Seasonal Management of Bee.pptx

Details of Seasonal Management of Honey Bee.

1. SEASONAL MANAGEMENT OF HONEY BEE Subhajit Pal Institute of Agriculture, PSB. Visva Bharati University, WB.

2. Pollen and nectar are available only during certain period. When surplus food source are available it is known as honey flow season. In contrast during dearth period there will be scarcity of food. During extremes in climate like summer, winter and monsoon certain specific management tactics are required.

3.   Honey Flow Season Off Season (Dearth period) High Hill April, May, June, July, August. September, October, November, December, January, February, March Mid Hill April, may, September, October, November, February, March. June, July, August, December, January. Foot hill and Plains April, October, November, December, January, February, March May, June, July, August, September.

4. Honey Flow Season Management Management During Dearth Period Prevent swarming by following the instructions in the swarm management section. Provide more space for honey storage by giving the bees a comb foundation sheet or built combs. Confine the queen to the brood chamber using a queen excluder. Before the honey flow, provide sugar syrup to the bees and build up their population. If you need to multiply your colonies, divide strong colonies into 2-3 new colonies. You can use queen rearing techniques to produce new queens for new colonies. Combine weak colonies to make them stronger.   Use a dummy division board to keep the bees in a small area. Remove empty honeycombs and store them in an airtight container. Provide sugar syrup, pollen supplement, and substitute to feed the bees.

5. Spring Management (Vasant R itu : February – April) In early spring, remove protective covering from lightly packed hives and heavily packed colonies when the daily maximum temperature reaches 16 degrees Celsius. Check the food stores and general condition of the colony on a sunny day for a short period of time to avoid chilling the brood and robbing. Equalize the strength of normal colonies by giving brood frames to needy colonies. Unite weak (less than 5 frames), broodless , queenless , or drone-dominant colonies with other needy normal colonies. If these colonies are strong, provide them with a mated queen. If a mated queen is not available, provide them with a frame of brood with eggs and young larvae so that they can rear a new queen.

6. Provide early-season stimulative sugar feeding ( sugar:water = 1:2), pollen, or pollen substitute feeding to increase foraging and brood-rearing activity. Provide raised combs or frames with comb foundation sheets for brood rearing. However, be careful not to expand the brood too much in the uncertain weather conditions of early spring, as this could chill the brood. Examine the colony on a weekly basis on a sunny day. Clean debris from the bottom boards and provide empty frames as needed. Make sure that each colony always has at least 5 kilograms of food stores. During spring, colonies may dwindle if there are not enough young bees to replace the old ones. To help these colonies, provide them with pollen, honey, and 1-2 sealed brood frames from strong colonies. If these steps are followed, the colonies will be well built up by the time of the honey flow, when maximum strength is needed. However, increasing the strength of the colony also induces swarming.

7. Summer Management ( Grishma Ritu : April to June) During the summer, which is a hot season and a major honey flow period, beekeepers practice honey flow management, supering , honey extraction, and dearth management.   Other Managements:   Move the beehives to a shady spot every day, no more than 3 feet away.   Keep the hives cool by placing wet gunny bags over them and sprinkling water around them during the hottest part of the day. Provide good ventilation by removing the entrance rod, widening the entrance, Staggering the chambers, placing thin wooden splinters between two adjacent chambers and adding additional entrances if necessary.

8. Make sure there is a source of clean water near the hives, with some sticks or wood pieces for the bees to sit on. Feed the bees with an artificial diet if necessary.   Transfer brood from strong hives to weak hives to help them grow stronger.   Control pests, diseases, and robbing.   Make sure the hives never go without brood for too long.   Protect the hives from hot winds by providing wind breaks.  

9. Monsoon Management ( Varsha Ritu : June to August) During the monsoon season, the high humidity, daily rains, and high temperature make it difficult for bees to fly and collect food. As a result, bees have to stay inside their hives for long periods of time. This can make them lethargic and may lead to dysentery. The attack of bee enemies is also more common during this time. Therefore, it is important to pay more attention to bee colonies during the monsoon season. Following are the few points to consider:   Place the colonies in an upland area away from water ponds.   Unite weak queenless colonies with queenright colonies. Provide pollen or pollen substitute if there is no pollen source.   Clean the debris on the bottom board and bury it deep.  

10. Cut the unwanted vegetation around the colonies to improve air circulation.   Provide sugar water if needed, at a ratio of 1:1.   Provide candy or dry sugar instead of sugar syrup if the food stores are low (<5kg). Check for robbing within the apiary.   Place the hives on stands sloping towards the entrance to drain out water.   Provide sugar feeding if there is no honey stored in the colonies.   Protect the colonies from wax moth, wasps, ants, lizards, and mites.

11. Autumn Management ( Sharad Ritu : August to October)   Important operations to be undertaken during this season are:   After the monsoon season, unite weak colonies to increase the number of bees that can forage for food before winter. Reduce the size of the hive to the size that the colony needs for winter.   Restrict the space for food storage to the lower hive body so that the bees will store their food there instead of in the supers. Strengthen the colonies so that they can produce drone brood, if you plan to raise queen bees. Control pests and diseases that can affect the bees, such as mites, diseases, moths, and wasps. Extract honey in the fall before winter arrives.   During this time, some colonies will prepare to replace their old queens by raising new queen cells. The new queen will kill the old queen when she emerges.

