Bee Chronicles March 2014

What a wonderful February, for “Snowboarder”! Three prolonged snow storms with temperature down to zero. Bees live in Minnesota don’t they?

The weather should not have hurt your bees if….. They had lots of winter food stores, they were healthy, and you had large populations. Number one winter preparation was to ensure each hive had between 60-90 lbs of honey. Number two was to knock the mite populations way down early in the fall so new bees could be born without mite injuries. Number three was to keep the queen laying eggs as long as possible so you had a good sized cluster to keep warm through out the winter. The mystery health condition is nosema cerenae, which no one knows what to do with yet. Fat healthy bees are the best counter measure for a lot of diseases.

Here in the mountains of northeast Georgia I have been watching for the spice bush to bloom. The blossoms are too deep and small to be much good for the honeybee, but it is an indication that better weather is to follow. This is a good indicator that you can add pollen patties to you hive food regime, along with 1:1 syrup to stimulate the queen to start laying eggs.

Personally, I stimulate my queens around the first of February to get as much of a head start as I can. This technique can back fire on you because the hive needs more food to raise the brood. If the temperatures are too low the bees will not move honey (they stay clustered) or they can’t process syrup into honey. Hence, the colony starve to death in short order.

If they don’t starve and the weather stays tolerable the brood pattern will expand, possibly larger than the cluster can cover on a cold night. The next day you will find dead larvae thrown out the front door of the hive. This is okay to a limited extent, because you will still have the brood that was kept warm to expand the colony.

You next problem will be that the hive is ready to swarm long before the nectar flow starts. This is what I want so I can split the hive. I will go to 2 hive bodies full of bees. Then split them and add a queen to the one that doesn’t have one. I feed like crazy to get 10 drawn frames of comb and stored honey around the brood chamber. I want this hive body nearly full of honey before the main nectar flow associated with the tulip poplar tree (early May).

Use the warm days of spring to finish up making hives and frames. The warm days are good for painting hives. You can even paint the hives with the bees in them. I close up the entrances so the bees don’t come out and walk in the paint. I don’t worry about them tracking it back into the hive, but they get stuck in the wet paint.

On a colder day prepare your apiary yard. Mow and weed eat. Repair the bear fence. Check out the electric charger and battery. The bears are coming and they will be early and hungry. There was a shortage of acorns last fall. The only thing to eat is your neighbors’ garbage and your bees. After weed eating under my hives and the fence I like to sprinkle heavily with red granulated mineral salt. You get it at the farm feed store in 50 lbs bags. The salt kill the grass. It also damages hive beetle larvae pupating in the ground under the hives. It also provides salt and minerals necessary for the bees to make the enzymes that they use to make honey. Rain and dew will liquefy the salt and the bees lick it up and take it home.

Start guessing how many queens you will need later this spring and get them on order. Most early queens go into packages and nucs, but you might get on the list before June deliveries. June is not a bad month to get queens as long as you don’t need one earlier. You will need an early queen for splits and replacements. Sometimes a live queen will start laying eggs and then go sterile. Today’s queens are not known to go three years. A lot don’t make it through their 2d laying season.

March is “the miraculous month”. You have made it through February, “the mysterious die off month”. You need to celebrate you success and get ready to go to work in April when everything starts blooming and you colonies explode in population.