July differs from other months in the apiary in that, firstly, it is the hottest month of the year, and secondly, it is at this time that the main cultivated and wild honey plants, which constitute the “main harvest,” begin to bloom en masse. Which means it's time to work hard.

July - preparation for honey harvest

Collecting honey for sale is combined with the simultaneous preparation of high-quality food for bees for the winter. The first ten days of July, which precedes the beginning of the flowering of our main honey plants, should be devoted to helping the bees collect a lot of honey, since this is the most active period of their activity of the year. To do this, it is necessary to pay attention to creating favorable conditions conducive to the work of bees on the bribe. Insects must be effectively used for the construction of honeycombs.

Until the linden, fireweed, and buckwheat bloom, the bees will swarm as before. It is not recommended to place late swarms in their old families, but it is worth placing at least two of them in one hive so that they can build frames with artificial foundation and produce a large amount of honey.

What jobs should you definitely not miss in July?

• checking the readiness of bee colonies for honey collection or honey collection (if the collection has already begun earlier, then the check has apparently already been carried out);
• association of a bee family with layers;
• installation of magazine extensions and additional housings;
• providing the apiary with a sufficient supply of honeycombs (if, when filling the cells with spray, there is no free honeycomb space left in the hive, then the bees will stop working, but trying to correct the situation by pumping out honey ahead of schedule is also not worth it, because the honey must ripen for virtually a whole week, which means if you rush, you risk collecting immature honey, unsuitable for storage, as it sours very quickly);
• regrouping of nests (the lower ones should be left for brood with the queen, and those above them should be left for empty combs intended for honey and injection);
• replacing old queens with queen cells;
• installation of frames with beebread, which were removed from the hive over the previous two months, in order to fill them for longer storage of honey;
• implementation of timely selection of full copper frames and replacement with empty ones for honey;
• If we're talking about about a wandering apiary, then you need to check its “motor” part and other components.

It is worth paying attention to the place where you are going to pump out. This should be a fairly bright, warm and clean room where bees will not have access. The process of pumping out honey is much easier immediately after the frames have been removed from the nest. In the case of a small number of bee families in the apiary, the selection of frames should be done in the afternoon (this way the work of the bees will be disrupted much less).

In return for those seized, without waiting for the end of their pumping, it is necessary to install spare frames at the same time. How to determine the ripeness of honey? If half is sealed in a frame, then such honey can be considered mature. It is undesirable to extract honey that has already cooled down; it will go poorly. To improve this process, it is recommended to warm up previously removed frames by leaving them in the room for some time, creating a temperature of 30-35°. The next pumping can be done in about 5-6 days.

Read more tips on beekeeping practice in our.

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August 14 - Honey Spas - bees stop producing honey, and beekeepers begin to break out honeycombs.

If in the summer bees throw out drone brood, then this is due to prolonged cold rains.

Strong summers until late evening - severe weather is expected to approach; the early termination of the bees' flight indicates that good weather will continue until the next day.

When the bees "play" in the morning, the day will be clear.

Honey yield is significantly reduced. Continues only in the sunflower and heather zones (only until half a month). The queens gradually reduce egg production. Bees drive away drones. The danger of bee attacks increases. The tapholes are reduced, leaving only the bottom one. The work of a beekeeper comes down to creating favorable conditions for the growth of young bees for winter. Nests are reduced, low-copper honeycombs are replaced with full-copper ones, families are left with 25-30 kg of honey and 2-3 frames of beebread. With smaller honey reserves, the feed is replenished with honey substitutes, for example, sugar syrup. Nomadic apiaries are returned to the hospital. Winter shelters are disinfected, dried, and measures are taken against rodents (in honeycomb storage facilities, against wax moths).

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Honey is pumped out of the combs in a room (workshop, mobile pavilion, nomadic hut) inaccessible to bees. Before pumping out, the honeycombs are unsealed and the wax caps are removed. Honeycombs are printed in different ways: with knives heated with hot water, steam or electricity, vibrating knives or special automatic devices with various working bodies, as well as forks and rollers. The printed honeycombs are placed in a honey extractor and honey is pumped out of them.

Honey is pumped out using honey extractors of various types and different capacities (from 2 to 50 frames) depending on the size of the apiary. Honey is extracted from honeycombs in honey extractors under the action of centrifugal force, which develops when the honeycomb rotates around the axis of the tank (manually or using an electric motor). Based on the location of the honeycombs, honey extractors are divided into chordial, tangential and radial.

