Bee Chronicles Mar 2012

31 January, checked the bees. Some brood in all hives, 11 really good looking populations, 1 nice looking.

16 February, Opened all the hives, lots of brood in all 10, 2 dead ones. Small clusters, in the starved to death pattern. Come on! These hives looked good enough two weeks ago. My two Russian hives look the best. The best hive of those has 7 frames, 75% full on both sides, with drone brood and hatched out drones. Now wait a minute. Russians are notoriously slow starters in the spring. Oh, and by the way, this one also show signs of varroa mite damage on some of the bees. I have to attribute the good start to the bees preparation last fall. They hit Thanksgiving with good populations and small football sized brood pattern on 3 frame faces. The hives were pretty full of honey and pollen. There is still fall honey and pollen in the hive. Well, it is hard to tell today, but they made it to egg laying with real pollen. This allowed the queen to do a better job of starting up. I hit the hive with soft mite control (powdered sugar) to knock the mites down. I think the bees carried a load of mites into the winter (normal). As the older bees died (normal) the mites moved onto the neighbor. When the queen started laying eggs, all the mites jumped into the brood cells to start reproduction. This caused too many mites on one larva, so they were born damaged. This may not cause a continued problem in the hive as more eggs are laid, the mites will spread out in the larval cells causing less damage to the pupae. The less mite damaged young bees might survive, but they won’t live as long or work as hard as normal. The strength of the Russian stock will hopefully give me enough time to knock the mites down. Then the subsequently hatched bees will be stronger and be able to tend to more brood and forage more voraciously giving the total colony population a boost.

I am disappointed that more of my hives didn’t make it through the winter. However, I am not discouraged. 25 percent loss is “normal”. I lost 50% from my August start point of 20 hives. The first one I lost went queenless. I made the management decision to not buy a fall queen. Then I lost the next eight in the 6 weeks after Christmas. I think some were to varroa mites and some were definitely “CCD”. My philosophy is: if you have to replace the dead hives, just do it. If I don’t have a communicable disease that killed the bees, and I am not going to change my management practices based on the lessons learned form the loss, don’t sweat it. This leads me to what management practice did I learn? BUY TOUGHER BEES! I had already made that decision and have 9 Russian nucs on order. I am on a 2-3 year change over plan.

One of the inconveniences of Russians is they propolize everything. Last fall in one Russian hive they built a wall from the top of the frame up to and around the inside of the inner cover hole. The other had a 4” long curved wind deflector from the bottom board to the center frame under the brood. Explain that one! This spring they both have wind deflectors at the left side of the reducer entrance hole. They go from the reducer to the front edge of the frame. They are both on the same side of the entrance hole but the entrance holes are not in the same location relative to the frames. I am going to make my fortune selling propolis.

The Russians are supposed to be hotter bees. Hotter than what? Sleepy Italians. Okay, I can handle that, some folks think I may not even be a bulb in the chandalier. My experience so far indicates they are as easy to work as any hive. Some times bees aren’t happy and some times they are. Use Smoke.

Russian Queens are supposed to start up later in the spring. They think they are still in Siberia. Mine didn’t get the word.

One great advantage to Russians is they winter over with smaller cluster. Big clusters make it okay too. But, if the cluster is somewhat smaller than desired it may make it. This would lead to the perception that the queen starts later. She would start slowly until there were enough bees to nurse and forage. Then she would start laying at the “normal rate”.

Do you notice how much “normal” there is in a bee hive and how much variance there is in “normal”?

I am cheating. It is okay to do this in the bee yard as long as you do not tell your children. I am putting Dadant’s variety of the “Florida patty” on my hives. Dadant changed the recipe, reducing the amount of sugar (Mega Bee Hybrid Patty with Honey Bee Healthy). I use these patties, not as a pollen substitute ,but, as a health improver. Don’t ask for the difference. My bees are bringing in adequate spring pollen. Lots of ground level plants are blooming. The pussy willow is doing well, and the red maple is out depending on how much sun that tree gets. Ones along the hot highways are doing best. Real pollen is the best thing you can give spring bees to develop brood. The person that developed the Florida Patty did it to reinvigorate his hives when they returned from commercial pollination trips. He said fat bees were healthy bees. The Univ of Florida used some of his hives to do a Nosema Ceranae test and his bees would not contract the disease. Sounds good to me. The extra food can’t hurt, but I do not look at it as a pollen substitute.

Keep monitoring your hives for food stores. As the brood expands the amount of food required goes up rapidly. Your hives could run out of food quickly. This is a management decision. You must do things consciensously, not from habit. If your bees are running out of food and the daily intake of nectar is low, you may have to feed syrup. Usually, there is enough spring pollen, but a cool spell can keep the blossoms from producing much nectar. What is Cool? Your guess is as good as mine. So the Tilt Test will not work for this. You will have to open the hives and look at frames. Is there liquid honey visible? This indicates incoming nectar. Capped honey is good for food, but you are looking for nectar flow. This new uncured honey will be closer to the center of the expected brood chamber or just outside of brood. Usually the new honey is deposited in the center of the brood chamber where it will be used. This can take up the space where the queen wants to lay eggs. This situation bodes against feeding syrup. Be judicious. Feed syrup, if it takes 3 days to empty the feeder, then wait 3 days before you feed again. This allows the bees to use that new nectar/honey as food and queen can then use the space to lay eggs. When you feed again the new honey will be placed around the newest brood (right where the queen will lay next). Repeat the feed and wait cycle until there is a large patch of brood and the bees will be consuming the syrup nearly instantaneously. As nectar flow becomes more reliable cut down on feeding. Nectar is infinitely better than syrup.

March is primary population build up time. Most queens started early this year. I think up to a month early for our mountain climate. No global warming in Georgia! Bee attentive and watch for signs of early swarming. This could happen by the end of March to the middle of April. If you have an excellent hive that carried a lot of bees through the winter and a mature queen that is laying on the high side of 2500 eggs per day the hive could get crowded early. Once there is enough food stores the swarm is gone. Use this build up time to level your bee populations between your strong hives and your weak hives. I would use the “switch the hive location” technique. This way you put worker/forager bees into the weak hive instead of nurse bees. This technique is easy, in mid day just switch the locations between the two hives (A to B, B to A). Each set of foragers will come home to the other hive. If all your hives are doing well remove pulled comb frames and add foundation frames. If you don’t need the new pulled comb frames immediately, save them for later in the year when you might want to switch out older dark comb for new comb. You might want to use the old frames with comb to create nucs or expand your number of hives. Placing the pulled comb into a “package” hive is an excellent way to jump start a package. Creating repair parts nucs is an excellent way to pull bees off a hive that is ready to swarm. Take out a frame with the queen cells on it and one with some brood, food, and nurse bees; place the 2-3 frames in a nuc box and let them create a happy new colony. Later, you will have a new replacement queen if you need her or maybe some extra bees or brood for a weak hive. If you never need the nuc let it turn into a 10 frame hive. Build it up to winter over. Next spring you will have your first replacement hive for the hive that winter killed. Go into the winter with more hives than you want. Come out with just what you want. If you do better than expected, your friend will buy it to replace his winter killed colony.