By Kathy Cox, Master Beekeeper U of Montana
Happy New Year, Beeks! This is the time of year to make your beekeeping resolutions! It is also the first meeting of the year when we will have vendors of packages and nucs giving presentations on their products. Waiting to order until February may be too late to get bees this year. So, join us either in person or VIA Zoom. The date is Tuesday, January 28th. Check out the calendar for date, time and video link. At 6:30pm we have a beginner’s lesson. 7pm is for general meeting announcements. At 7:30pm we will have vendor presentations. After that, those in the in-person meeting can talk with vendors. Those online will have breakout rooms to chat about bees!
Another date to be aware of is in the Apiary at the Graham Visitor’s Center PSBA apiary. On Sunday, February 2, 2025, from 11-1pm. It will cover the why and how of Winter Losses with Jeff Steenbergen.
For those who have lost bees, it is time to clean up the old equipment and order new. I am downsizing my apiary since it is becoming harder for me to lift hive bodies with my advancing arthritis. If you are interested in saving money and shipping costs, send me an email to kathycoxusa@comcast.net and I will send you a price list for what I have to sell in February after I take an inventory. I have some discounted new equipment, too. Thanks for your support. If you are ordering from Mann Lake Bees or Dadant, don’t wait too long. They do run short of some things. Besides, you want to paint and wait 2 weeks for the equipment to dry out before introducing bees. Most packages arrive in April and nucs at the end of April and into May for local nucs.
For those lucky enough to still have survivors, it is a good time to clean the bottom boards of debris and dead bees. On a day above 50 degrees, it is a good time to reduce the boxes. It can be as easy as removing the bottom box if it is empty. If it has brood, move them up to the next box or combine them next to brood in the second box. Move any honey frames right next to the cluster. Bees in the Winter will not move over to the frames of honey that are not right next to the cluster. It is too cold for their proboscis to pierce the cold wax. If the shavings in the moisture quilt are wet, replace them. If using a moisture board and it is wet, replace it with a fresh, dry one. At the start of February, you can change from Winter patties to regular ones. The regular ones have a higher protein content and encourage the queen to start to ramp up her laying. If it is still freezing at night, postpone the patties until the end of the month. Starting too early is a mistake.
If your deadouts have honey to extract, make sure to freeze the frames for 48 hours to kill wax moths, eggs, larvae and pupae. The frames should be stored in an airtight bin or critters, bugs and robbing bees can ruin them. By the way, wax moths are not after your wax. They really like to lay in pollen, so their offspring have food. If you have never seen them in your hive, be on the lookout for diagonal trails. If you look on your sticky boards, the feces are small black rectangular and usually found in a pile. If you do your detective work, look on the frames above where you see feces. You can often clean out the tracks and scrape out eggs and larvae. The bees will do the perfect clean up in a normal hive. The larvae is small to start, but the pupae can be approximately one inch long. They can actually eat holes in the woodenware.
Stay warm out there. See you here next month.
Kathy Cox Master Beekeeper
Text: 206-465-1464
Email: kathycoxusa@comcast.net
Website: Facebook.com/seattlehoneybees