The time required for high-quality pumping of honey depends on its viscosity and the air temperature in the room. To speed up the pumping of honey, you need to do this immediately after removing the honeycombs from the hive or heat the room well (not lower than + 25 - 30 ° C). In both cases, the temperature of the honey will be + 25 - 30 °C. At this temperature, the viscosity of honey is relatively low and does not complicate pumping.

Heating honey above 50 °C is unacceptable, this leads to the loss of its antimicrobial properties, and then to the destruction of enzymes and sugars.

Heating is used primarily to transform crystallized honey into liquid before packaging, reducing viscosity before filtering and settling, destroying osmophilic yeast that causes fermentation, melting the germ crystals, and preserving honey in a liquid state.

In some cases, blending is carried out - mixing different types of honey to obtain a product of the desired quality. Usually honey with a weak aroma and honey with a sharp taste and strong aroma are blended; honey, varying in color and moisture content. Low grades of honey are not blended with high-quality monofloral varieties. For blending honey, homogenizers are used - devices with a mechanical stirrer.

After pumping, the honey is filtered through a metal mesh, most often a two-section filter. Honey is poured into honey sumps or cans, lipovkas, barrels.

To preserve organoleptic properties and High Quality honey great value have conditions for its storage. The composition and properties of honey allow it to be stored for a long time under normal conditions. Storing honey at high temperatures and high humidity causes a significant change in its composition. The optimal air humidity in the room should be about 60%, temperature - no higher than 10 °C. It is recommended to store honey in glass, plastic and enamel containers, hermetically sealed. Honey should not be stored near foods that have a strong odor. Honey easily absorbs odors, as a result of which its quality decreases.

Natural honey in terms of organoleptic and physico-chemical indicators must meet the requirements specified in table .

Building bees that are physiologically complete for wintering

The rearing of the winter generation of bees begins in the second half of the main honey harvest. In the conditions of the central regions Russian Federation bees born in the first half of July do not survive until winter, and bees born in August make up the bulk of well-wintering bees. In high-quality colonies that go into winter with 30 thousand young bees (3 kg), the bees hatch within 6 weeks. It has been established that in order to create strong, well-wintering colonies, it is necessary that in mid-August they have brood on 5 - 6 honeycombs (on average 12 thousand cells of printed brood). To do this, at the end of July, you should make sure that there is enough honeycomb in the nests of bee colonies for the queen to lay eggs. All colonies that have lost queens should be combined as soon as possible with nucs containing replacement queens.

The duration and intensity of the autumn period of bee rearing largely depend on the availability of food reserves and the supply of fresh nectar and pollen to the hive. To raise a large number of physiologically young bees at the end of summer, families must be provided with abundant, complete food (1.5 kg of honey and 0.25 kg of bee bread per bee house) and supporting honey collection. Families with such food supply raise up to 9 nests of young bees during the autumn period (6 weeks - from the beginning of August to September 20), develop intensively in the spring and collect more honey than families with smaller food reserves. The presence of a supporting honey flow and the entry of fresh pollen into the hive contributes to the high egg production of queen bees, the cultivation of full-fledged bees and normal physiological preparation for wintering.

If during the period of autumn growth and physiological preparation for wintering the bees are deprived of the opportunity to bring fresh nectar to the hive, the families must be given stimulating feeding (50% sugar syrup 200 - 300 g daily or every other day). They activate the bees, which expands the zone of stable temperatures in the hive and thus promotes intensive egg laying by the queen.

If there are no flower fingers in the hive, it is advisable to feed the bee colony with protein fertilizers from JSC Agrobioprom. It has been established that feeding bees with protein in August has a positive effect on their preparation for winter and the results of wintering. However, it should be remembered that it is not advisable to use protein supplements later than August 20th. In this case, the bees go into winter with their rectum full of indigestible masses, which significantly reduces their life expectancy.

The age of the queens has a significant influence on the amount of brood reared by bees during wintering preparation. It has been established that colonies of bees with one-year-old queens raise 2 times more brood brood by the end of summer than families with three-year-old queens. Colonies with young queens go into winter stronger, with a larger number of young bees, have less mites and tolerate wintering much better.

