Greetings Beekeepers, The goldenrod is starting to bud and should be coming on in the next few weeks across our region. Goldenrod is our main fall nectar flow here in Maryland. Both the invasive Japanese knotweed and English Ivy can also provide a flow depending on their prevalence in your area. Some areas are starting to see that fall flow, other places... not so much. If your bees are trying to draw wax again and are filling it with nectar, it's a good indication that they have a flow coming in, give them a little extra space to fill in. Everybody else, sit tight... Are your bees "hangry"? Now is the time to feed any hives that are light on honey stores. We've made the last of our queens for the season and are now focusing on preparing the hives for winter. We like to get at least two full brood cycles in before Halloween (and be completely done with any feeding by then as well). The queen is now laying her nurse bees that will feed the winter bees and she will be slowing down her laying as daylight starts to fade. Bryan has been busy going through the out yards and marking our post solstice mated queens and combining or building up smaller colonies. His August days are spent marking queens, feeding bees, and catching up on weed-eating around the hives in all the out yards. Peace, love, and honey bees - Bryan and Karly Fae Chesapeake Queen Company |
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What should you be doing now? Here are two seasonally appropriate podcasts Karly recommends :
- Equalize your hives for brood and food this will help prevent the larger from robbing the smaller. Also, use robber screens if you have them
- 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.
- Mite checks! Summer brood production starts to taper off but the varroa load starts to increase, your nurse bees for the winter bees are being produced now you need to make sure they are healthy.
- 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
- 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.
- 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 tidbits of honey
- Render your wax
- Considering entering the Maryland State Fair? Check out the Honey and Wax classes here, and for tips and how-to's for honey shows check out this website: API Solutions Consortium.
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Rendering Wax I've been getting a lot of questions about how to render wax... Honestly, I am NOT an expert. My process changes a tiny bit every time I do it. Whatever you end up using assume that tool will only now forever only be used for wax processing. - Prepare your workspace by covering everything in the nearby area.
- Place cappings in your crockpot, add a few cups of water, heat on low until fully dissolved.
- Prepare "filter bucket" it should be clean to start with, add a double layer of your filter material. Here I am using old sheer curtains doubled up with a layer of paper towel on top.
- Make sure the filter has slack as it will take a few mins for all the wax etc to filter, secure well with rubber bands.
- When the wax mixture is fully dissolved use silicone mitts to take the crock out and slowly pour out the mixture into your filter bucket. You may have to take a pause or two while pouring to let things drain a little. But try to do this fairly quickly before the wax starts to cool and set.
- While the crock is still warm, wipe down all sides to get the smudge out before the wax hardens it.
- Do not disturb the wax bucket until it has cooled to the touch on the sides. This takes a few hours to overnight.
- Once the wax has cooled it will form a hard puck on top of the water/slum mixture on the bottom.
- Take the bucket outside, turn over the bucket to pop the wax out, and rinse the wax disk off with cold water from a hose.
- If there are bits of stuff stuck to the bottom of your wax puck, they can be scraped off with a hive tool*. *Hive tools are very sharp, always scrape with the blade going away from your body and hands.
- This process can be repeated until you have nice clean wax.
- Once you have clean wax, I used a separate wax melter for the superfine filtering and pouring it into the molds.
- For the final pour, I place a Chemex coffee filter in the bottom and add the wax on top. the coffee filter acts as the final fine particle filter, just be sure not to overload the melter.
- Slumgum and waxy clean-up paper towels can be saved and used for fire starters.
- If you are saving a bunch of slum gum put it in a bag and place it in the freezer to keep the wax moths from finding it.
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What are we up to: - Winding down the queen production to focus on building our hives up for winter
- Playing catchup on weed-whacking all the apiaries
- Combining small colonies
- Pulling and processing capped honey frames
- Bottling honey
- Rendering wax from our cappings and burr comb
- 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
- Attending bee clubs meetings and picnics
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Highlighted items in the store: | | |
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Water sources for the bees You can go all out with a pond, or a water garden, or keep it as simple as a birdbath with pebbles or floats for the bees, or even a soggy potted plant will do the trick. The bees need a consistent source of water with easy landing spots. It took our bees a while to find our pond but once they did, man... they love that pond! I love watching them at the pond and it brings in all kinds of birds and wildlife too. Overall they do seem to prefer the more natural water sources - muddy puddles, soggy potting soil, ponds, or streams over the cleaner "fresh" water in birdbaths or feeders... but that doesn't exclude them from being attracted to the chlorinated pool water at your neighbor's so give them something closer to home to find and use. |
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Community Supported Agriculture | Moon Valley Farm | MarylandCommunity Supported Agriculture Get a weekly box of delicious local vegetables for home delivery, pick up at a site or on the farm! PLUS members get access to seasonal add-ons including gourmet mushrooms, fruit, honey, bulk veggies, eggs & dry beans! |
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Good Dog FarmGood Dog Farm is a 5-acre sustainable vegetable farm in Parkton, Maryland. In Fall 2017, we expanded to offer an online a la carte CSA. |
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Upcoming bee club meetings: |
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