Bee Chronicles April 2014

My thought are started about 10 March. My fingers are working 23 March 2014. The delay is caused because my brain is in between.

Trying to figure out the schedule of the hive is the never ending challenge to beekeeper. I like to guide on the blooms. Nectar and pollen are the two most necessary items being brought into the hive. Water is up there too, but the location of the water source doesn’t change much.

My recent blooming observations are as follows:

Pussy willow From Jan. to mid March

Then there was yellow pollen and tan pollen

Red Maple Red tipped and blooms on trees 1 Feb in sun Still blooming above 2500’ (don’t confuse wasted flowers as a source)

Hembit weed 3” purple flower in fields and road ways 10 Feb

Ground Ivy small blue blossom on the ground 10 Feb

Bluets 4” delicate light blue in hot dirt areas 15 Feb

Johnquills (daffedoils) 15 Feb

Pink Appricots (don’t confuse with Japanese Cherrys) 15 Feb

6” white small flower cluster?? In grass 15 Feb

Bradford pears just starting 20 Mar

Ornamental hollies starting in sun and lower elevations 22 Mar

White spirea 22 Mar.

It is important to notice the native plants versus the ornamental plants. There will be more native plants and they attuned to our climate as the weather fluctuates. Ornamentals are not as reliable as a bee food source. They are a good supplement.

March is a great time to monitor your hives. Stuff starts happening. Any time from mid February on the queens start laying eggs. The queen will be stimulated by the new pollen and nectar that starts coming into the hive. You can trick you queen by giving her 1:1 sugar syrup. It is harder to trick her with artificial pollen. BUT, when the real pollen starts the combination of syrup and pollen patties will stimulate her to lay more eggs. She will only lay as many eggs as the food source supports and the number of nurse bees available to tend to the larvae.

Some hives will build slowly because of the number of bees in the hive. Be patient.

An early start by the queen can be detrimental. It will not be terrible but, as the weather warms the queen will lay in a larger pattern. Then when a cold spell hits the cluster will be smaller than the brood pattern. Any larvae may die do to chilling. You will see the dead larvae thrown out front on the next warm day. The population will slowly expand even with the die off. This is good. The bad news is the hive expended all that energy and lost the brood. Some of the dead larvae will be consumed and used for food for other larvae. It is nearly pure protein.

Don’t get in a hurry to equalize your hives. You could weaken a strong hive and slow down that population expansion. I let my hives expand until 8 frames have brood before using that hive to level a weaker hive. 22 March and I just did my first 4 equalizing.

I switched the location of the four strongest hives with the four weakest. The foragers will come back to the weak hive giving that queen more bees to act as nurse bees. Some foragers will regress in duties because the food is not needed but nurse bees are.

Here in the mountains April becomes the most exciting bee raising period. Stuff is happening fast. You can become over come by the fast changes inside the hive.

As your hives develop into strong hives you have two options, to make splits or draw comb. It takes lots of bees to draw comb. If you don’t want to make splits which you can sell as nucs or increase your own apiary, put the bees to work drawing comb. You can use the comb to replace your darker 3-4 year old comb. You can start drawing comb with sugar syrup so as to not waste honey making wax. If you don’t need brood comb put honey supers with foundation on. Let the bees pull the comb before the nectar flow starts in late April with the tulip poplar.

If you are drawing brood chamber comb you might want to do “frame management”. There are tricks to getting the bees to work one frame vs. another. The slowest frames to be pulled out are the ones against the outside of the box. If the bees don’t see the need for the frames for honey storage they may not work them. If they can go up into another hive body or honey super they may ignore the outside ones all together.

They want to work the ones right next to the brood the hardest so the queen can lay there. You might put one next to brood on one side but not the other so the queen can keep laying eggs without crossing over an empty frame. When the nights are cool you don’t want gaps in the brood area when the bees cluster. Place the foundation frame on the other side of the brood, one frame away. If you have a 2 hive body set up and the queen is in the bottom box, place a foundation frame in the center of the upper box and alternate with drawn comb out to the outside. If you have a foundation frame next to the outside wait until the center frame is pulled completely and then rotate the center to the outside and the outside foundation to the center.

Don’t go to a double hive body situation 30 days before nectar flow if you expect to collect honey off that hive. The bees will use all the honey they can make to draw comb and fill it with honey before they put up one cell of excess honey. Couple that work load with the high requirement of nectar and pollen to support the expanding brood and you will not collect excess honey in the honey super. Wait until after the nectar flow to expand. Then with the flower nectar feed syrup and the bees will pull comb like crazy and have enough extra (syrup) to fill it with honey as winter food.

If the bees don’t get all the wax pulled before nectar flow, and you have enough frames with comb to collect honey stop making wax. Take the partially completed frames off the hive so the bees don’t waste honey making wax. After the main nectar flow ends replace the partial frames onto the hive and let the bees complete them with nectar. You now have a head start on next year.

The end of March and the first half of April should be used to get all you wood work completed and enough extra frames made up to support you in an abundant honey flow year. It is a real “bear” when you have to extract honey in the middle of a flow just to have enough supers to get through the flow.