees that may accumulate. A few are expected. If there are many, check with your mentor what to do next. Anticipation – The best way to keep the hive healthy is to anticipate what may happen before it does. Here are just a few things to anticipate before the spring busy season. Equipment maintenance – clean and repair any hive boxes, frames or other equipment, and put in storage. Store honey frames – if you haven’t already, you can freeze empty comb for 3 days then store it in a 64 Qt/ 61 L Sterilite bin. Tape up the holes under the handles so wax moths or ants don’t find their way in. Para-Moth can be added to keep moths out, but the frames should be ventilated before use. If you have too many to store like this, leave them open to the air and light but under cover. Light deters wax moths. Quick Inspection/Food – Bees can die from starvation even if there is honey in the hive, if the cluster cannot get to the honey. If you are able to move honey frames close to the cluster, bees can access it without leaving the warmth of the cluster. On a mild day with no wind, when the bees are flying a bit, take a peek under the cover. Do you see the bees? Do they look ok? They may be in a cluster the top box. See if you see capped honey close to the cluster. Check the weight of the box by hefting the back side of it. If it is light, you may need to start some emergency feeding, candy board would be best if the temperatures are expected to remain cold. Inventory – If you have an established hive, do you need any more boxes and frames to sustain its growth? Do you need to purchase a nuc box and frames incase your hive creates queen cells, so you can remove the queen before a swarm occurs? If you want to do any splits or order a nuc hive, do you have the hive set up to do this? Do you need to build a hive stand? Do you have mite treatments for the different weather conditions or hive conditions? Do you have enough honey supers if you get a bumper crop of honey next spring? Ordering bees and queens – If you are considering expanding your apiary and need some bees to do it, SWOBA strongly suggests to order from local beekeepers who are selling nucs. These bees will prove to thrive in these weather conditions, and be able to overwinter into next year. SWOBA will have a list of beekeepers who will be selling nucs and queens in the area. A Nuc is a nucleus hive which contains bees, a queen and two frames of her brood at all stages of development, two frames of food in the form of honey/nectar and pollen, and drawn comb to grow. Its usually 5 deep frames, but can be medium frames if specifically requested. According to the Ohio Dept. of Agri, a nuc should be a colony of bees in a box with three to eight frames containing a laying queen bee and her progeny in all life stages. The nuc shall have honey and a viable population sufficient enough to develop into a full-sized colony. Register your apiary - Please note that according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture, any newly established apiaries are required to be registered within 10 days of receipt of the honey bees. Registering your apiary allows the state of Ohio to know where there are bee hives in case of some kind of pesticide contamination. Your apiary will not be inspected unless requested or used to raise queens or sell nucs. It costs $5 per apiary if registered by May 31. When buying queens or nucs, you have the right to see the registration for that apiary. Download the registration from this page: https://agri.ohio.gov/divisions/plant-health/forms/plnt_4201-002 5 minute Video - https://agri.ohio.gov/divisions/plant-health/apiary-program Read up/Tidy up/Make up/Think up – Winter is the perfect time to read those bee books and magazines, clean up you bee equipment in the garage or basement, and make something out of any extra wax you have accumulated though out the summer/fall. Review your year in beekeeping. What did you learn? What will you change? What questions do you have? Do you need a mentor to ask questions and brainstorm? SWOBA can provide for you a mentor in your area.