November in your Central Oregon Apiary
Wow, that atmospheric moisture came quickly and with a
vengeance…..although the water is sure welcomed. Let’s hope for a good snow year as well.
At this point, your hive should be pretty well tucked in for
winter. It’s now getting cold enough
that we shouldn’t be feeding syrup (it is hard for the bees to digest when
cold, and is a heat sink in the hive causing the cluster to expend more energy
keeping warm.) If fed too late, you’ll
frequently end up the winter with a feeder ¾ full of fermented sugar
syrup….yuck! Hopefully your colony now
has sufficient stores, but if not, with respect to emergency feeding, best is
if you have a/some reserved frames of healthy honey, you can put right next to
the cluster on one of our semi warm days.
Next best would be some way of feeding dry sugar (fondant, sugar cakes
below the inner cover, sugar cake on a “Sokermatt” or, least best is granulated
sugar on a piece of newspaper on the top of the frames). Remember our bees can’t eat solid sugar, but
only “lap up” the liquid when the sugar absorbs water exhaled by the cluster. Therefore, these dry sugar methods need to be
either above the cluster, or right next to it so they receive as much humidity
as possible.
Per Naomi Price’s presentation in October, think about
finishing up your winterizing. Perhaps
insulation around the hive, even more recommended is insulation on the bottom
and top. A mouse guard and/or entrance
reducer, and a method for tying or weighting down the cover and stabilizing the
hive.
Start thinking about whether you’re going to do a winter
mite treatment. It kind of depends on
the mite numbers when they went into winter, and counts can be qualitatively
estimated using a sticky board without disturbing the colony very much. The Tools for Varroa management is a great
place to get information.
The OSBA annual conference, held this year in Bend, was
quite an event. I saw a bunch of our
members there, including several who were presenting (Clyde Dildine, Naomi
Price, Heike Williams and Vivienne Hight), as well as quite a few folks helping
with various aspects of the event (Connie Axelrod, Linda Jensen, Muffy Roy,
Libby Rice, Jenn Judd, Karen Foster, Terry Foster, Dennis Detrick and Joan
Sciacca). Also we had several
folks/local companies who donated items and/or were sponsors for the
Conference.
We will NOT be having a November meeting (enjoy your
thanksgiving), and in December we’ll be sharing our ideas for honey related
gifts.
Finally, remember we’ll be having our election for
leadership in the second half of November.
Watch for the announcement.
Have a wonderful Autumn.
Allen Engle
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