Bee Chronicles June 2014

What is happening in nature this month?

The wild cherries have quit blooming. The black raspberries are in full bloom. The tulip poplar tree has started blooming. Poplars are in bud, and full bloom at the same time. This means a long tulip poplar nectar flow. Tulip poplar is our (here in the mountains) main spring honey volume nectar. SO, that means a good year, right. If only it were that easy. Last Thursday, (15 May) during “blackberry winter”, it hailed 4 times. Many tulip poplar blossoms on the ground. How many were damaged still in the trees? How will they produce? Along with that storm, it rained (deluges) form Wednesday to Friday. That washed nectar out of most of the other blooms. So early (blackberry) honey collection was set back at least 3-5 days. Blackberries only bloom for about 14 days. OUCH!

What is next? Japanese Privit. This only okay honey if it is adequately mixed with other flowers. If you are around a privit patch, the floral smell is so strong you will almost choke on it. It is not pleasant. There is also lots of clover blooming. White, sweet (yellow), and red clovers. These are all good honey but the bee will avoid them for a better flower. Clover is always a good back up flower.

In the bee yard you are most worried about swarming and supersession right now. Your established hives are full of bees and starting to fill with honey. Check the hives every 11-14 days looking for queen cells. They hatch on day 16 so don’t go 3 weeks without looking. You have 2 choices, kill the queen cells or start nucs with the whole frame where the cell is. Add one more frame of food and all the nurse bees that were on the two frames and you are set. It will grow very slowly but will provide you with a new queen and later additional bees and frames if needed for another hive. I think of these nucs and repair parts for other hives.

If the hive is drawing queens because the resident queen I weak and not performing correctly, I start the nuc and then come back and replace the old queen later. This keeps the old queen laying eggs (if she is) while the virgin queen hatches and goes on her mating flight. It can take 20 some odd days for the virgin queen cycle to get to her laying good eggs. That is one whole batch of worker bees you would loose if she hatched in the hive and killed the old queen. I hope to get the best of both situations this way. A new queen and all the eggs I can get out of the “old lady”.

By now I am through manipulating my hives. I have to collect honey with what I have. No more forcing the hives that are ready to draw more wax. No more population leveling. Hopefully no more queen looking and disturbing the queen. The “Dummy beekeeper book” says the hive won’t swarm during a nectar flow.

You will find out if you made the right decision on going to a double hive body this year or not. If the second hive bodies does not have 10 frames of drawn comb and nearly full of honey, you might as well pull it off and put a honey super on. The bees will not work the honey super until the brood chamber is full of honey. If you aren’t going to sling the honey out of the second hive body, set it aside, let the bees rob out what honey is in it, and then store it until the nectar flow ends. You can put it back on the hive and they can work on it making a good set up for winter. You have all of August and September to get it finished and filled with honey.

Stop all field feeding. You don’t want syrup mixed with your honey. No one could probable tell the difference, but it is unethical. If you have to feed a weak or new hive go to an in hive feeder. Even an entrance feeder will have interlopers robbing syrup and taking it home.

Hail will be the next really big threat to nectar collection. Thunderstorms will cause short term interruptions in nectar collection, but the flowers recover in a couple of days after the nectar is washed out by the rain. Heavy winds can shake the nectar out of the blossoms, but again the flowers recover fairly quickly.

Do you have enough honey supers for an extra large honey flow. I am optimistic this year. The last time I saw a year this good some folks got 5-7 supers per hive of spring honey. If you don’t have enough super, only plan on adding a few new ones. You will loose too much honey to drawing the comb in the new honey supers. Make provisions to sling out the honey as your current supers get full. Get a few new super boxes with frames and foundation ready to go. When you pull the full super, place the empty new super on the hive so the bees have something to do. They will start pulling comb. After sling out your honey supers, replace the old super back on the hive and remove 1-2 frames of drawn comb. Place 1-2 frames of frames with foundation in the old super. Mix drawn comb frames with foundation frames in the new honey super boxes. The bees will draw the new foundation as they collect the second round of honey. When you put the new mixed frame honey supers on the hive the bees will work them quickly and you will still collect honey. What makes this system better than just adding supers of foundation is that you are still collecting some honey while comb is being pulled. If the bees have to pull an entire super of comb the nectar flow might stop and you will have collected none of it. Better a little than none. If everything works almost correctly, you will have more supers ready to go when the sourwood nectar flow starts.

Don’t worry about varroa mites or hive beetles during nectar flow. The growing bee population should be able to withstand any ill affects from these two pests. At the end of nectar flow you will have plenty of opportunity to fix these problems. If you find a situation where the mites or hive beetles have invaded a weak colony and are damaging it too much, take the hive out of honey production and fix the problems. It is better loose the honey than loose the hive. Get the hive healthy so it can winter over and be ready for next year.

If you are starting late hives (from packages or nucs), be patient and grow bees for next year. Some times a good hive will take off like a roman candle if you are just growing bees and do a good job of it, they will put up honey the first year. Some times the new colony just can’t get their act together enough for extra honey the first year.

Happy Honey Season