Checking feed supplies for honeydew

The bee's body is well adapted to consuming honey in winter, which contains the entire complex of necessary easily digestible substances that ensure the maintenance of their life. However, not all honey is suitable for wintering bees. Particularly dangerous is the admixture of honeydew - a sweetish liquid collected by bees from the leaves of some trees and shrubs.

The chemical composition of honeydew honey is very diverse and depends on the type of honeydew-producing insects, the time of its collection by bees, meteorological conditions and honeydew microflora.

Due to the high content of dextrins in it, honeydew honey has 2-3 times greater viscosity and elasticity, and differs from flower honey in its higher salt content.

Honeydew, unlike nectar, does not have phytoncides or other antibiotic substances that protect it from the development of microorganisms. Therefore, in honeydew, while on the leaves of plants, microflora freely develops, changing its composition and introducing substances harmful to bees into the solution.

Consumption of honeydew honey causes intestinal disease and digestive upset in bees.

For bees overwintering on honeydew honey, already in October the content of feces in the rectum is quite high, and at this time they begin to diarrhea. Diarrhea occurs due to the accumulation of excessively watery excrement. Bees have impaired absorption of water and substances dissolved in it. Toxic substances found in honeydew and large amounts of minerals disrupt the function of the rectal glands of bees.

The most detrimental effect on bees is exerted, first of all, by the breakdown products of proteins contained in honeydew (as a result of the vital activity of honeydew-producing insects). A high content of mineral salts reduces the activity of the enzyme catalase, which plays a protective role in the hindgut. The admixture of alkali metal salts (potassium, sodium) is especially harmful.

When bees feed on honeydew honey, the epithelial cells of the midgut are affected, which contributes to the disease of bees with nosematosis.

Bees overwintering on honeydew honey, as a rule, die in almost entire families, and the survivors often die in the first days after the exhibition from the winter hut and the first cleansing flight. To prevent the death of bees, in the fall it is necessary to carefully analyze the quality of winter food reserves. If pesticides and honeydew are detected even in small doses, honey should be selected and sugar syrup given in an amount sufficient for wintering.

In order to prevent and reduce the effect of honeydew toxicosis on bees during the season, it is necessary to feed harmony of nature CJSC "Agrobioprom"

It has been established that bees overwinter better on light-colored honey. When bees overwinter on dark honey, their rectum is filled with a large amount of feces, as a result of which by spring such colonies experience more death and diarrhea.

Honey that is characterized by increased crystallization (from mustard, rapeseed, rapeseed, as well as from heather, cotton and sunflower in dry years) is unsuitable for wintering. Crystallized honey is inaccessible to bees, and in winter they die of hunger.

The degree of crystallization of honey is significantly influenced by the age of the honeycomb, the presence of embryonic crystals in it, and temperature differences.

It has been established that when bees winter on dark honeycombs, the degree of crystallization of food reserves is 45% higher. Honey in honeycombs crystallizes most quickly at a temperature of 13 - 14 ° C; at higher or lower temperatures, the rate of crystallization decreases. In strong colonies, where all the honeycombs are completely occupied by bees, honey crystallizes very rarely.

In dark honeycombs, honey turns sour more often and much faster. To prevent honey from turning sour in winter, bees are left with mature and sealed honey in the combs. Due to the fact that honey sours mostly in the outer combs of the nest, where temperature conditions are less stable, when assembling nests for the winter, as many combs are installed in the hive as there are bees brooding on them.

Formation of food reserves of bee colonies for the winter

From mid-August to early September, preliminary assembly of nests for the winter is carried out. The bodies and store extensions are removed from the hives, low-copper, unfinished, and old honeycombs that are subject to discarding are removed. Nests are formed from honeycombs containing at least 2 kg of good-quality honey. Full-weight honeycombs, completely filled with honey and sealed with wax caps, are placed along the edges of the nest, honeycombs are placed next to them, and honeycombs containing 2.0-2.5 kg of honey are placed in the center (double-sided nest assembly). Enough honeycombs are left so that they are completely and densely covered by bees. Later, as the weather gets colder, the bees will gather in a winter club, and one or two outer combs will be free.

