Bee Chronicles Feb 2012

Bee Keepers! WAKE Up!!

Okay, it’s the start of February. We are all deep in hibernation (unless you have children).

The bees are coming! The bees are coming! OR are they going.

February is bee mysterious die off month. I think it is a nationally recognized non holiday. You can not be taking time off now.

Food may be short by now, do the tilt test to determine if your hives are running out of food.

The bee clusters are at their smallest size for the winter. The bees have been naturally dieing off all winter long. If every thing goes correctly the queen will start laying eggs the middle of February.

What to do? What to do?

Analyzing your situation is the easy part. Convincing the bees that you are there to help them is the hard part. You may need to trick (stimulate) the bees to do something they are not prepared to do as due course of their current daily chores. Is it still too cold to get the cluster to loosen up? Can I stimulate nectar collection (drinking syrup)? What is my varroa mite situation? Do I have a good bee population number? Is the queen laying eggs yet? Everything you want to do will be easier if the weather cooperates and the henbit weed and the red maple are starting to bloom. This might be the 3^rd week of February. Can your bees survive until then?

If the cluster won’t loosen up there is very little stimulation you can do to the colony. They must loosen up to feed. They must have food to survive this last month. There must be warm days (inside the hive) when the bees can move around and go to stored honey or in hive feeders. You can use liquid syrup or dry sugar based food. If you bee cluster is real small and there is a lack of food it becomes very difficult to encourage the bees to eat emergency food (some drier formula sugar). The bees must have lots of food (pollen and nectar) to raise brood. If the temperature is averaging in the mid to high 40’s during the day the cluster will probably be moving around inside the hive. The sun will warm the hive higher than ambient outside temperature. If you get some days of 55 degrees or better you can open the hive and inspect quickly for food, number of bees, and a queen. Insert food, treat for mites (powdered sugar which doubles as a dry food), and insert pollen patties if desired. Take notes on the conditions in each hive so you will know if you need to order bees or queens. Order the bees immediately, before the suppliers run out.

Several hives will appear okay early in February but the varroa mite population is overloading them. As the population of bees decreased in the cluster the mites can get on other bees. This will stress the bees to death. Knock the mite population back down to an acceptable level. This is necessary before heavy egg laying starts. You don’t want large mite populations moving into the new larvae cells during brood build up.

If your colony is apparently small you will have to nurse it along. The queen will lay eggs more slowly due to a lack of nurse bees. You can easily over feed a week colony. The bees are all mature and want to be foragers. They can put up all the syrup you provide, but they will put it in the center of the brood chamber leaving no space for the queen to lay eggs. If all the bees are foraging you further reduce the number of nurse bees. By limiting feeding more bees will be inclined to nurse. This is an interaction between scout bees telling the other foragers where good nectar is and bees staying home because the scout bees are not bringing in good reports. As native pollen and nectar become available the reports go up and foraging increases. By this time you hope the queen has laid the first batch of eggs and new nurse bees will be coming along in 12 days (queen has been laying for 10 days plus the remaining 11 days till those first eggs hatch).

Maybe, by the end of February or early March your strong hives will be coming along at a very respectable rate. Your weaker hives that are being coaxed along can use a boost of bees. This is your first opportunity to start leveling your hive populations. On a warm day (60 degrees or better) remove a frame of brood with nurse bees from a strong hive, and place it in the weak hive next to existing brood. This can be tricky due to different hive smells. Smoke both hives heavily before pulling the brood frame. Lightly spray the brood frame and the sides of the adjoining frames in the receiving hive. This will reduce fighting and stimulate grooming of the syrup making everyone is good buddies. Place the drawn comb in the empty spot in the good hive.

This is the time of year to closely monitor queens. They can die rapidly from varroa mite overload just like any other bee. Weather permitting, check you queen’s activities weekly. Good solid pattern of worker bee brood is the good sign. Drone brood early in the season is a sign of weak fertility and a new queen is needed.

