Summer Hive Management

Beekeeping changes with the seasons, because bees change with the inflows to the hive. It is one of my favorite parts of beekeeping – a spectacle of nature.

My beekeeping year ends in spring, and begins anew in Summer. Spring is when the bees make the honey that becomes my beekeeping income, and Summer is when I begin to set the bees up to survive winter and thrive next spring.

Summer Management Goals

• Honey Harvest
• Strength Assessment / Queen-right Check
• Draw Comb
• Pests & Parasites
• Dearth Management

Beekeeping is local, beekeeping is personal. My summer management goals reflect my location, and my overall operational goals. As such, my goals will change a bit from year to year, and your goals should reflect your location and management plan.

To help you understand the set up to summer management, let’s briefly touch on Spring, and the state of the hives.

Spring Management (Refresher)

My Spring Management goal is to create huge hives with incredible forager populations.

The reason behind this is to take advantage of the 2.5X Rule of Bees – Double colony population, and honey production increases by 250%. (Reference Link)

Following this rule, it is more efficient to have fewer bigger colonies than it is to have more smaller colonies. The reason is operational efficiency, and woodenware efficiency.

All my hives require roughly the same amount of work and maintenance, whether they have five honey supers, or none. All of my hives require a bottom board, inner cover, and top lid.

The marginal honey production cost per hive is actually lower for big hives than small hives when factoring in increased production and lower average labor and woodenware expense.

My Spring Management system is based heavily on the checkerboarding technique championed by Walt Wright (Read More).

I’ve talked with another beekeeper running this system who averages 90% success in swarm suppression and generates massive honey production per hive using a similar system, so I’m hoping to move toward those goals in future years. (Check out this beekeepers YouTube Channel – Carter Hill Honeybees).

This technique relies on large amounts of drawn comb to use as honey supers. Unfortunately I did not have enough drawn comb this year to implement the strategy properly.

Due to my lack of drawn comb I’d label my spring management attempt a moderate failure. I had a 33% success rate in swarm prevention, but due to my swarm trapping endeavors caught almost all of my swarms. Because the nectar flow was so strong this year, even hives that swarmed repopulated enough to make some honey later in the season.

Honey Harvest

My part of Tennessee has 43 minor nectar flows, and 7 major flows. I waited until Basswood and Sourwood were played out and then harvested honey.

Due to our humid climate I dealt with a lot of uncapped frames and honey too wet to be shelf stable. I was able to dry my wet honey and the average moisture of my buckets is now running about 17.5%. (Read My Article On Drying Honey)

The total harvest netted around 750 pounds, a testament to strong flows and good flight weather, rather than the success of my management. Who was it that said “I’d rather be lucky than good”?

Strength Assessment, NOT Queenright Check

When honey supers are on hives it makes for a tremendous amount of work to inspect the broodnests. You pull off each of the supers, set them aside, finally get down to the brood area at the bottom of the hive, and when you’re done you have to re-stack the supers. A day of that would leave me hot, sore, and tired…more so than I want to be.

Because of this simple physical barrier, after honey comes off hives is a perfect time to assess the health of the hive.

Instead of traditional Queen-right Checks, I have settled on Strength Assessments instead. My true goal is to preserve my resources.

I see beekeeping as being a Bee Landlord. So what I really want to know from summer through winter and into spring is that each hive has a healthy population, and can protect the hive that I am renting to them.

What I want to avoid is the hive population diminishing to the point that Small Hive Beetles and Wax Moth overrun the hive, slime the comb, and destroy my investment.

So with an eye on the true goal – preservation of resources – I can relax on doing traditional queen-right checks. It’s great to know that each hive has a queen, but that doesn’t tell me what I really want to know – does that hive have the population to protect the comb area they have?

Strength Assessment

• Can be done from the top box (in some cases)
• Can be fast & easy
• Doesn’t break honey open (prevent robbing)
• Little risk of rolling or pinching queen

Queen-right Check

• Need to see queen, or eggs
• Requires opening the brood area
• Can break open honey (robbing)
• Some risk of rolling or pinching queen

When I pulled my honey supers from production hives I stripped everything taller than the third medium (I use all medium boxes for hives bodies, nuc boxes, swarm traps, and honey supers.)

At the same time I added back a fourth box with a double frame feeder and eight frames of foundation. This maneuver has several purposes and benefits.

