BEEKEEPING
From page 22
“By the end of June we have
rounded up the hundred
hives that we will be taking,
have reduced them to brood
chambers only, and have
completed the spring cleaning
by replacing two outer frames
in each brood chamber with
two frames of full foundation
wax in the center of the
brood chambers. 200 supers
have been prepared and are
also ready to go. But first
there are preparations to do
on the farm.
“When the flower spikes are,
on average, about 400mm
high throughout the fields, we
are ready to start moving. In
the day time we move all the
200 supers to the farm and
set them out in stacks of 16 to
20 about 100m apart all over
the farm. At these points we
will set down our brood-only
hives.
“Back home the following day
we fit travelling screens to the
brood chambers under the
lids to give the bees ample
ventilation, and at sunset the
day thereafter (once the bees
are all in the hive for the
night) we plug the first 50
hive entrances with sponge
rubber plugs and load them
the next morning as the first
load.
“The trip takes about three
hours and by midday we
arrive on the farm. We spray
the load of hives with water
to cool them down because
o
the air temperature is 26 C.
“We then off load them at the
super stacks, remove the lids
and screens and place two
supers on each brood. These
are our working hives for the
next six weeks. The two
supers give the bees ample
space to prevent swarming
off. By early afternoon the
tasks are complete and we
head for home to be back by
24
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dark. The following day we
repeat the journey, taking the
second 50 hives and place
them among the aloes.
“For the next week, at our
home base, we prepare a
further 50 to 60 empty brood
boxes to receive new swarms
as there will be queens
available from the hives and
these are then transported to
the farm.
“By now the bees have been
on the farm for about four
weeks. Methodically for the
next two weeks we work
through about ten hives per
day. Where we find scattered
queen cells, we remove the
frame with one or two cells,
plus three frames of bees and
one frame of pollen and
place it into one of the empty
brood boxes.
“Certain swarms do not
produce queen cells and in
these swarms we kill the old
queen and add two new
queen cells.
Continued on page 25