CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to keep bees in the south?

In winter, there are fewer and fewer flowers and the climate is slowly getting colder. So how should we keep bees at this time?

1. Cultivate bees of appropriate age for wintering

The so-called overwintering bees of suitable age refer to worker bees that have not participated in collection activities or performed excretion flights. If there are many overwintering bees of suitable age in the bee colony, the overwintering is safe, the feed consumption is low, and the colony develops quickly in the next spring; on the contrary, overwintering is difficult, the worker bees die early, and the spring reproduction is slow. Breeding overwintering bees of suitable age should be started at the beginning of the last major honey collection period. The old queen with poor egg laying can be replaced with a new queen. During the high honey flow period, the honey stored on the brood combs should be removed, and new combs suitable for egg laying should be selected to expand the egg-laying area as much as possible.

When the honey flow ends, take out the excess honey combs, replenish the empty combs appropriately, keep the bees and combs symmetrical, strengthen the heat preservation and reward feeding in the nest, and promote the queen bee to lay eggs. However, when the temperature is low, the queen bee's egg laying should be controlled, because the worker bees that come out later cannot perform excretion flights due to the low temperature, which is not conducive to wintering. In order to ensure the strength of the colony over the winter, 2-3 weak colonies can be raised in the same box, and one queen bee can be selected before wintering to merge the colony. This will seem to reduce the number of colonies, but it can strengthen the strength of the overwintering colony, develop faster in the next spring, and artificial swarming can be carried out earlier, which can also develop the colony faster.

2. Store winter feed

Selecting and retaining capped honey combs is a major task in autumn management, because temporarily feeding honey or syrup before wintering will increase the workload of bees. If the honey combs are not capped in time, they will easily deteriorate in winter and cause diarrhea. Experienced beekeepers select four or five flat honey combs without drone cells that have been used to breed several generations of bees when collecting honey for the first time in the last major honey collection period of the year. They are placed on the side of the super and the bee paths are expanded. When collecting honey for the second time, these honey combs are capped and can be taken out for storage. If not enough are left at the first time, more can be left at the second time. The number of honey combs left depends on the length of the wintering period of the bee colony. Generally, one honey comb is left for each frame of wintering bees. More can be left in severe cold areas, and fewer can be left in bee farms that move to the south in winter.

The honey combs for wintering should be well preserved and placed in a cool and ventilated place. To prevent the harm of nest insects, sulfur and other drugs can be used to kill them. The method is to put 8 honey combs in each super, put several supers on the empty nest boxes, light sulfur in the box, close the nest door tightly, cover the top super with gauze cover and large cover, and seal the gaps between the boxes. You can also put several supers with honey combs on a strong colony and let this colony keep them until they are used during the winter.

3. Treat mites and prevent diseases

In autumn, the number of honeycombs in the bee colony decreases rapidly, while the number of bee mites increases greatly. In order to ensure the safety of the bee colony overwintering, the treatment of mites should be started before the breeding of overwintering bees. When treating mites, the capped honeycombs can be transferred to other colonies. After the capped honeycombs are out of the hive, the same fumigation treatment is carried out. The effect of treating mites is better after the queen bee stops laying eggs and most of the capped honeycombs are out of the hive. Adding antibiotics, sulfonamides and other drugs during reward feeding and supplementary feeding in autumn can prevent the occurrence of infectious diseases.

4. Storage of honeycomb

In autumn, honeycombs extracted from bee colonies should be scraped clean of propolis and wax scraps with a scraper, and the protruding walls of the house should be flattened with a sharp knife. Then, 5% of the new cleansing solution should be sprayed for disinfection, and the solution should be stored after air drying. Honeycombs are generally stored in super boxes, with 8 honeycombs in each box. Honeycombs, half honeycombs, powdered honeycombs, empty honeycombs, and half-finished honeycombs should be stored separately according to the quality of the honeycombs. Honeycombs should be fumigated with sulfur or carbon disulfide two or three times before storage. For sulfur fumigation, 3-5 grams of fully burned sulfur should be used for every 10 honeycombs, and each fumigation should last for 4 hours. If conditions permit, a closed storage room with convenient fumigation and rodent-proofing can be built, and racks for placing honeycombs should be set up indoors. It would be better if there is ultraviolet rapid disinfection equipment.

5. Do a good job in other management work such as preventing bee theft

In autumn, especially in late autumn, there is a lack of nectar sources, which makes it easier for bees to be stolen. Improper treatment of mites can also easily lead to bee theft, so beekeepers should do a good job of prevention. In addition, when encountering low temperatures, attention should be paid to heat preservation in the nest, appropriately reduce the nest door, and keep the number of bees appropriately dense. Bees should be prevented from pesticide poisoning in autumn. After entering autumn, the external nectar sources gradually decrease, and the management of bee colonies gradually shifts from the production of bee products such as royal jelly and honey to the preparation for the wintering of bee colonies. In particular, beekeepers who have moved to other places have gradually returned from other places since September to prepare for the wintering of bee colonies.

It is necessary to choose a suitable breeding environment, select high-quality bee species, do a good job of ventilation, pay attention to the supplement of nutrients, choose the appropriate harvesting time, strengthen management, and do a good job of keeping warm.

First of all, you must choose suitable sealing for breeding. You must pay attention to the breeding environment and choose suitable sharing. You must pay attention to the sealing situation and try to choose a place with better environment.