• Gives large populations space to spread out, which reduces
  • Overheating
  • Bearding
  • Potential overcrowding swarms
• Potential to get more comb drawn
• VERY fast and easy way to assess strength (on some hives)

Hives were not fed syrup for a week after honey supers were pulled. Mostly because I was busy working honey, but this worked in my favor because some strong hives actually moved up into the box of empty foundation and started drawing comb.

This unstimulated work tells me instantly that the hive is strong and populated enough to protect their hive. There is an extremely good chance that they are queen-right and healthy, so I closed them up and moved on – never going deeper than that top box.

Assessing strength on other hives can be more complicated. I’ve more than doubled my hive counts this year, so I have a lot of nucleus colonies and smaller colonies that aren’t strong enough for the quick and easy method of top assessment.

On these colonies I assess strength from the top. If the population isn’t impressive, I’ll usually remove the top box and pull frames from the center of the broodnest, going straight to the heart of the matter and looking for brood of all ages, eggs, or the queen if she happens to be on the one or two frames I look at.

The key for me on these inspections to be time efficient. I try hard to be gentle on the hive and judicious with my time. Less work with the same result is the goal.

Draw Comb

Comb is one of the most valuable assets a beekeeper has, and it has a perishable lifetime. Comb collects toxins from the environment over time, tracked inside by millions of bee feet.

So a wise beekeeper plans the obsolescence of his comb. Bob Binnie at Blue Ridge Mountain Honey Company lists making and selling nucleus colonies as a wonderful way to cycle 3-5 year old comb out of his operation. It is still valuable and has life for the next owner, but he is cycling in fresh comb and old comb out of his operation continually.

I’m in a different operational stage – build up. Being my second year, I am still trying to build comb. I began the year with somewhere around 110 medium 10 frame boxes of foundation, and probably still have 20-30 that have not been drawn this year.

If I can feed my bees through the dearth and get some comb drawn, then it is well worth the hassle and expense…this year. Next year I hope to not have to worry with it.

Pests & Parasites

Summer is notable as the peak Small Hive Beetle population, and peak Varroa Mite population. Both of these come at a time when (in my area) locally adapted queens are slowing their egg laying and shrinking the broodnest in anticipation of dearth.

Declining bee population with peaking SHB and Varroa populations are a recipe for hive collapse if colonies are not properly managed.

Varroa Destructor

I choose to treat my hives with Oxalic Acid Vaporization. Oxalic Acid has been used for many years, but I feel like research into this treatment is still in its’ infancy.

Randy Oliver and Jennifer Berry along with many other researchers are pursuing many avenues of treatments with OA, in different dosages, timeframes, climates, and delivery devices.

More is NOT known than IS known.

For instance, scientists DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW OA KILLS MITES!

OAV has strengths, weaknesses, and unknowns (unknown is spelled R-I-S-K).

• Easy on bees, not causing brood loss, Queen loss, or bee loss.
• Kills a large % of phoretic mites (phoretic = mites outside brood).
• OAV does not penetrate capped brood.
• At any time, 60% of mites are in capped brood.

To treat with OAV during a time of year where brood is present and extensive within the hive, I treat 6 times at 4 day intervals. (Note that current research that Jennifer Berry at UGA is doing shows a similar treatment regimen to be largely ineffective – Reference Link)

I followed this regimen last year, treating in late July or early August when Varroa populations peak, then treated once more in early January (when hives should be broodless). I had 100% survival of 9 hives, which is an insignificantly small sample size.

I am risk averse. I have a lot invested into my apiary – time, money, and passion. I want to protect that investment…protect my bees.

I wonder if I should start another yard somewhere, even though I’m loathe to do so because of the extra work and travel involved? I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket, one treatment, with no diversity.

Sorry guys, I’ve got a brain full of information here, and more questions than answers.

Small Hive Beetles

Small Hive Beetles are terrible opportunists. They have a fascinating life cycle – they trick the bees in the hive into feeding them, even though the bees act as their jailers. So the bees are sustaining the life of the pest that would love to wreck their home and all their possessions.

I deal with Small Hive Beetles in 4 ways:

1. Appropriate sized hive for the population (this is a cure-all for so many hive problems!)
2. Hives in full sun.
3. Metal roofing under hive stands.
4. Freeman Oil Tray Bottom Boards.

Hive Size

During strength assessments I look closely at populations and shrink any hives that I feel don’t have enough bees to protect the comb that they have. To shrink a hive, I’ve got several options:

• Shake out bees and combine a box with a stronger hive.
• Give the box to a growing nuc that could use the resources.
• Freeze the box to save it for swarm traps or nucleus colonies next spring.