Honey unsuitable for wintering is selected and replaced with combs containing high-quality honey collected at the beginning of the main honey harvest. If it is not possible to provide families with high-quality natural food established standards, the bees are fed with sugar syrup. According to these standards, each full-fledged family going into winter, depending on the natural and climatic features of the area, should have from 22 to 30 kg of feed (including sugar supplements). In the North-Western, Northern, West Siberian and East Siberian regions of Russia, 30 kg of feed should be left for the winter-spring period, in the Ural and Far Eastern regions - 28 kg each, Central, Volga-Vyatka, Povolzhsky - 25 kg each, Central Black Earth , North Caucasus regions - 22 kg each.

AT THE APIAR IN JULY

Although the days have slowly begun to shorten, the beekeeping season is in full swing. The time has come about which people say that summer day feeds the year . Therefore, the beekeeper now has not only a day, but also every hour on the register - he would not forget anything, he would do everything on time.

Although swarming peak has already passed, the hives cannot be left without a daily external inspection, especially before lunch.

In normally functioning colonies, the brood part of the hive does not need to be disassembled before the autumn inspection. Usually at this time only honey frames or honey stores are manipulated. Moreover, only frames with dry land are placed for expansion during the main honey harvest period. If frames with foundation are placed on the expansion, then the bees engaged in the construction of honeycombs will not be able to fully use the potential honey collection.

At the beginning of the main honey harvest, it is advisable to begin creating reserves of honey, which will later be used when assembling nests for the winter and as a safety food fund for the spring of next year. For this purpose, full-copper, well-sealed frames are selected at a rate of at least 2-3 pieces. for each family that will be left in the winter.

In the first half of July it is still possible continue collecting pollenusing pollen collectors. In the second half of July, this is no longer recommended because it is necessary to give the bees the opportunity to begin accumulating beebread in the hive for the autumn growth of bees and to create winter reserves. And on top of everything else, in the second half of summer the number of pollen carriers in nature decreases and its consumer standards decrease.

July - it's time to pump out the honey. There are many views on how this should be done. We will talk about how most beekeepers do it. First of all, during the season this operation should be carried out as few times as possible, since after collecting honey the family reduces flight activity in bringing honey for at least 2-3 days. If the selection of honey coincides with the peak of flowering of the main honey plant, then the loss of commercial honey will be noticeable.

Only those honey frames that are sealed at least halfway are selected for pumping. If sushi supplies are limited and honey collection continues, then the pumped out frames are put back into empty stores to be filled with honey. If the honey flow decreases sharply, then the empty frames are given to the bees to dry overnight, and then they, along with the stores, are taken away and stored until the next honey flow.

July is the middle of summer and the hottest month of the year. Beekeepers receive commercial honey and create stocks of good-quality food for bees for the winter. In the first ten days of July, until our main honey plants - linden, fireweed, angelica and buckwheat - bloom, bees continue to swarm. Late swarms should not be returned to old families, but it is better to plant them two or more in hives with 20-24 frames, where they will build 15-20 frames with artificial foundation and produce a lot of honey.

Before the main honey plants begin to bloom, the beekeeper must create favorable conditions for the bees to work on the bribe and fully use them for the construction of honeycombs.

The family brings several kilograms of nectar to the hive every day, from which the volume of finished honey is 2-3 times less. For better evaporation of water from nectar, bees fill the cells only 1/3 of their volume. Therefore, to accommodate the spray, they will need about 6 times more space than for mature honey. Honey ripening in the hive takes five to six days, therefore, a large number of combs will be required to collect the nectar and process it into honey. With a daily nectar yield of 6-8 kilograms, the family should have 15-20 honeycombs to accommodate nectar and honey.

If during the bribe there are no free honeycombs in the hive, then the bees, having filled all the free cells with spray, will be inactive. Thus, the beekeeper will miss out on bribes and receive less honey, and if he rushes to pump it out in order to free up the honeycombs for the bees to work with, he will receive unripe honey, which will turn sour during storage.

