Bee Chronicles March 2013

What a weird spring! It snowed 7 February. I had bear tracks down by the mail box. As all you hunters know, bears are not out this early in the year. That is unless they are hungry. Two warnings, hungry bears right out of hibernation are mean. Bears right out of hibernation are hungry. If your hives have brood in them they become an excellent target for hungry bears. Check and maintain your electric fences all year around. Southern bears are not known to go into full hibernation like in Michigan. They will stir occasionally to warm up or find food. They are groggy, slow (for a bear)(but faster than you), and don’t see well (that is normal for a bear). They do smell very well. I mean their nose works. Actually, they stink to high heaven. Just be aware they are there and give them a wide birth.

I have not look at my bees in 3 weeks. I am not available on the sporadic nice day, but I hope to get into them soon. It is real cold and windy right now. My Bordman feeders are empty, but my field feeders are full. When ever the temperature gets up around 50 degrees I am seeing bees on the flowers. I want to put pollen patties on and refill my feeders to stimulate early brood development.

The flowers are about one month early this year. The temperatures have been spiking above 50 and then below freezing in multiple day cycles.

My queens started laying eggs the end of December 2012. Normally, here in the mountains they don’t wake up until mid February. By early February most of my brood areas were 4-5 frames with one at 7. This seemed to work on the warm days (plenty of food and nurse bees). But when the multi day cold hit the cluster could not cover the expanded brood and there was significant die off from chilling. This is important to recognize. You might think you have chalk brood from all the white larvae dumped out in front of the hive entrance. I don’t think this hurts the colony. It does set the expansion rate back a little. Generally, the bees will clean out the cells and the queen will relay eggs. This cycle will continue until we get a steady warm pattern.

If your bees are expanding now, you will have to brush up on swarm management techniques. What causes swarming is when the hive is full of food, full of brood, and full of bees. You will be okay until you are full of food (honey). Be careful on your syrup feeding. The bees can put it up fast and the queen will think there is enough food. If the queen is confused or a couple of years old, she could swarm with a small bee population. One situation that causes this is when the nectar (syrup) is coming in so fast that the bees store it in the empty area in the center of the brood. There are no open cells at the outer edge of the brood and none in the center, the queen thinks her work is done. Slow down on the syrup. If it takes the bees three days to empty the feeder, wait three days before you refill it. Let them eat the honey that has been stored. Don’t put large pollen patties in the hive. The hive beetles will lay eggs in any that is not eaten in one week. Then wait awhile before putting the next one in. This will slow brood development. If your hive is full of drawn comb, take some out and put foundation in its place. It is 8 times more work to draw comb than make honey. Keep the bees busy. When you have lots of bees, make a split. If you can’t get a queen right away place a frame with eggs in it in the queenless split. It will keep the bees happy. Drawing a queen and her getting mated will take 3 weeks. Maybe you can get a queen by then. If not, don’t worry too much. The poorly or unmated queen will start laying eggs and the workers should be happy for a little longer. If the queen is only laying drone eggs the worker bees might kill her, but you get a few more days to get that new queen. You can always add these bees to a weak hive to help it along.

One thing I can guarantee is that this spring will be different than normal, blooming will be earlier (but not as early as last year), and there will be a killer frost in April. Watch the red maple blooming as your sign of official spring.

Early mite control and disease treatments will be necessary.

Get all your wood work ready. Repaint, glue up, what ever. Wait for warm days to put wax foundation in you frames. If it is too cold it will break when you work with it. You can always do it in the kitchen.

Fighting small hive beetles is important. Some are too many. You don’t have enough guard bees to keep them corralled. This allows them to lay eggs in the honey or pollen patties. You don’t need that in the spring. The adult beetles that are roaming around will eat bee eggs and larvae. You don’t need that when you are trying to expand your hives. Put in beetle traps and maintain them. Every type of trap works sometimes for some people. If yours isn’t working switch traps and talk to you fellow beekeepers to see what they are using. Whack a beetle always works so squish as many as you can!