Nucleus Hives, Supering and Summer Management Workshop

Many professional beekeepers advocate for nucleus hives to complement your beekeeping operation. Many of the beekeepers in our bee club have nucleus hives and rely on them for helping weaker hives. The nucleus colony is a smaller, complete hive in a smaller box. This workshop will cover the clear advantages of the nucleus hive over purchasing packages of bees each year. Our discussion will include: faster colony development due to the presence of brood, the queen’s laying cycle; the ease of establishing the nucleus in your own equipment, and how to create a nucleus hive.

Do you know how to effectively super your hive so that you can harvest honey?

Observational beekeeping helps to solve problems before they become a detrimental issue. Take the Benedictine monk’s advice: “Listen to the bees and let them guide you” (Br. Adam of Buckfast Abbey). This workshop on summer management will develop a plan for: how do I identify the health of the hive, how do I identify the signs of potential swarming, what are the signs of a struggling hive, how do I identify a dearth and robbing, what is the mite load in the hive?

Led by Bill Hesbach, CBA President

Bill is an Eastern Apicultural Society Certified Master Beekeeper, graduate of the University of Montana's master beekeeping program, and president of the Connecticut Beekeepers Association. He teaches bee biology and various beekeeping methods, and appears as a guest speaker at local and regional beekeeping seminars. Bill has been published in Bee Culture, Bee Craft, and The American Bee Journal, and was presented the Distinguished Speaker Award at the 2019 EAS conference. Special interests include bee biology and flight, and the connection between local flora and bee behavior.