Hive Maintenance – Sanitation

Keeping your hives clean is the start to a healthy, productive apiary. This aids in the biosecurity of the hive and promotes overall health for your honey bee friends.

Methods:

• Brood Comb Culling – Honeycomb is very absorbent and can hold chemical residues over time. Removing old comb and replacing it with fresh, new comb can increase overall colony health. This can be done on a 5 year rotation being careful not to remove too many frames in one colony at a time. You want to help the bees, not set them back.
• Hive Location – Keeping your hives in sunny locations and away from Northern exposure can help the bees regulate temperatures as well as humidity levels to maintain a clean hive.
• Sanitizing tools – Keeping tools isolated to each apiary in order to isolate any diseases from being transmitted from apiary to apiary or hive to hive is a good practice and can help keep your hives healthier overall.

These are the three main methods for keeping a clean operation and helping your bees to be more productive and healthier.