Sunday, February 24, 2013
Honeybees in Winter!
Got home today and saw a sweet little worker honeybee laying in the snow. Wasn't sure if she was alive or not, but I scooped her up and brought her in the house. Within minutes she was walking around on my hand, and buzzing her wings like a pro!
This little lady took off, and I tried to keep an eye on her flight path, I lost her...I had a general direction to look, so dad and I headed out into the woods to look around.
This is just a 'handful' of the workers that I plucked out of the snow. They all looked dead, but within minutes they were all buzzing and crawling around!
Bees don't go to the bathroom in the hive (they keep a VERY clean home) so on a fairly nice day (like today was) they go on 'cleansing flights' and do their business, then fly back home. Some of them don't make it back, and those are the ones that I rescued. ( I was only stung once)
Here is one of the openings in the hollow tree that the bees use. I think there is another opening higher up, but I couldn't see that far in. I'm hoping that I can build a swarm trap and catch any of them that split away in the spring! I'll keep you up to date!
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If you or someone you know are handy with a skill or table saw you can build some swarm traps for yourself.
ReplyDeletehttp://robo.bushkillfarms.com/downloads/beekeeping/Coates5FrameNuc.pdf
These are the best swarm traps that I have found. Also, the cheapest. All you need to buy is a 4'x8' sheet of 1/2" plywood, considering you already have nails/staples and glue. One sheet will make you 4, 5 frame deep nuc boxes/swarm traps. Depending on local cost thats about $3-$5 per trap.
Build them and place them within about 150 yds of this bee tree and you may get you some free bees this spring. Be sure to place some lemon grass oil on a cotton ball in an old pill bottle with 1 or 2 holes in the top of it inside. Hurry you don't have much time before swarm season starts this year, haha.
Hope that helps. Good luck.