DGBAMA
Well-Known Member
Going to be as busy as your BEES.
Wow, everyones starting the blogs now, I counted 14 grow blogs for 2014 so far.
Well, I'm going to get the pots and trays out soon and give them a good cleaning and even a little clorine disinfectant soak. I have the little (4 cells square) containers (48 per tray) I started in from last year and I'll be using those again to save time and space. I'll be doing a direct sowing into the pots, once again to save time and space. One variety per each square ought to do the trick. I will have 11 trays on the go then. I'm grunting just thinking about it but I'll get'er done. The plan so far is to do a april 7th +/- sowing, I'm looking forward to that day.
Through the winter, the bees eat the stored honey. they cluster at the bottom and work they way up. by this time of year, all the bees are in the top box where they are brooding and carrying on all the activity while the bottom box is fairly empty apart from maybe some good frames of pollen. Reversing them allows the bees to expand into the empty box quicker and make use of that pollen for making more brood. It also puts the remaining honey in the bottom box. the bees will try to move this honey back into the top box and when they do this, it simulates a honey flow (funny how that works) but it does kick the queen up to level of egg laying.
yeah, that different from warmer weather bee farming. We just have one hive with supers on top of it for the honey. We usually leave one full super for them to eat through the winter. Down here 10 qts. of honey is plenty to get them through the winter. For weather proofing, we just close off the entrance to a tiny slit. Just enough for them to enter and leave through, that helps keep the temps inside the hive. The worker bees go off or are run off to die and that leaves less bees to eat the honey through the winter, and less chance of swarming right away.
Swarm control this year will be done using a variant of the demaree method. It is the stone thats going to kill many birds at once and free up time so I can manage my baccy plants.
The demaree method sound similar to my "it was Dem or Me method".