The key is to have a strong population with good bee coverage for whatever hive size you give them. You need enough bees to police the space they are in.

Full Sun

Hives in full sun have fewer beetles. If you know the reason, please let me know why.

Even in truly southern states – Texas, Florida, Louisiana, South Alabama, South Georgia – the bees are able to cool their hives when placed in full sun, and being in full sun results in fewer beetles.

When I started beekeeping I placed my hives in partial shade with good Southern exposure for winter warming. Now I am putting hives in full sun and plan to move my shaded hives to the sunny yard, in part because of the reduced beetle pressure. (Also because I won’t get stung bushhogging the field in front of the shady yard anymore.)

Metal Roofing Under Hive Stands

This serves two purposes:

1. When beetle larvae crawl out of the front of the hive to burrow into the ground and become adults, it is very likely they will hit the SCORCHING hot dark green metal in front of the hive entrance and roast, thus breaking the life cycle of the beetle.
2. I don’t have to mow or weedeat as much. Call me lazy, but I don’t like mowing and weedeating.

Freeman Oil Tray Bottom Boards

Admittedly I have a love/hate relationship with these….they definitely have strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

• Giant beetle trap.
• Can access and clean without opening hive.
• Kills beetles, beetle larvae, wax moth, wax moth larvae, and Varroa Mites.
• Can use to monitor Varroa Mite levels.
• Saved a hive last year from a Mite Bomb.

Weaknesses

• Expensive
• More Work
• Messy, especially if you move hives.

Overall, oil tray bottom boards have big strengths and also big weaknesses. They definitely do not make sense for a beekeeper who routinely moves hives, and due to cost and extra work may not make sense for a commercial beekeeper.

For me, at this point in my beekeeping career, I like them. They make mite monitoring fairly easy, and they definitely work against Small Hive Beetles.

Dearth (Robbing Prevention)

Here in my corner of Tennessee Basswood and Sourwood bloom in early July, and then we get dearth until the fall flow starts with Frostweed, Wingstem, and Goldenrod in September.

Bees love to work. They are happy when fully employed. Lazy, shiftless bees are mean bees. Bees without honest work to do will find dishonest work…robbing.

A strong hive will send out robbers and if they’re able to overwhelm the guard bees at a smaller nucleus colony then they will kill that hive off in the process of robbing all their honey.

I do two things to combat robbing:

1. Tight, defensible entrances.
2. Buckwheat plantings.

Reduced Entrances

Having entrance reducers in is a bit of a double edged sword, because it can contribute to bearding and hot hives, especially because my hives are now in full sun due to SHB concerns. But I’ve been surprised at how little bearding has occurred, and how well the bees are doing in keeping their hives cool.

The fact that I have a pond 15 feet in front of my hive stands likely helps, as water bearers bring water to the hive, smear it on the comb, and then bees fan at the entrance to cool the hive through convective cooling.

Buckwheat Plantings

Buckwheat is a summer annual and is wonderfully vigorous and easy to grow. Let buckwheat seed smell dirt and touch water and it will sprout and try to grow.

Bees LOVE buckwheat! Especially during dearth when nothing else is available, or profitable for them to work.

When planting for bees, look for holes in your flows. I’ll quote a passage from Shannon Trimboli’s book Plants Honeybees Use in the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

Knowing the major honey plants for your area and when they bloom is important because those are the honey bees’ preferred forage. When they are blooming, those are the plants the honey bees will work while ignoring everything else. Planting something that competes with the major honey plants for the bees’ attention isn’t going to have the results you want. Planting minor honey plants as a supplement to fill-in the gaps between the nectar flows of the major honey plants is where planting for honey bees is likely to be the most effective.

Shannon Trimboli

Buckwheat is the only thing blooming in my bees’ forage area at this time of year, and a walk through the field sounds very similar to the buzz of the beeyard. It’s a neat experience, and always makes me smile.

Your Bees, Your Goals, Your Management

I hope this article helps you build your own summer hive management plan. I expect it will be different from mine, as you’re a different person with different bees, and in a different location. You may not deal with dearth. You may not have Small Hive Beetles.

My goal in delving into the factors behind my management plan are to help new beekeepers suss out the details for their own plans.

Don’t copy mine, but use mine to build your own.