Hello, dearth my old friend.

The nectar flow is over for the majority of us in Maryland. Time to put away your dreams of drawing more comb, and focus on your bee to space ratio. If there is too much space and not enough bees you are prime for small hive beetle infestations. The space between all frames should be packed with bees, if not, then remove the box - condense the brood and honey frames by removing the empty frames. If there are frames of honey/nectar leftover open feed them back to the colonies (put these on the opposite side of the property from your hives), and freeze the frames of the drawn comb if you can. With the flow done,  brood rearing has passed its peak, be ready for possible rising mite levels in the hives. Summer solstice we pinch all of our spring queens except for a few (that if they survive the winter,  will become our breeder queens). We will evaluate their daughters and if they make the cut, they could end up in your hive. I’ve found that queens mated after the summer solstice are better mated and build up very quickly for winter. We only have a few more cycles of brood rearing before the queens shut down for winter. We will feed a few weak hives if they need it and basically start getting the hives ready for winter. We’re harvesting honey from the production hives and returning sticky frames for the bees to clean. The days are getting shorter and the bees know it. There is a season to everything, and plenty to keep an eye on but don't forget to take a pause and enjoy the bees and the sun while it's shining. 

Bee well and stay cool. 

Peace, love, and honey bees

-

Bryan and Karly Fae

Chesapeake Queen Company 

Bee safe this summer 

With hot and humid days here to stay,  familiarize yourself with signs of heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Image from the National Weather Service

What should you be doing now?

1. Equalize your hives for brood and food this will help prevent the larger from robbing the smaller. 
2. Replace any damaged hive boxes. Any boxes with gaps or cracks will lead to robbing. Add robbing screens if you have them
3. If you are feeding colonies make sure it's inside the hive (entrance feeders = robbing opportunity). If you are open feeding make sure it's on the opposite side of the yard from your colonies.  
4. Consider requeening an older queen < or put her in a "retirement" nuc if you can't bring yourself to pinch her
5. Mite checks! Summer brood production starts to taper off but the varroa load starts to increase
6. Got varroa? Use the Honey Bee Health Coalition varroa management tool to figure out your best options and how to use the various products properly
7. Extract excess capped honey frames. How much is enough? General consensus for our area is to keep one full deep of honey or two full mediums of honey on the hives for winter. But you still need to monitor how much is left or their rate of consumption going into fall. 
8. After extracting your honey put the sticky frames in their boxes and on top of the hives (under the top cover) for bees to clean out and restore and last tid bits of honey

What are we up to: 

1. Equalizing colonies
2. Pulling and processing capped honey frames, and bottling honey
3. Mowing the grass and teaching in the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association teaching apiary (aka "Nuc Yard") - meets will be live-streamed on Facebook or contact Bryan about attending 
4. Zoom attending bee clubs
5. Always adding more content to our website. Let us know if you have any feedback or find a broken link. 
6. Working hard sun up to after sundown! 

Try "the Chelsea Chop" in your garden

New to me term this year is "the Chelsea Chop", and in all honesty, I hear this was supposed to be a garden task for May/June-  but our weather was quite sporadic this season... so let's try for early July!  The goal is to shorten the height of the stems by pruning back 1/2-1/3 of the plant to reduce flopping, keeping shorter but denser plants, delays blooming, with smaller but more flowers. 

• Tips from Nuts for Natives (local)
• More in-depth tips from Longfield Gardens  (NJ)

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