We had eleven members in attendance. Randy Austin shared his new technique for keeping his smoker going. He uses a toilet paper roll filled with cardboard from Amazon cardboard and three smoker pellets. Amazon doesn’t use any artificial chemicals in their cardboard. See the photo below. Most members stated pine needles are their source for smokers. However, sometimes it is hard to find dry pine needles and keep them smoking.
There was a question about losing queens at the end of the year. Some reasons may be due to her age and/or repeated exposure to mite treatment medication. A weakened hive due to mites. The queen gets injured or killed during hive inspection. If the queen needs to be replaced, most of the time it will be during the last honey flow, which is the Sourwood flow for our area.
If you have a hive with a lot of drones in mid October, it’s in trouble and probably won’t make it through the winter. It is best to combine the hive with another one.
It is the time of year for robbing. You probably want to add your entrance reducers.
It was discussed that sometime in the future the club could get together to share in equipment and purchase mite treatment in bulk for those who only have a few hives and don’t need a lot of medication.
There are some bee stores around that will rent equipment.
Hope you can make it to our next bee club meeting on October 1st.