Bee Chronicles July 2014

How is your Farkleberry tree doing? I am always looking for a new flowering plant when the blooms are not so abundant. Locally known as “turkey berry” this small tree has many flowering white bells very similar to blue berries. You might know the shrub as sweet bell. I have to re look up the scientific name but believe me when I say there is a tree that blooms. The first week of June is when I discovered it. The third week of June the blossoms are gone. Next will be a black marble sized berry that the turkeys love.

Also blooming 2-3^rd week of June are: all the milkweeds, orange butterfly weed, summer asters and daisies, red spirea, bee balm, queen anne’s lace, and lots of garden flowers and weeds. The ground has stayed damp enough to create and hold nectar in the blossoms. If you know or have planted “bee flowers” and you don’t see your bees working those magical flowers, it is good news. Bees always go to the most lucrative source of pollen and nectar. The nectar is measured by calorie count (sugar content) and volume. If they aren’t on you flowers they have found a better source for now. They may come to your flowers as backup plants or the other source stops nectar flow.

Blossoms produce nectar as a pollinator attractant. Once the flower is pollinated it will stop producing nectar. There may still be flowers on the same plant that have not been pollinated.

I have just pulled my spring honey. My good hives did well (2 supers, one not capped). My mediocre hives did nearly one super (not capped). My young hives (late nucs) are working their hive bodies well. Isn’t that the old story for the loosing sports team. We are building for next year. I am hoping that a few of my mediocre hives expand population and finish brood chamber work so they can move up to good hives doing sourwood.

Black raspberry vs. sourwood Always looking for some way to game the system, that is reliable. This year I am watching the black raspberries ripen in relation to the blossom development on the sourwood. I am picking black raspberries now and for the past 10 days. Since both are weather dependent, is there a correlation that is useful to telling me exactly when the sourwood will start opening the blossoms. This information helps me in two ways. One is when to finish pulling my spring honey supers off so the two honeys don’t get mixed. The second piece of information is how long until the sourwood blossoms actually open. This year that is not critical because we have had adequate rain. Some times there can be a significant dirth before sourwood and the bees might need a short period of feeding.

You should have some of your spring honey already capped and ready to remove from the hive. It is okay to leave capped honey on the hive as long as there still is a nectar flow. But, if the nectar flow stops for a short period and there is still brood hatching out, the bees will open the capped honey to feed the brood. If you really want honey, you remove the capped honey and feed syrup for brood food while you wait for the next nectar flow.

On my hives building for next year, you must realize, if the queen is doing a really good job laying brood, it takes a phenomenal amount of honey to feed that brood. Also, if any wax must be drawn even more honey. I get impatient and blame the bees, then I realize they are really doing just right. Some times we just have to grow bees for next year and do the best job of that.

And now, SOURWOOD! Every nook and cranny here in the mountains is showing different stages of blooming. I notice the most advanced blooms on the south east side of the tree. Just a few more hours of sunlight can make a difference. I see trees with just the start of blossom stems. I see the rows of blossoms nearly to the end of the stems. I haven’t seen open blossoms yet, but, there are reports of open blooms. I see all these variations 100’ apart in the woods. If you think I know what is happening I know where a really nice bridge is for sale. My best guess is the most advanced sourwood blooming is 10-14 days away. It is currently 22 June. I also predict that the great variation in bloom stages will create a long, slow bloom period which will be wonderful for collecting more honey. Even if we have the hot temperatures (90-95 degrees) the high humidity will help keep the nectar up.

What can go wrong? Wind! Rain! And oh my, Hail! So what does the near term weather report say (the TV)? Heavy rain for the next 10 days. The hotter the day, the more violent the storms. Not good news. The only advice I can give is have your hives ready and hope the heavy storm hits the other side of the mountain.

There has been much discussion on “queen management”. As in, queens have died early. I don’t have any good explanation for that except you have to bee really careful when you catch a queen and stuff here into the shipping cage. I am not making excuses, just a fact. The only good note I can provide is that when the queen dies no state funeral is expected.

What can you do and how fast must you do it? You first inclination might be to replace the queen with a mated new queen. You can buy one or use one from another bee keeper which is locally grown. This will save you about 30 days in bee brood production. You will only loose 1-2 weeks while you discover that the queen is dead and get a new queen introduced.

You can combine the “dead queen” colony with another colony to make a stronger colony and then split them back apart after honey collection is over. You might leave the combined hive until you are ready to do your fall requeening and then do the split. You should have two nice strong hives after the split.

What is the advantage to fall requeening? I’ll go into more detail next month, but the short story is: A spring queen must ramp up egg laying from 0 to 1,000 per day. She may not hit the 1,000-1500 point until July. Some are quicker than others. Queens are harder to get in the spring because of the large demands versus the number of bee keepers producing quality queens. If you introduce a queen in the fall (August) she has until October to lay eggs. She might ramp up to around 1,000 per day. Then she stops for the winter. When she fires up next spring she will think she is a 2 yr. old queen and start laying 2,000 eggs a day and ramp up to 2,500. This is caused by her hormones shutting down and then restarting.

I had the ultimate good beekeeper experience 3 weeks ago. I went to pull off a honey super and it was full of brood. The hive was set up correctly and had good bee population all spring. I had one deep brood chamber so I put on a queen excluder. With the spring nectar flow I place two honey supers on. Okay, I popped the top and the top honey super had the brood. So I am guessing the lower honey super would have brood also. Yep, I was right. But this is okay. I have had skinny queens go thru the excluder before. Two honey supers is equal to one deep hive body. So I figure it will okay with the honey down and the brood up. But, oh no! The bottom was full of brood also. I am talking corner to corner in all chambers. I had two queens working one above the excluder and one below. So, I made a nuc with the top queen. I’ll let the bees hatch out and the workers will back fill the upper honey supers with sourwood honey. I probably have 60,000 bees in this hive so they will do real good for sourwood. Sure beats loosing a swarm.