To make fuller use of the family’s capabilities for collecting honey and building honeycombs, advanced beekeepers do the following:

1. When keeping bees in 12-frame hives, 3 frames are taken from the nest - one with mature brood and two with honey (well-built or discarded). Instead, 3 frames with artificial foundation are placed side by side in the middle of the nest. A dividing grid is placed on top of the frames across the entire width of the hive so that the queen cannot cross into the superstructure. At the same time, 2 store extensions are placed on the hive, 4 frames are placed on each edge, and in the center of the extensions - a frame with brood, two with wax and one with drying material. Can be lifted into extensions and 2 frames with brood. Thus, in 2 extensions there will be 16 half-frames, from which honey is pumped out, and 4 nesting frames, when filled, the honey is not pumped out, but stored as feed with the best honey. Instead they use sushi or wax.
2. When keeping bee colonies in two buildings, they are prepared for bribes in the same way as in 12-frame hives, with the only difference being that all the nesting frames will be in the second building. When filling them with honey, the beekeeper can either pump honey out of them or save them for fodder.
3. In 16-frame hives, 4-5 frames with honey (discarded or dried) are removed from the nest; instead, frames with foundation are placed in the middle of the nest in a row. When staging, bees often damage old honeycombs, thickening them up to 50 mm, and making new honeycombs very thin. After this, the store extension is placed not on 16 frames, but only on 12. In this case, the beekeeper can monitor the filling of the frames, both in the store and in the nest. Such a nest volume (22 frames) will fully provide seven honeycombs and will make it possible to promptly take filled frames from it without removing the magazine extension.
   

   If the hive faces the southeast, then the magazine extension is placed against the southwestern wall, since the bees in the nest will store honey towards the northeastern wall, and this is where the space free from the magazine should remain. It is covered with separate shelves and a pillow. During a bribe, honey is pumped out only from the store extension.

4. When bees are kept in beds, they are prepared for bribes in the same way as in 16-frame hives. The difference is that you don’t have to install a magazine extension, but during a bribe you can take honey from the nest. If, when preparing families for honey collection, embedded queen cells are found, they are removed. In cases where the uterus is bad or old, one queen cell is left and the uterus is removed. Over time, the bribe will come out and the young queen will begin to worm and by winter will produce many young bees. At this time, the highest quality queens emerge.

Multi-copper nesting frames prepared during the main harvest should not be pumped out by the beekeeper before the nests are assembled. After assembling the nests for the winter and creating a supply for the spring (3 frames per family), all low-copper frames removed from the nests can be pumped out.

During the main bribe, the entrances are opened to their entire width, including those at the second and subsequent buildings. As soon as the bribes are over, they are closed, except for the main one. Honey is pumped out in a bright, clean and warm room where bees cannot fly. Honey is easier to pump out when the frames have just been taken from the nest. If there are few bee colonies in the apiary, then it is better to select the frames in the afternoon in order to less disrupt the work of the bees. Instead of the removed frames, you need to immediately install spare ones, that is, without waiting for the taken frames to be pumped out. Honey is considered mature when half of it in the frame is sealed. Cooled honey from frames does not go well, so frames taken from the hives earlier are heated in a warm room at a temperature of 30-35° before pumping out. If the bribe is good, it is pumped out again after about 5-6 days.

The honey is left to stand for 3-4 days. During this time, all the impurities from it will float to the top. After removing this layer, the honey becomes quite marketable and of high quality.

WORK OF A BEEKEEPER AT THE APIAR IN JULY

The largest productive bribe during the summer is called the main bribe. Usually the main bribe falls in July. Bees should be prepared for it in May - early June. Swarming must be extinguished, old and unproductive queens replaced, layering done, nests expanded.
When all this work is done, all that remains is to monitor the honey collection and pump out the honey on time.
Honey begins to be pumped out when all the combs are full and most of them are sealed. Frames with honey from single-hull hives or stores are selected after 5 - 8 days. The best nesting combs are not pumped out, but are left until winter, in case the bees need feeding.
Honey is pumped out of two-tier, multi-body and sunbed hives only after the main bribe. After all, the capacities here are not limited: they can always be increased.
It is better to pump out honey in the evening in order to disturb the bees less during their work. Immediately after pumping out, the frames and half-frames are placed in their place in the hive. Honey is poured into duralumin flasks and linden tubs. For small packaging, honey is poured into porcelain or glass containers. Store honey in a cool room at a temperature of 5 - 8 °C

Read about the work of a beekeeper by month:

If the beekeeper notices bees walking strangely at the entrance, which try to penetrate the hive not in a straight path (as their bees do), but in a zigzag manner, not in the center of the entrance, but from the edge. And also an open bee fight near the entrances - this needs to be taken urgently