ENVIRONMENT

Some people are just natural artists.  Fonta is definitely a talented beekeeper.  She went into winter with 33 colonies and lost only one. She and her daughter manage all those colonies alone.  And she took 1000 pounds of honey last year.

I am so impressed and took notes on things she was saying that weren’t on her slides. I’m writing my notes up for myself and decided to share them with you.  Please correct me if I didn’t get what she was saying correctly.  

• 1.     She numbers her frames and suggests we put the year on them.  She stressed that frames need to be kept in order.  If you need to move them somewhere else you can put stickers over the numbers and renumber them.     They need to be cycled out of a hive when they get black or are three or four years old. The cells get smaller the longer bees have been raised in them and the wax does vector diseases.
• 2.    When you’re putting the colony to bed in winter, move all the honey frames together in the middle. Do this if you do a late winter inspection and the honey is split out to both sides of the box.
• 3.    Decide what to do based on what plants are in bloom rather than the calendar. NATIVE plants are a better indicator than cultivars.
• 4.    If you have a weak colony, shake the bees into a hive with fresh comb. (This one is super important if we get a weak nuc with all that black wax.)
• 5.    She uses weatherunderground app and recommends it.
• 6.    If she’s using foundationless frames, she uses a whole box of foundationless. She doesn’t checkerboard them. (I have to wonder about this)
• 7.    She stressed: don’t split too early. Also don’t split if you don’t have the resources. Swarming happens if there’s too much capped brood.  She splits EVERY ONE of her colonies every year before they are at swarm stage.
• 8.    Overwinter genetics are an important indicator of a really good colony.
• 9.     When doing inspections start from one side and only go to the middle. The other side is likely a mirror image of the side you just examined. (Remember she’s going through 33 colonies and this doesn't apply if you are looking for swarm cells!) When you go into that hive next time, start on the other side. She writes her notes on the lid with what she called a beeswax crayon.
• 10.  Presence of queen pheromone AND presence of open brood pheromone create balance.

Why is she so successful? Part of it is her intuition, I think. Plus she splits every colony which cause brood breaks that reduce varroa build-up. She said she only treats twice, once in summer and once in early fall. (We need to verify that and get more info on that topic). She told me before the meeting that she merges all weak colonies into strong ones so that all her colonies are strong going into winter.  She uses top insulation. 

She seems to know just what needs to be done no matter what the situation. Awesome!