| BEE CALENDAR FOR EACH MONTH OF THE YEAR | EQUIPMENT |
| JANUARY Reduce the hive entrance and check for blockage from buildup of dead bees or snow. Be sure roof is secure. Emergency feeding if necessary. Record your observations for each hive rather than relying on memory. Take the time off to read a good book and attend local bee club meetings. Place your packaged bees order for this year. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Books
Hive feeders
Entrance reducers
Record book
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| February
Medicate at least 60 days prior to adding supers. As the cluster grows, shift frames with eggs to the center and frames of sealed brood to the outer position. Add brood chambers with drawn comb to the strongest hives. Reverse double brood chambers to move the empty frames to the top and center. This will stimulate growth of the hive. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Medication |
| March
Due to massive increase in bee population and food consumption, consider feeding. Continue the frame rotations and begin to alternate the frames according to brood age. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Hive feeders |
| April
Remove the entrance reducers. In order to prevent swarming: add supers, spread out the frames with brood, cut queen cells, limit barriers to bee movement upward into the supers. Consider placing swarm traps in the Apiary to catch any swarms. Replace any queens due to old age, temperament, or bad brood pattern. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Swarm traps
Supers |
| May
Add a queen excluder, and place honey supers. Give them plenty of room to bring in the pollen and nectar, but toward the end of the nectar flow you will want to crowd the bees to finish out partially filled supers. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Queen excluder
Frames
Foundation
Supers |
| June
Begin to take off frames of capped honey and replace with empty frames/foundation. Place bees escapes prior to removing entire supers. July
The nectar flow will continue this month and you may even find your bees festooning (a group of bees hanging onto each other in a cluster) along the side of a hive. Some say they are cooling themselves. Add more supers as needed. August
The hive begins to slow down as the nectar flow decreases. | Bee suit, smoker, hive tools
Frames
Foundation
Supers
Bee escapes Extracting equipment
Containers
Labels
...etc (add to this list) |
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September
The hive population drops and the drones begin to die off. Harvest the remainder of your honey crop, but remember to leave the hive with at least 60 lbs. for use over the winter. Near the end of the month, feed and medicate. Install Apistan strips or CheckMite (for 42 days). Push or Crowd your bees as needed by feeding them to help build honey for the winter.
October
The bees are preparing for winter. Add any necessary insulation or windbreaks and remove the Apistan or CheckMite strips. Store your equipment. | Apistan
CheckMite
wax moth treatment |
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| November
Not much to do this month. The bees are clustering together on colder days. A good time for you to take a vacation as well. Also a good time to think of all the terrific honey-related gifts you could prepare for Christmas gifts: Bottle some of your honey in decorative containers and tie with a festive ribbon, make candles with your beeswax December
There is not much to do this month for the bees. Read a good book and make candles with your beeswax. Consider ordering some goodies to include with those Christmas gifts to friends and family. Enjoy the holidays!
| Book about candle making
bottles Good eats and gifts
Books
Book - candle Making |
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