BEE CHRONICLES MAY 2011

18^TH of April: My blackberries are starting to bud. That means maybe 2 weeks to blossom. For those who have followed the chronicles for awhile know that I live on the north side of the hill in the shade. So for those that get more sun, your honey collection is about to start. I use the blackberry as my first indicator of “nectar flow”. Of course there has been nectar since the first flowers of spring. The queens woke up and started laying eggs. The worker bee population started to swell. Now is the time where there are enough foragers and an over abundance of nectar that the colonies will start putting up excess honey. Here in the southern Appalachian’s tulip poplar blossom will mark the peak of the spring nectar flow. My guess is that the tulip poplar will start blooming about 2 weeks after blackberry. Tulip poplar can last a full month. Cool weather will hold the blossoms on the tree longer. Even though we might have warm (up to 80 degree) days the nights will be cool.

One tulip poplar tree can produce as much nectar as 6 acre of clover. The next time you are out driving look at how many tulip poplars are in the forest. They are the really tall straight gray trees with fairly small crowns compared to oak trees.

There will be hundreds of other types of blossoms out there also. That is what makes spring flow honey so flavorful. The varieties of pollen are what give the spring honey its hay fever medicinal affect. The mixture of pollen colors will all blend to brown and the spring honey will be amber to dark amber colored. Enjoy and bee ready with you honey supers.

In a proper year each hive will produce 2-3 supers of spring honey. PROPER??? That is a double hive body with over 60,000 bees in it and all the brood comb already pulled. Pulling comb can take a lot of honey. Besides counting, how can you tell if you 60,000 bees? In the evening there will be 2 quarts of bees sitting on the landing board, not going inside the hive. The bees will actually fill the front porch of the hive and hang in large clusters like little swarms. If the weather gets bad they will all squeeze inside. But, normally it will be too hot for all of the bees to squeeze in.

When your hive is approaching this condition is also swarming time. You need to practice swarm management. The conditions to swarm are: 1. Full population of bees, 2. Full food stores, 3. Queen cells coming along, and 4. No more work left for bees, the hive full of food and all the comb pulled.

The signs that a swarm is coming is the bees are agitated and hovering around the top of the hive. They are confused about what to do (with no work required of them). They are very loud in their buzzing. If you can hear, which I hardly can, you will notice the buzzing from quite a distance. The queen must stop laying eggs to slim down to flying weight before she can swarm. This further confuses the bees. You should notice the cloud of bees circling the top of the hive. It just looks different. So now is the time to learn what normal flight patterns around the hive look like. I love the observation part of bee keeping. I don’t have to sweat to watch my bees.

What can I do to manage against swarming? Reverse any of the situations mentioned above. Inspect your hive and kill queen cells. Be very thorough. If you miss one cell the swarming will still take place. Create more work for the bees. Place a honey super on the hive to increase the storage area. Pull out some of the brood frames and place new ones with foundation so the bees have to pull comb. This can be done with honey frames also. This allows you to create comb to rotate out your older comb. If you do management techniques without removing the queen cells the hive will not swarm. However, the queen will be superseded by the new queen. Once an abundant nectar flow starts and there is room in the hive, the colony will not swarm until the nectar flow stops. Then it is bang we are gone.

This situation creates the magic of honey collection. We pull the full honey supers, replace full ones with one empty one, and the bees go back to work, but more slowly because of the lack of nectar.

Good Luck and BEE ready