It is, once again, bee feeding day. I have tried plastic hive-top feeders and jar feeders, but the setup that’s consistently the most workable is a simple freezer baggie, the kind with the double zip, and a feeder shim. I use quart baggies, because of the footprint of the hive, so they get replaced every two or three days. It’s super quick, less than ten minutes for the three hives, and the bees don’t seem bothered in the least.
Another thing that has worked very well this year is the bee escape board. I bought a pack of porter bee escapes on Amazon, and used them in a plywood and square dowel escape board I Titebonded together. It cleared most of the bees from the boxes I needed to remove within a day. I’ll have to make a couple more.
The hives were treated for mites mid-August with Apiguard. I plan to do an oxalic acid dribble sometime after Halloween. I also plan to do treatments preemptively, as it’s almost a given that a colony will have mites. Next year, the second with these colonies, will probably be more of a hands-on thing.
These Saskatraz bees have been a joy to watch all summer. They are so very gentle, and extremely efficient. They look to be perfectly suited to our weather zone by how they have changed with the three (so far) seasons. If they overwinter, and maybe even if they don’t, I’ll probably stick with them. And/or whatever mix they become.
And is it wrong that each fall a Randy Travis song pops into my head, but with the replacement lyrics, “We’re kickin’ out drones… we’re kickin’ out drones…”
