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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: NC Beekeepers Orange County <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Fwd: June Meeting
  • Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:06:53 -0400

Mark,

Since advice is free & you get what you pay for, I'll offer you some about using triangle escape boards. Many folks complain about them but I love them. But there are three key things you must do in order for them to work:

1) put an empty super under the escape board (so you have honey super, escape board, empty super, brood boxes). If you don't the bees coming out of the super will get jammed up with bees trying to get in and nobody will get anywhere.

2) don't use an escape board with more than two or three supers. You can stagger them on a single hive if you need to but a single one doesn't work well with too many bees.

3) make absolutely sure that there is no brood in the honey supers. The bees absolutely will not leave if they are tending brood.

I put escapes on then come back the next day and pull the supers. Extract as soon as possible after that -- that day or the next day. Otherwise you will get lots of little wigglers (small hive beetle larva).

You don't have to leave the supers and escapes on the hive for them to work. I often stack my supers on stands next to the hives I'm harvesting. The effect is the same as when they are still on the hive.

If I follow all the rules, I end up with very few if any bees in the supers.

Randall Austin

On 6/6/2013 8:33 PM, Geneva wrote:
B5D9697F-7DEA-4EF2-8354-F8D657AD6A2E AT mindspring.com" type="cite">Mark and all
I am forwarding this email to the list because I think others probably know better than me.  I would love to have our new beekeepers witness honey extraction in person before they have to do it by themselves. I am not sure about when we can make this happen.  I know my own schedule is slammed.  Can anyone give Mark and Karen some good advice on extracting and splitting.  
thanks
Geneva


Begin forwarded message:

From: mark powers <markapowers53 AT gmail.com>
Date: June 6, 2013 7:52:18 PM EDT
Subject: Re: [ocba] June Meeting

Hi Geneva,

Karen and I have been trying to figure out details as to how we are going to extract.   It looks like our year old hives have quite a bit of honey. We may have access to an extractor that is not being used by its owner.  Watched lots of YouTube on extracting.  I have ordered two escape boards.  How long should before the extraction should we insert them?  Any suggestions on how to get the remaining bees, if any, off the super frames on the big day?  This will be a first for both of us!

We were thinking about making a split from our year old colonies.  

We also caught a small swarm in our yard last month and have been nursing it along.  Last week there seemed to be plenty of new brood.  These seem to be darker bees (Carniolan?).

When should we extract and when is the best time to make a split?  We were hoping to do the split after the extraction, just to have fewer (heavy) hive bodies to deal with (each year old colony now has 7 medium 8 frame bodies, with the middle one lacking drawn comb to hopefully keep the queens below).  Will after the extraction be too late in the season for a split?  If so, we don't have to try for a split.

We were hoping to have a session on extracting before we tried it, but I'm thinking we can get through it.  I hope this was not to rambling.

Mark Powers





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