Queen Rearing
As spring gets closer and closer, checking on your bees is essential. Not only is it important to keep your colony healthy with treating for mites, but it is also important to make sure your queen is healthy as well. One way to do this is to re-queen every couple of years. As Seth has mentioned during the lectures in the meetings, making your own queens is not only cost efficient, but you are also expanding your knowledge and forcing yourself to learn more about your bees and getting yourself more and more acquainted with your beehives. Seth will be offering FREE classes on queen rearing, and I would highly recommend taking his class!
Preparation for Spring
I've included a list of bee suppliers again as all of us are still ordering supplies.
As with ordering equipment, it is also time to think about treatments for mites and ordering supplies for the treatments you plan to do.
Your Bees
As the weather gets warmer, you will start to see your bees more and more. You should still be checking for honey stores. If you use pollen patties be cautious. If you give pollen patties to your bees too early the chance of starving them increases. Washington weather is very unpredictable, and cold snaps can happen fairly fast. Since pollen is protein for bees, the worker bees will convert pollen into royal jelly and grow the brood. If a cold snap happens, your bees will easily cluster up and the brood band that is not within the cluster will die. Just be cautious.
Extender Patty Note
As many of you know, Bruce has kindly donated free extender patties to the club. However, after looking at the numbers there were a few people who had 25+ beehives. If you fall into that category, Bruce would like to ask for a donation. He is being so kind as to extend the offering to people who are backyard, hobbyist beekeepers. If you are commercial or have more than the number of beehives listed above, it would be much appreciated to help with that cost. Thank you!! The extender patties will be at this upcoming meeting (the auction).
With that, when you put your extender patties in your beehive, you MUST crack your beehive and place the extender patty on the brood nest. I would recommend smoking them down first, then place the patty on top of them.
Events Coming Up
- The March potluck/ silent auction will be be held at the Sedro-Woolley Senior Center at 6 pm on March 12th
- It would be greatly appreciated by the club if any donations would be made. The proceeds go to the club's budget.
- There will be a queen rearing class in April. The date is TBD. It is free!
- Membership renewals are due in January, and is $12 to re-join
Ordering Bees
The following are local places to order spring bees:
- Coastal (both nucs and packages)
- Snohomish Bee Company
- Seth Smith (nucs): Text nuc orders to 360-770-0481
- Rob Rienstra (nucs): $160/nuc (Bellingham)
- GooBees Farm: Nucs ($150- 3 frames of brood), 10 frame colonies for $240 (6 frames of brood) 360-770-9509 and 360-395-8339
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