It's vital to know other beekeepers and grow the skill's bank for beekeeping in SA and the world!
The Advanced Bee course Success!
What happens when you split a colony?
The bee season is on and we made a split last weekend, 26th Sept, on the Advanced Beekeeping Course and the Easy Buzzing bee Course learners witnessed the excellent success in seeing six sealed Queen cells!
Everything is More!
Bees are building comb and breeding brood on a large scale now. Every week a new colony would be building a new frame out in built comb.
So for a new bee colony it could be up to 10 weeks before that colony should have built out all of the 10 frames in a traditional Langstroth bee hive. Some beekeepers prefer to use 9 frames and some in the Cape also like using 11 frames.
Catch boxes should be placed in elevated spots like barn roofs, garage roofs and trees about 1.5m - 2m above ground. This time of year trekking colonies will migrate from areas of low sources of food to those with higher quality areas of food and welcoming homes. Using the swarm lure or propolis and old comb from another bee box or frame, acts like a homing beacon for the trekking swarm.
How long to build honeycomb?
Each production quality bee hive in a brood chamber will take about 3 days to build out and fill each super frame. It's critical that the bees have food however which includes protein by way of pollen (usually seen on their hind legs in colours of yellow, red and orange) as well as carbs by way of nectar which is what ends up being honey when it is ripened.
Now the focus is on finding the best sources of food in your area so that you enable your bees to operate at their best!
It is vital to note that under test conditions smaller colonies have been recorded to fly 1200-1500m from the colony for optimum food foraging. Larger colonies will fly as far as 2500m to find food under the same circumstances and with the same food available.
Obviously bees can fly much farther than this if necessary and have been recorded to fly as far as 5-7km when required however it is vital to note that this is under very special conditions.
Place your colonies, small or large, with the above-mentioned distances in mind with respect to food sources.
Our queen cells above and below are the result of the technique we used on the Advanced bee course.
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We sell Langstroth bee hives complete with travelling lids to make it easier for beekeepers to transport the hives.
Metal and plastic queen excluders are also available. All of the required beekeeping tools needed to start keeping bees are stocked at our retail shop in Centurion!
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