Also know as: "You're Getting Your Bees - Now What?"
Presented Wednesday evening in early June.
Click here to see the description from 2022.
Session 1: Online via Zoom
Hive Assessment
- Traffic
- Entrance traffic
- Growth
- Frames
- 3-4 brood frames minimum
- Growth
- Are there more frames than previously
- ELB
- Food
- Number of frames of food
- Assessment decision tree
- Lack of growth
- ELB
- Food stores
- Signs of disease or pests
- Solutions
- Missing queen
- Are you sure?
- Cause for her demise? Pests or disease?
- Solutions
- Lack of space
- Add honey super
- Split the hive
- Finish
- Check food
- Check treatments
- Close up
- Lack of growth
Nutritional Requirements
- Water
- Hydration and cooling
- Where to put a water source
- Supplemental feeding
- Syrup
- Feeder types
- Pollen patties
- How to
- Supplements
- Optional
- Syrup
Protecting Your Bees
- IPM - Integrated Pest Management
- Varroa control
- Mechanical
- Drone comb removal
- Chemical
- Hopguard III
- Mechanical
Honey Supers
- Remove full supers ASAP
- Harvesting
Class Prep
- How to hold and pass frames
- When to go into your hives
- Hive inspection
Session 2: Field Class
From the class description and signup form:
Here's your chance to get together with experienced beekeeper mentors and put into practice what you have learned online:
- Brood assessment
- Hive expectations/simple fixes
- Recognizing and testing for common maladies
- Space - when to give and when to reduce space in a hive
- Honey - when to or not to extract
Note: each participant is expected to bring personal protective equipment (PPE) including veil, jacket, gloves and boots. PPE is available at these fine establishments:
It seems like most of us use apivar, oxalic acid, and formicpro. Seems like we feature of these treatments instead of Hopguard.
Maybe we should also add the feed store on Monterey Highway here in Gilroy. They are going to be having a bee section from what I understand. I believe Sam’s is going out of business, so they probably shouldn’t be on the list.