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How to make bees go through a queen excluder

Beekeepers often call them “honey excluders” for a good reason: worker bees hate to go through them. The theory I hear most frequently is that the bees don’t want to build comb in places where the queen can’t go. But there are ways to entice your bees through the queen excluder.

  • One way is to simply leave the excluder out of the hive until the bees have started to draw comb in two or three of the honey frames. Once they are “committed” to the project, you can usually add an excluder with good results.
  • For a really stubborn batch of bees, you can put one frame of uncapped brood in the honey super. Pick a frame without drone brood, if possible. Make sure the queen is down below, put the excluder over the brood boxes, and put the honey super with one frame of brood above that. The workers will go through the excluder to attend to the brood. Any drones that hatch above the excluder will need to be released.
  • New frames in the honey super can be sprayed with sugar syrup to entice bees through the excluder. I find it works best if you add a few drops of essential oil to the syrup. Anise oil or teatree oil work especially well.

Follow the link for more about using queen excluders.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Anise is an all-time bee favorite

Yesterday a reader, Harold Owen, commented on my post “Five Favorite Plants for the Bee Garden” by saying that anise is an excellent bee attractant. He is absolutely right. I want to thank him for mentioning it because anise is a great bee plant.

I have never grown anise in the garden. But of all the essential oils I have experimented with, anise is the all-time winner for attracting bees. Whenever I have bees that won’t drink their sugar syrup, I place one or two drops of anise oil in the feed. The next morning the feeder is empty. It never fails.

It seems that sometimes in the late fall when it starts getting cold at night, the bees are not motivated to collect their syrup. So I always keep a little bottle of anise oil on hand as a feeding stimulant. They go crazy over it—more than any other scent I know of.

I first learned about this on someone’s blog a number of years ago. At the time I was experimenting with various oils as feeding stimulants, including tea tree, rosemary, thyme, lemon, wintergreen—whatever I could find, but anise was the hands-down favorite (or maybe the feet-down favorite) of all the colonies I tried it on.

Anise is an annual herb native to southern Europe and the Mediterranean region. It bears loads of white flowers that attract bees and the seeds are the source of the anise oil. Select a sunny location and plant the seeds in well-drained soil as soon as the ground starts to warm in spring. Because anise has a taproot, it does not transplant well, so plant the seeds in their final location. Water regularly, but sparingly. Plants grow to about two feet high.

Note: Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is sometimes confused with anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) which is an excellent bee plant in its own right. Anise hyssop is neither a true anise nor a true hyssop, but is one of the many species of Agastache. Both Agastache and the true hyssops are in the mint (Lamiaceae) family whereas anise is in the carrot (Apiaceae) family.

Rusty

Pimpinella anisum. Hand-colored engraving by James Sowerby 1793.
Pimpinella anisum. Hand-colored engraving by James Sowerby 1793.

The secret of bee tea . . . remains a secret

A sidebar in the August 2010 Bee Culture created a lot of buzz about bee tea. The article claimed that bee tea boosts the immune system of honey bees, but it doesn’t say what in the tea helps the bees. It also doesn’t cite any studies that show a beneficial effect from its use.

Bee tea is given to bees as a feeding supplement in late summer or fall if a hive doesn’t have enough honey stores to take it through the winter. It is basically 2:1 sugar syrup made with brewed chamomile or thyme tea with the addition of mineral salt.

Now mineral salt is known to be beneficial to bees, but I’ve never read anything about the health effects of brewed leaves of any sort, so I remain skeptical.

However, the optional formula includes the addition of lemongrass and spearmint oils which have been shown in laboratory experiments to enhance honey bee health. But if you use just the sugar, salt, and tea without the essential oils, I’m not sure you are getting anything you wouldn’t get with just regular 2:1 syrup and a little mineral salt.

Nevertheless, here is the recipe that appeared in Bee Culture:

Ingredients:

  • 16 cups white cane sugar
  • 6 cups hot tap water
  • 2 cups brewed chamomile and/or thyme tea
  • ½ teaspoon mineral salt
  • 4 teaspoons Pro Health or Honey-B-Healthy[1] (optional)

Method:

  • Dissolve sugar and salt in 6 cups hot water and stir until dissolved
  • Boil 2 cups water, pour over tea, and let it steep (covered) for 10-15 minutes
  • Strain tea and add to sugar solution
  • If using, add 4 teaspoons Pro Health or Honey-B-Healthy
  • Mix thoroughly
  • Fill feeders and refrigerate any leftovers

Regardless of any health benefits, the essential oils also help retard mold growth and fermentation in the feeders—a real plus.

