Central Beekeepers Alliance

November 2007

Beekeeping Information

How to Help Honey Bees to Survive the Winter

honey bees at hive entrance As Canadian beekeepers work to rebuild after the unusually high overwintering losses of the winter of 2006-2007, what should be done to promote bee health and reduce future winterkill?

Medhat Nasr has prepared a fact sheet, Honey Bees and Winterkill, for the Alberta Department of Agriculture. It outlines the best management practices developed in Alberta to address the several possible causes that contribute to winterkill, and provides beekeepers with options to minimize the amount of winterfill in future.

In general:

Best Management Practices

  • Keep bee colonies strong — avoid over-splitting.
  • Send bees into winter with a healthy, mated young queen.
  • Make room for the queen to lay eggs to make winter bees.
  • Feed the bees as needed.

Following is a summary of highlights from the Alberta beekeeping factsheet.

Beekeepers will find it useful to read the original factsheet on the Alberta Departmant of Agriculture website, however. It has much more detailed information — including the fascinating fact that winter bees are physiologically different from summer bees, and thus better suited to withstand winter weather — to help beekeepers in making sound management choices in caring for our bees.

Continue Reading »

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Ode to a Drone

New Brunswick poet Bliss Carman (1861-1929) wrote his ode to the honey bee collaboratively with the American poet Richard Hovey, and it appeared in their book Songs From Vagabondia, published in 1894.

It’s just a shame that Carman didn’t know more about Apis mellifera.

The poet made the common mistake — perpetuated in works from the time of the ancient Greeks right through to Seinfeld’s newly released animated film, Bee Movie — of thinking that the male bee, the drone, “works like a Trojan hero;
Then loafs all winter upon his hoard…”

In actual fact — the premise of Hollywood film plots notwithstanding — the male bee serves no practical purpose in the colony beyond queen-mating. When the weather turns cold, and the drones are no longer needed, they are firmly turned out of the hive so the colony’s food resources can be used to sustain the queen and worker bees through the winter.

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Bee Cozy Winter Hive Wraps

NOD Apiary Products Ltd., the company founded by beekeepers that makes Mite-Away varroa treatment pads, also produces the Bee Cozy winter hive wrap.

The easy-to-use Bee Cozy is constructed of fibreglass insulation and UV-protected polytubing, to give extra weather protection to bees overwintered in cold climates. It is easy to put on and take off, and — unlike the traditional tar-paper wrapping — the Bee Cozy can be saved from year to year and used many times over.

This “how to” video on the winter wrap was produced by NOD Apiary Products. In New Brunswick, the Bee Cozy is distributed by Country Fields Beekeeping Supplies in Upper Coverdale, NB. See the NOD website at MiteAway.com for more information, and Bee Cozy distributors in other areas of North America.

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Southeast NB Beekeepers Meeting 24 November 2007

Saturday, 21 April 2007
Southeast NB Beekeepers Meeting
Moncton, New Brunswick
9:30 a.m.

The Southeast New Brunswick Beekeepers Association (SENBBA) will be meeting on Saturday, 24 November 2007 at the Lions Community Centre, 473 St. George Street, Moncton, NB. Coffee will be on at 9:30, and the meeting starts at 10:00 a.m.. There will be a small charge for the coffee, but no registration or lunch. (The Maritime Beekeepers Meeting will follow in the afternoon.) For more information regarding the agenda for the SENBBA meeting, contact Esther Hicks at 506-756-8989 or by email at asterw@nb.sympatico.ca.

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2008 CBA Executive

The Central Beekeepers Alliance has elected its Executive committee for 2008:

  • President — Natalie Duncan, Fredericton, NB
  • Vice-President — Jane Edington, Hanwell, NB
  • Secretary — Marlene Price, Gagetown, NB
  • Treasurer — Rick Atkinson, Keswick Ridge, NB

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