If you live, like I
do, with mostly corn and soybeans in the immediate area you have a lot of
two kinds of food… Think a daily diet of breakfast cereal and salad – good
for awhile, but not for long. Monocultures dominate the universe in some
places, leaving out much of what a balanced diet calls for, thus, you need
to provide the missing nutrients, vitamins, minerals and the rest. My
suggestion is that if you offer your bees some of the pollen you collected
earlier this season, or a protein substitute available from bee supply
companies and they take it, they needed it. If they don’t you’ve invested
a buck in knowing they don’t. This is very cheap insurance.
At the same
time, these two crops, along with many others unfortunately, harbor a
beekeeper’s favorite foe… pesticides. Is the pollen your bees have stored
good pollen, clean, without pesticide residues? How do you know…? You
don’t really. If you check, you might find that the local farmer is
spraying beans for aphids, corn for worms, or they were seed-treated
before planting. Some of the newer pesticides are systemic and will end up
in pollen and nectar in treated plants. Bees harvest this deadly diet and
bring it home to store. In general, big agriculture is more foe than
friend, and the further away you can stay the better.
It’s still late
summer and, in many places, there is still a fall flow of honey to be had, so
read the treatment label carefully before treating with your honey supers
still attached. But
if the season is over, the sooner you can treat, the better, because you
want to make sure that you take care of the bees that take care of the
bees that go into winter.
Next time we’ll look
at actual winter prep… and unless you live in southern Florida or Texas,
there are several things to do so your bees do okay all winter long.
