Ep157 More Springtime Tips: Keeping bees in the boxes, avoid the honey dome, get more comb drawn, know if your hive is queenright or queenless.
Beekeeping at FiveAppleShow Notes
Ep157 More Springtime Tips: Keeping bees in the boxes, avoid the honey dome, get more comb drawn, know if your hive is queenright or queenless. In case you missed it: Ep156 Spring in the Bees! Ep 155 Interview with Colorado beekeeper and writer Tina Sebestyen Ep 153 Interview with James Lee of SBGMI ⬆️ available wherever you listen to podcasts Patron Exclusives: Patron exclusive show notes on Ep 155 which includes link to the split notes compendium. Links to Five Apple’s podcast on the Reverse Doolittle split on Patreon, with links to Tina’s how-to article as well as my own silly drawings of the process AND the link to the compendium of splits methods I teach (the handout when I speak to bee clubs) --------------------------------- Here's an extra tip for those who read show notes: If you see your hive swarm, and it was a large hive, there are probably enough swarm cells left in the original hive to cause afterswarms. It's wise to carefully go in the hive and look for swarm cells on frames. I like to relocate a frame with swarm cells, a frame with open nectar and ideally some pollen, and a capped brood frame to a nuc box and add a few shakes of bees (remember to never shake a frame with a queen cell on it if you plan to keep that cell). This is your backup insurance. In the main hive, go through each frame carefully and brush bees off brood frames with a feather or bee brush so you can see the swarm cells. Cut them down to one large swarm cell and replace in the original hive. You have greatly reduced the chances of afterswarms. Plus, you have a backup nuc (or three!) that will also requeen. If your main hive fails to make a queen (check 3 weeks after you do this split to look for eggs from the new queen!) you have the nuc most likely with a new queen and you can combine the two. You now have a young robust queen to go into winter! --------------------------------- Not a patron yet? You are warmly invited to become a Friend of Five Apple on Patreon and join the folks who make the podcasts possible, who keep the archives available and who keep it all advertising-free. https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple In addition to huge gratitude, you get:
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If you can support the show with $3 a month or more, please sign up today: https://www.patreon.com/fiveapple About Beekeeping at FiveApple: Leigh keeps bees in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (gardening zone 6b). She cares for around a dozen hives in a rural Appalachian highland climate. Colonies are managed for bee health with active selection for vigor, genetic diversity and disease resistance, but without chemical treatments for sixteen years. The apiary is self-sustaining (not needing to buy/catch replacement bees since 2010) and produces honey and nucs most every year.
More from Beekeeping at FiveApple
Did you know honey bees are able to detect lung cancer by smell? Today I share that amazing study as well as more about the scents our bees use to communicate vital info: food! danger! home! here it is! Plus updates on the bee yards, black jar honey contest, new requeening presentation, Bee Expo 2027 and more. Links mentioned in this episode: MSU researchers discover honeybees can detect lung cancer https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2024/06/msu-researchers-discover-honeybees-can-detect-lung-cancer Smells - by Kevin Cheatham-McFadden in Bee Culture https://beeculture.com/smells-2/ Not a subscriber to Bee Culture yet? https://simplecirc.com/subscribe/bee-culture North American Honey Bee Expo, Louisville KY Jan 7-9, 2027 https://www.nahbexpo.com/ Speaker Info: https://www.nahbexpo.com/speakers wishing you all a wonderful October! Leigh
The light and the leaves are both saying Autumn has started. Our winter bees are already emerging and there are things we can do to give them their best chance. In today's episode I'm talking about the things I'm getting done to get ready for the bees journey through Winter. kind regards to you all in every kind of weather, Leigh
Found a research article that was food for thought on how warmer autumns may be having effects on our bees that aren't so good: creating smaller late-winter clusters by increased wear and tear on the precious winter bees who should not be as active as the temps drive them to be. But also, it goes into novel solutions (well, not novel in Canada but novel in more Southern climes) to help. Do backyard beekeepers have any options to help? I do some thinking aloud about all that and pondering on an unexpected potential benefit of insulation perhaps?
Ep165: Bee Radio Reader "Reflections on the Past Seasons" by Richard Wahl (Off the Wahl Beekeeping Column, Nov 2025. Read by permission of Bee Culture magazine. ) Today it's a radio reader episode on learning to reflect on the past in a way that makes it useful for the future. As well as a bit of clarification on the last episode. Link to the article: https://beeculture.com/off-the-wahl-beekeeping-46/ Link to another good on in the same issue: https://beeculture.com/minding-your-bees-and-cues-50/ Becky Masterman & Bridget Mendel on the fascinating Nasonov gland in "Come Hither." Both full articles are available free online. And while you are there you can get access to the whole archive with a digital subscription for as low as $24. https://simplecirc.com/subscribe/bee-culture Wishing you all a wonderful week and sure hope I'll get to meet a lot of you at the 2027 North American Honey Bee Expo (Louisville, Kentucky Jan 7-9) where I'm delighted to be a speaker for one of their smaller venue "Community Series" talks. I'll likely be talking about specialty splits (but of course!) ;-) kind regards, Leigh
[Last Thursday Apple podcasts had an outage and the episode didn't show up as a new one in your feed. Here it is again for the Apple folks -- just a duplicate of last weeks episode that was missing for many! --Leigh] Listeners, This has been a test year in my bee yards, to see if my old treatment-free methods that worked so well for 16 years in an isolated bee yard would hold up in areas with more beekeepers. Answer: Nope. [Deep sigh and regroup. ] I now feel so lucky to have learned a hybrid system that still allows me to work on my long term project of stock selection towards mite resistance–while also utilizing organic acids for mite clean up in colonies that don't make the cut, with a requeen afterwards with the better genetics. Back on track! Thank you to queen breeders Ryan Williamson, Ang Roell, Troy Hall , James Lee and YouTube legend Bob Binnie for helping me understand a system that allows for both. Thank you all so much for pioneering a method that gave me resolve to farmer up! I'm happy to have a plan and have put it underway. in gratitude, Leigh Thank you to the supporting Patrons. You make this podcast possible as well as keeping all of us from needing to listen to adverts! Thank you to Lisa N the newest podcast angel and thank you to Bev M, Anderson M, Greg K, Dan G, Donald F, and Kerri A for joining this community this summer! Welcome to you all! And a special shout out to podcast angels Michael C and Will C, plus Jeff T, Deborah P, Chuck J, Bruce H and Blaine N for being with the podcast since it started in 2019! What a huge amount of gratitude I have for your continued support. It's thanks to you this podcast still exists.