BEEKEEPING
From page 23
The best system to follow,
therefore, is as follows:
K Spring-clean each hive,
with two frames of full
foundation sheet placed in
the centre of the brood
chambers before the move to
the aloe field.
K Remove the supers,
making loading easier. This
allows more space for more
hives on your truck or trailer.
K Load supers to provide
two supers per hive, and
deposit these supers on the
site ahead of the load of bees
to follow, placing them where
the hives are to be placed.
Usually aloe sites are large
areas, therefore spread
the hives to facilitate cropping
off the honey at a later stage.
K Move the hives to the site,
timing the trip to allow
enough time to super up the
hives before dark.
K Place two supers on each
hive.
K To confine the queen,
block up the entrances and
place a good quality queen
excluder on top of the first
super and under the second
super. Move the top super,
which is above the queen
excluder, slightly backwards to
allow a gap that the bees will
use as a top entrance. In this
way the queen will not be
able to fly off. The super
below the queen excluder
gives the queen ample egg
laying space. The hive will
need a third super when the
aloes are peaking.
K Now for the big job. Crop
off the honey by drawing
frame by frame, a long and
tedious job when there are 50
or so hives to work on the
same day. This allows the
bees to fall back into the hive
and not on to the ground in
front of the hives. By doing so
one must avoid mixing the
26
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bees because some hives
might have the black bee
invasion which can spread by
too many flying and disturbed
bees during this cropping
operation.
K The swarms develop into
largish groups and one must
be wary of over-cropping,
leaving at least a half a super
of honey until the next honey
flow, possibly on citrus groves,
or the Highveld gums that
follow in October.
Continued on page 27
Aloe daveyana