This PPT slideshow covers the following topics: building up the hive, requeening, managing swarms, supering, managing Africanized honey bees (AHB), recognizing honey plants, and pollinating.

1. Management of Honey
Production and Pollination
Chapter 5 of Keith Delaplane’s
First Lessons in Beekeeping
PPT by Dr. Steve Payne, retired
professor & Member, LA Master
Beekeepers Advisory Group

2. Topic: Early Season Build-up
• During late winter and early spring,
supplemental feeding (sugar syrup and a
pollen substitute) might well be needed for
some hives. Various types of liquid feeders
exist and commercially produced pollen
substitute are available for purchase, so that
bees can be nourished until natural floral
resources bloom.

3. Topic: Requeening
• It is vital to replace poor-performing queens.
Caged queens should be introduced carefully
so that existing bees grow to accept this new
queen. Cutting out any existing supersedure
queen cells is recommended as well as
checking that the new queen is actually laying
eggs a few days after she has been accepted
by the hive.

4. Topic: Swarm management
• Swarms deprive existing hives of much of their
workforce and can ruin the making of a decent
honey crop. Swarm impulses exist particularly
in the spring and can be tied to hive
congestion and the presence of queen cells.
Relieving congestion can be accomplished by
making splits/nucs, equalizing colonies,
reversing hive bodies/boxes, and supering.

5. Swarm management (2)
• Culling queen cells is another way to reduce
swarming tendencies, but checking hives
every ten days or so to cut out every queen
cell (and even finding some of these in
inconspicuous and odd locations in the hive)
can be demanding work for a beekeeper.

6. Topic: Supering for the nectar flow
• Tip: The beekeeper should be liberal with
adding supers early in the season (when lots
of flowers are in bloom) and frugal with
supers near the end of the nectar flows.
Depending on the presence of new white wax
combs filled with raw honey in top supers over
time, the beekeeper might add as many as
eight or so supers over a very good season.

7. Supering for the nectar flow (2)
• Beekeepers can simply add supers to the top
of the existing boxes or add to the bottom
(above the brood boxes). While bottom
supering can make sense especially for comb
honey production, research has shown this
doesn’t significantly increase honey yield.
Bottom supering obviously means more lifting
and work!

8. Other honey production concerns
The over-riding objective in spring and summer
management is to have large bee populations in
time and place for major plant nectar flows.
Other tips include placing hives in direct sunlight
and providing a wind break for the hives, as well
as replacing black and old brood combs.
Research has shown that such old combs
decrease honey production.

9. Topic: Working with Africanized bees
• Some beekeepers in the US, and especially in
foreign countries, must work with Africanized
bee hives. Some tips in such cases include:
good and isolated apiary locations, use of
single hive stands (instead of pallets or rails),
adequate protective clothing (use of white
color in veils, etc.), and heavy smoking.

10. Topic: Honey plants
A variety of flowers offer good nectar and
pollen sources for honey bees. Among those
commonly found in the South are ones shown
below: Red maple and orange blossom

11. Honey plants (2)
Dandelion and white clover

12. Honey plants (3)
Blackberry and soybean

13. Honey plants (4)
Tulip poplar and goldenrod

14. Honey plants (5)
• There are many other honey bee foraging
sources in the South. Different honey plants
bloom at different periods and for different
lengths of time. Goldenrod, for example,
offers a good fall forage to help hives survive
the winter. The largest plant forage for bees in
the USA comes from yellow, white and Dutch
clover. For honey production, hive location
near good foraging sources is essential.

15. Topic: Pollination
• For crop pollination purposes, the key
concerns are the presence of a vigorously
laying queen and plenty of brood to create a
protein demand for pollen foraging. One
strategy for successfully pollinating crops is to
delay having the hives in place until when the
bloom is about ten percent achieved.

16. Pollination (2)
Although a common target density for crops is
one hive per acre, the type of crop and other
factors can significantly raise suggested target
density (more hives per acre). Pollination fees
can be attractive, but hives can suffer honey
producing and health consequences from
frequent moves to different pollination locations
and crops.