12. Winter Management ( Shishir Ritu : December to February) Brassica blooms in January. To sustain the colonies through winter, following operations are generally necessary: Inspect the colonies on a warm day to check for queen, brood, and food. Always unite weak colonies with strong ones following newspaper methods. To feed bees during winter, fill drawn combs with concentrated sugar syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part boiled water). To prevent crystallization, add 1 tablespoon of tartaric acid to every 50kg of sugar. The hives should be moved to a sunny spot with the entrance facing southeast, away from the wind. To protect bees from chilly winds, plug any cracks or crevices in the hive and narrow the hive entrance. To insulate hives, cover them with gunny bags and fill them with packing materials. Remove extra empty combs and store them properly to prevent mice and rats from accessing them. Provide one or two layers of inner winter packing depending on the strength of the colonies and severity of winter.

13. Swarming   A natural division of a bee colony occurs when a group of bees (may be 30 to 70 per cent) , along with the old queen, leave the colony to form a new one nearby . While swarming they fill their honey stomachs with the food. Period of swarming: Queen bee swarming occurs when she has reached her peak of brood rearing activity in the late spring or early summer, or in the late autumn or onset of winter, depending on the floral conditions of the area, mainly before the honey flow.   Cause of swarming: The hive is too crowded and there is not enough air.   Presence of the old queen is.   There is a sudden increase in the amount of honey.   There is not enough space for the queen to lay eggs or store honey.  

14. Problems due to swarming: Loss of working force in the colony.  Morale of the colony is not suitable for honey collection because they direct their efforts towards building queen cells and start searching for new home sites. Indication of swarming: The colony usually raises many queen cells along the bottom of the honeycombs. However, in the event of queen failure, the colony will also raise a few emergency queen cells, known as Supersedure . Many bees do not go to foraging creating additional crowding and clustering outside the hive. Time of swarming: Colonies usually issue swarms between 10 AM and 2 PM, but they may also issue swarms in the early morning or evening.  

15. Catching and hiving a swarm: Use a swarm catching basket to catch a settled swarm of bees.   Place the basket above the bee cluster and gently push the cluster upwards so that the bees start ascending into the basket. Once the queen has entered the basket, the whole swarm will follow.   Take the swarm to the apiary and place it in a hive that has been prepared with one frame each of capped brood, pollen, and honey. Add extra frames as needed.   Shake the swarm onto the top bars of the hive and immediately cover it with burlap cloth, inner cover, and top cover. Feed the swarm sugar syrup (1:1 sugar: water).  

16. Prevention and control of swarming:   A single colony may issue one to several swarms depending upon the condition of colony. To avoid swarming:   To prevent overcrowding, add empty combs for egg laying.   Remove queen cells regularly as soon as they are made.   Provide shade and ventilation to the colonies. Remove the old queen and introduce a new queen to prevent swarming.

17. Demaree plan of swarm control Remove all queen cells from the brood chamber. Remove the brood chamber from the bottom board and place another hive body containing one comb of unsealed brood, eggs and the queen on this bottom board. Fill the remaining hive with empty combs. Place a queen excluder on top of the second hive body. Place the original brood chamber on top of the queen excluder. Inspect the top hive body after 10 days and remove any queen cells that have been built. In 21 days, all of the brood will have emerged in the upper body and it can be used for honey storage. Swarming instinct of the colonies can also be overcome by temporarily divide the colony and then reunite them just before honey flow.

18. Honey flow: Honey bees gather and store extra honey in the hive after their population reaches its peak. This is known as honey flow. It is indicated by: The honey cells in the comb become whiter as the bees deposit fresh wax.   The bees build large quantities of burr and brace combs, which are freshly prepared pieces of comb. The weight of the colonies increases due to the incoming nectar. This can be seen by placing a colony on a stage balance in an apiary. During this time, the colonies are populous but do not have the instinct to swarm. Precautions during honey extraction: Only remove frames of honey that are completely sealed or two-thirds sealed.   Keep the colonies well-fed, depending on their strength and the current season.   Monitor the colonies for swarming and manage them as described in the winter management guide.  

19. Supering : Provide supers to the colonies when you see the first indication of honey. But before doing so, check the colony for diseases and queen. This is because you will be too busy putting and taking off the supers during the honey flow. Place a queen excluder between the brood chamber and super to prevent the queen from laying eggs in the super. A strong colony can collect 2-10 kg of honey in a good honey flow.   Honey Extraction: Only extract honey that is sealed by the bees. Unripe honey, which has a high moisture content, can ferment and spoil easily.

20. Time to remove supers: In the early morning, before honey bees start storing honey.   Procedure of honey extraction: To remove sealed honey combs, give some puffs of smoke the bees and softly brush them off. Do not extract all the honey from the colonies. Leave at least 2-3 kg of honey in case of Apis cerana for monsoon dearth periods. The honey extraction room should be bee-tight. Uncap the honey combs with a steam-heated or water-heated knife. Put the uncapped frames in hive bodies with dip trays below. Put the uncapped frames in the honey extractor and spin them at 150 rpm for 2-3 minutes. Then, reverse the sides of the frames and repeat. Return the empty frames to the colonies. Strain the fresh honey with clean muslin cloth and pack it immediately. Clean the appliances and the place where honey was extracted.