Bee Chronicles April 2010

This epistle will be done in three chapters. Go ahead and get some tea and snacks now.

This late winter was interesting to all the new beekeepers and newly arrived mountain folks. Newly arrived is anyone newer than May 1, 1953. This winter was close to normal but a little too warm. The old timers, like Larry, remember when January and February were cold months. It just hasn’t been cold these last 15 years. I think it is global warming!

The news is official, 2009 was the lowest honey crop in the southeast ever. Average hive honey volume was 55 lbs. Normal is close to 70 lbs. Part of the statistical trick was they only counted hives that produced excess honey. Hives that produced no excess were not counted. Most of mine were in the no excess category. Of 12 good hives I got a total of 7 honey supers (Spring and Sourwood combined)

You must realize this article is hitting the presses about a month late to be useful. What it can do is show you what I saw and you can compare. This is not a right or wrong test, but beekeepers being observant. Know what is happening and why, to the best of your ability. This allows you to plan ahead for the good or the bad. The good is: should I be feeding, how is my queen doing? The Bad is: did I order enough replacement bees and new queens?

Early March saw pussy willows starting to bloom. That is when the fuzzy catkin puts out anthers and stamens. They don’t look particularly pretty except to the bees. They are loaded with pollen. Look around your yard, and the neighbors, and public land that seems to be not guarded. Is there a place for pussy willows. They grow 10’ tall and 10’ around. If you spend some money, you will notice the garden catalogues flooding you mail box. There are cheap pussy willows in some of them. There are black, pink, gold, and silver ones. Each blooms a just a little different time. If you are cheap and know someone with pussy willows, you can cut a stick at least 6” long. It does not have to the end piece. Stick it in the mud by a creek and it will root and grow. You can also dip the cut end of the ones you bring in the house for flowers in rotenome rooting stuff. They will root in the vase. Then transfer to the outside dirt after it warms up. There was a little hembit weed blooming in the sunny spots. There was also a very tiny white flower (I mean tiny). The bees were starting to wake up and make foraging flights. Not much to bring home. This was a good time to start forcing you queens to wake up and lay eggs. Syrup in a 1:1 ratio to simulate nectar, a pollen substitute, and a little real pollen is all it takes.

Middle of March life in the hive was looking up. Queens were starting to lay eggs. The queens are smarter than they look. She will not lay more eggs than there is food for. Pollen is the one thing that might be in shortest supply. She also is limited by the number of nurse bees. This is one reason you want to start you queens working early, especially if your colony is on the small side. At 26 days to produce more workers she will build up very slowly at first. The second month will be better, and so on. May is spring flower season and you need lots of bees before 90 days from when the queen starts laying eggs. Jump ahead! What can I do? Get the queen started then toward the First of April, cross level some workers with drawn comb to the lesser hive. Queenie will speed up.

Now it is toward the end of March. What should I be doing now? Look and see what you bees are doing. Is there enough nectar (honey) in the hive? If not, syrup. Is there enough pollen? If not, a substitute. Are the bees bringing in pollen? At first pollen usually comes in, in greater quantities than nectar. It has to be balanced for the queen to max out on egg laying. Right now I am seeing red maple in nearly full bloom. It went from zero, to full bloom in two weeks. That is a little fast. I also see lots of maple blossoms on the ground. High winds and heavy rain. That reduces the pollen available to the bees even though the trees still look red. I also see good patches of hembit, little white flowers, and the tiniest violets. What to do?? Pull up a stump in the bee yard and watch the landing zones at the hive entrance. Are 20% of the bees packing pollen? Are all the hives working with the same intensity, if not think, about cross leveling foraging bees. These are the ones flying outside the hive. You don’t want to cross level nurse bees because they won’t have anything to do. I just switch one hive with another hive in the yard during the day. The foragers will just go into the weak hive because it looks like home. The strong hive will receive the foragers from the weak hive and add the maturing nurse bees to the foraging platoon. It all works out. If you are working double hive bodies it is still too early to switch bottoms to tops. Let the bees stay in the tops where it is warmer, especially if you have screen bottom boards. When you have 8 of 10 frames with brood, honey or pollen, then switch tops to bottoms. Otherwise the queen will move up and lay leaving the lower brood to cool and die.

Next week, beginning of April, your new bees and queens will be arriving any day now. Be ready with hive bodies and as much drawn comb as you could save from last fall. You don’t want the bees drawing comb and wasting nectar that can go to bee food if you can help it. The wax moths are out so take caution to fight infestations in weak hives and stacked brood frames. On weak hives you might want to pull 2-3 frames out of a 10 frame brood box so the bees can patrol the frames better. Stored frames need to have air and light. If you have any questions use “paramoth” in the stored boxes. Remove the paramoth a week before placing the frames in the hive. Good clean wax is precious. Keep it golden or lighter. Change it out every 3-4 years. As you inspect your hives rearrange your frames so the older ones are to the outside. The bees will fill them with honey. When the hive is getting a lot of bees, pull the old frames, insert foundation frames, and set the old frames with honey out in the area (couple of 100’ away) so the bees can rob them out and use the honey. Now dispose of the old wax and reload with foundation.

Winter is not over, even though it is spring. We will have several more good frosts and maybe snow. Remember, April 19? We could loose all our blossoms. Just keep an eye on you bees and be ready to adjust on the run.

If you follow my instructions you will either kill your bees or start to have full hives toward the end of April. If the latter is the case, you will have to start swarm management. As your hive population builds, the queen will start laying drone eggs. A month later you can start growing your own queens for fun or profit. Don’t try to grow a queens before there are plenty of drones with whom to mate. The workers will grow a queen, she will go on a mating flight. If she fails to mate or is inadequately mated she will start laying drone eggs. So don’t get in a hurry making queens here in the mountains. Your swarm management techniques should focus on making spare parts for weaker hives. You can cross level excess bees. You can also cross level drawn comb so the weaker hives don’t have to work so hard. As long as the robust hives have room and work to do they will not swarm.

Happy Beekeeping

Glen