BEEKEEPING
Plan the work , then work the plan
Here we are sitting around our garden table in the shade of our magnificent Eucalyptus melliodora tree . New buds are developing for the October honey flow , which over the years has never failed us . Pen and paper in hand , we are planning the seasons ahead , from catch boxes to new swarms to the final three supers on each hive , 40 kg of honey per hive from 50 hives by end of March 2018 , ie ,
How an organised beekeeper tracks his swarms , catch boxes , hives and apiaries , and keeps in touch with farmers and landowners , by the Eastern Highveld Beekeepers Association
two tons of honey . Our target is to replace the 50 hives lost over the past year due to failing queens , vandalism , fires and poor swarms that just did not develop from the previous year ' s catching . This manoeuvre will bring our complement of working swarms back to 300 in the field . All catch boxes must be ready for placing by mid-April . They must have been cleaned out of possible wax moth infestation , spider webs , old dry combs , and each frame , of the 500 involved , to have been cleaned and scraped , the wires tensioned where required , and a 20mm strip of foundation wax fitted into the groove of the top bars of the frames . Damaged boxes must have been repaired , lost boxes due to fires replaced , and all leaky holes repaired and closed up to facilitate the eventual moving of the catch boxes to their apiary sites . By the end of April the siting of the catch boxes must be completed . The area targeted for our plan is the Magaliesberg , Brits , Mooinooi , Broederstroom and Pelindaba areas , 150 km from home base . We will have visited farmers , institutions and maplotters to scatter our catch boxes over as wide an area as possible , say eight sites of six boxes per site . ByMay1wemusthave placed all boxes and clearly have recorded each site , the owner ' s details , and a brief sketch of the access to the boxes . The next step is to research the areas for our bees to have access to aloes , citrus , eucalyptus , mangoes , avocados and natural bush , and the flowering times of each . We will rendezvous the caught swarms into five apiaries of ten hives in the areas that we had selected best for our target . We may have to move the apiaries to suit the flows in order that we obtain eucalyptus honey to conclude the season by the end of November in these areas . The December dearth period
Continued on page 19
18 www . sasmallholder . co . za