Get ready to receive your packages of bees. Hopefully they will be ready in early March. An easy way to introduce a package is to use a 10 frame hive body with 5 frames in it (all along one side). Having drawn comb is best, but foundation will work. DO NOT smoke the package box. This only makes the bees mad. Smoked bees tend to engorge themselves with honey which calms them. There is no honey in the package box. Spray the package with water or syrup. Thump the package on a hard surface knocking the bees to the bottom for a few seconds. Remove the lid, take out the syrup and the queen cage. Replace the lid to keep most of the bees in the package box. Hang the queen cage. Spray the 5 frames with syrup. Dump a bunch of bees on the top bars around the queen. Place the remaining bees in the package box in the empty space in the hive body. Place another empty hive body on the first one. Place the feeder can on the top bars NOT directly over the queen. Then replace the inner cover and telescoping lid. This creates a food source and a crowd of bees in close proximity to the queen. Lots of nectar and lots of bees shoulder to shoulder stimulates wax production. In 3 days release the queen into the hive frames. She has been cooped up 4-5 days and needs to get back to laying eggs. The bees have no other queen scent so should accept her very easily.

BEE CHRONICLES FEB 2011

We are well into next year already, week three coming up.

Here in the mountains of North Georgia USA we are having weather different from the past 40 years. Does that make the current weather abnormal or finally back to normal? I am sure it is all due to global warming. Three measurable snow storms since 2d week of December 2010. The snow has stayed on the ground a week or longer each time. The last two storms were more than 6” deep each.

What is this going to do to our southern bees? What is it going to do to our beekeeping practices?

To answer the first question, our southern bees should not be affected, even if they are Italian bees. These very same bees have been shipped all over America and generally survive normal winters in Michigan.

Question two is the” Killer”! Our beekeeping practices are “southern”. Did we all remember to put our snow shoes on, hitch up the sled dogs and go out the apiary to make sure the entrances were not clogged with snow? Were the bees getting enough air? If you have screened bottom boards, trust me, your bees got plenty of fresh air. What about the howling winds? Were they blowing right into your entrances (even if reduced)? All questions without good answers. Really healthy bees living in very large winter colonies can take a lot more extremes. An apparently healthy colony might be pushed over the breaking point if enough extremes meet up at the same time.

The first thing I would do is order some back up bees, Packages or Nucs. If you don’t need them in March one of your friends will. If you cancel your order someone you don’t even know will appreciate you. It is easier to get rid of bees than it is to get them late in the spring.

What is going to go wrong between now and 2d week of March? I would rank starvation as number one. The bees stayed clustered too long at a time. You had winter food or syrup in the hive but the cluster never expanded enough for the bees to go get the food. I have had colonies starve with food 2 inches away and the bees would not go get it.

Chilling the colony would be my number two killer. The population of the colony is too small so it dwindles down until it dies. You might see bees on the front of the hive on a 55 degree day and think it is okay and then one cold spell and zappo! (That is a beekeeper term for dead)

Dead queen would be number three. A queen can die any time, just because. If she dies mid winter the colony will do just fine. Being lethargic there is no requirement for the queen except to keep order in the hive with her pheromone scent. Workers will continue to exist, but may not cluster correctly. Too loose of a ball will lead to chilling. They may not move out to the food with out enough empitas from the queen. Some one has to go get her food and bring it back. Disorderliness starts to set in. You may not notice the missing queen until no new eggs are laid in the spring. Before you can get a new queen, the colony is dead. If you notice a queenless colony, combine the bees with a weaker colony. Due this on a warm day. Spray the bees lightly with sugar water. Pull the frames with bees on them and put them with the frames with bees on them in the week hive. The bees will groom each other and shouldn’t fight. Load the hive up with food frames. Work fast it is still too cold to be breaking a hive apart. Shoot for a 60+ degree day. If you get a new queen you can always make a split off this hive later. The idea is to save the workers.

The fourth problem will be couped up deseases. The ones that occur from moisture or are spread bee to bee in the cluster. Nozema would be one. Mite predation would be another. Foul brood stopped with the end of brood, but it could come back (or appear) with the restart of brood formation.

Get Ready here “IT”comes. Spring time I mean. It could get warm any time now and then snap freeze or not. I start feeding my bees heavily the first of February. I want to get the queen woken up. When red maple and hembit weed start providing pollen and some nectar, I will switch to 1:1 syrup to simulate nectar flow. In theory this will fire up egg laying.

Think about it, try to fix it, and meet spring time head on.

Good Luck!