Bee Chronicles February 2015

“The 3 Days of January”. Mid January sure was good weather! Did you check your bees?

Is it time to start stimulating the hive to get the queen to start laying eggs? Do you have enough stored food to support the increased hive activity?

How is your varroa mite count? Are your bees healthy enough to start expanding?

That is all there is to spring bee keeping.

It is currently the first of February. This is the time I like to start stimulating my queens to lay eggs. The earlier the population build up starts the earlier you will be ready to collect honey. You don’t know when the main spring nectar flow will begin, end of April, May, or June. Here in the mountains weather is pretty unpredictable.

If I get good hive build up I can make splits and still have large enough populations to collect honey when the nectar flow starts. By starting my build up early I only have three concerns in my way. The first I should already have accomplished. Building any hive boxes that I might need. That is what the winter was for. The second is, I can’t control the weather. If my brood area increases significantly (larger than the cold weather cluster size) and we get cold weather, when the bees cluster they will leave brood outside the cluster and it will die. This is not TOO bad. The bees will eat a lot of the dead larvae as protein food and use some for protein for the brood food, so it is not a total loss. You will have a net gain in bees over waiting until you only have warm weather. The third situation I will have to deal with for the rest of the year. Too Many Bees! Would not that be a nice situation to bee in. My bee colonies will be right on the verge of swarming going into nectar flow. One mistake and they are gone. After nectar flow, there will be so many bees, one mistake and they are gone. The solution is to balance your hives so all the colonies are TOO strong. Then make them draw comb in hive body frames and honey super frames. The extra space and work will keep them home. During this period you may need to feed syrup just to have enough nectar to keep the bees busy. Once all the work is getting accomplished in all your hives, draw off some frames of bees (brood, food, and comb) to start nucs. Let the bees draw their own queens. This will stifle both the old colony’s and the new colony’s desire to swarm. The new nucs are you replacement part hives for new queens later in the year and bees to boost weak hives.

You will have to execute your varroa mite control program. Your over winter hives and any new hives probably will have some mites. Ascertain the level of mite infestation an conscientiously determine what to do. Don’t guess. Knock your mites down in the spring and your hives will be strong all summer long.

Easy, what else could you need to do?

The only thing I can think of is have you ordered your replacement queens, packages, and nucs? You may have trouble finding some that can be delivered before June so look around if you think you will need more bees.