Rusty

[1] These products contain lemongrass and spearmint oils with a soy-based emulsifier.

How to use a baggie feeder

A baggie feeder is nothing more than a 3-inch deep super—a perfect tool for the hobbyist. You can buy them, build them, or slice an existing super into several layers. Each feeder will hold two 1-gallon plastic zip bags of sugar syrup. If you prefer, you can use just one bag of syrup and use the remaining space for pollen patties, grease patties, or whatever else you like to feed your bees.

Done correctly, the syrup won’t leak out of the bags. Bags should be filled only about two-thirds full. Just hold the bag upright by propping it in a deep bowl or pan and fill with cooled syrup. At this point you can add any supplements you want, such as Honey-B-Healthy or essential oils. Then carefully squeeze out most of the remaining air and close the zip top. Make sure the bag is zipped all the way to the ends.

Handle these bags carefully. If you squeeze or drop one . . . what a mess! I usually make several and place them side-by-side in a bucket. When you go to your hives, remember to bring a sharp blade or box cutter. I also carry a roll of duct tape in case of a pin-hole leak.

The hardest part of the entire process is placing the bag on top of the upper frame of bees. Once you remove the covers, the bees will flow out between the frames. Brushing them away may help, but I usually hold the bag over the bees, lower it till it touches the frames and slowly lower it more until it’s lying on its side. If you go slowly, the bees will move out of the way as it comes down.

Once it’s in place, you can slit the top. Some people make an “X” but I like three parallel lines about 2 inches (5 cm) apart. It seems like all the syrup might flow out, but it doesn’t. The plastic just floats on the surface and the bees line up at the slits and draw out the syrup. Somehow, they get every last drop out of the bags. After years of doing this, it still surprises me to see the totally empty bags.

The thing to remember is this: don’t cut too deep or you will slit the bottom as well. Be careful because the syrup will find its way through the tiniest nick. Also, don’t forget to install the feeder frame before you replace the covers.

The bags are good because they keep mold away from the syrup, they prevent bees from drowning, and the warmth from the cluster keeps the syrup from freezing. When the bags are empty, just throw them away. I’ve heard of people re-filling them, but I’ve never tried.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

Why feed sugar syrup to honey bees?

Spring is one of the times when you may have to feed your bees sugar syrup. If you are new to beekeeping it helps to understand why, when, what, and how to feed. I will try to cover the main points.

If your bees have used up their winter stores of honey, they may need syrup for a few weeks until the nectar starts to flow. This can happen even if you didn’t harvest any honey in the previous season. Sometimes a dry summer prevents the bees from making enough honey, sometimes a winter cluster is a bit too large and eats through the supplies early, and sometimes the nectar flows are late. And, yes, sometimes the beekeeper harvested too much the year before. In any case, a few weeks of sugar syrup can often save the colony.

Another springtime need for syrup occurs when you set up a new hive with a package of bees. They don’t have anything to start with unless you give them frames of honey or sugar syrup. If you’re just starting out, and you don’t have frames of honey laying around, sugar syrup will do the trick. Never give your bees honey that didn’t come from your own apiary. Honey can harbor disease organisms that can infect your new bees. Stick with sugar syrup.

Check your existing hives in the very early spring to see if they have enough honey. If they don’t, you can start them on syrup if it’s warm enough for them to break cluster and feed on it. Otherwise, you might want to use a candy board until the weather gets warmer.

A spring syrup is usually mixed in a 1:1 ratio, either by weight or volume—they are close enough that it doesn’t much matter. Every type of nectar has a different ratio of sugar to water, so the bees can handle a little variation. Don’t obsess over it. Just heat the water to about a simmer, remove it from the stove and dump in the sugar, then stir until all the crystals are dissolved. You can also dissolve the sugar in cold water, it just takes more stirring.

At this point you can add some Honey-B-Healthy if you like, or a couple of drops of an essential oil, such as spearmint or lemongrass. These oils are supposed to be good for the bees and, in any case, the bees love them and will finish the syrup in no time. Honey-B-Healthy is a commercial product that contains these essential oils along with an emulsifier to keep them in solution. It’s an excellent product, but expensive, so some beekeepers like to make a substitute. Either is fine, but the Honey-B-Healthy is easier to handle.

I will write about the different kinds of feeders in a separate post. In the meantime, you can stock up on sugar. You will be pleased to know that the price of sugar reached all-time highs this past year thanks to the sugar tariffs imposed by our government.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite