Bee Chronicles April 2015

March 2015 has been quite the month.

7 March flowers started blooming about 3 weeks later than 2014. Then they bloomed faster (more varieties) than 2014, compressing the bloom time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it causes us to react faster to the situation. The queens really started laying eggs. Some that I was keeping an eye on went from slowly starting to full bore in one week.

I installed some 2 lbs. packages. It is always a gamble to start early (7 Mar.). You never know what the weather will be like. I have been blessed the last couple of years and the bees got well settled before the next cold snap which is going on right now (27 March). We are expecting 3 freezing nights with 50 degree days. Then back up to 70’s. The big concern is that the cold weather too soon after installing the package might prevent the bees from clustering on the queen to protect her from the cold. You can also have problems if you have to install the package onto foundation and the bees have to work extra hard to draw comb but don’t have the temperature or the nectar to get for the wax. You can feed syrup but you can’t raise temperature up to working temperature. That is above 50 degrees inside the hive.

Today (27 Mar.) those packages have 2 frames of brood and 3 frames of raw honey (not capped). The raw honey is okay during brooding season because it is used to make the bee bread for larval food.

If you are feeding your bees you need to remember to not flood the brood area with syrup. This will cause the queen to not lay eggs because there are no open cells for her. It will result in the small colony swarming because the queen thinks the hive is full of food and everywhere she goes there are plenty of bees. Every time the bees empty the feeder wait a day before refilling it.

Look at the frames in the center of the area that should be the brood chamber. The cells in the center should be empty and dry. The bees will start storing pollen in the next area out so it is readily available to the new larvae. Then the honey will be stored out side of that. This pattern creates a signal to the queen of where she should be working. But, she will ignore the pattern. It is still interesting to see the pattern. As the brood area expands and the pollen is consumed, the bees will move the pattern outward staying ahead of most of the eggs that the queen lays.

During the population expansion phase it is interesting to note that the healthy queen is laying nearly all worker brood. If there is too much drone brood it is a sign the queen has gone sterile. She needs to be replaced with a store bought queen because a locally grown queen doesn’t have enough drones to mate with. A spotty brood pattern is an indication of an old queen. She just can’t figure out a nice dense pattern. Again, replacement is your only option.

Some queens are slow starters. Most of them will catch up by nectar flow at the end of April to mid May. If the hive remains slow about building up, replace the queen before mid May. That way you might have enough bees to collect honey.

Keep an eye out for swarm cells in the hive. These are usually the ones in the center of a frame. The ones around the out side of the frame are supersession cells. Swarm cells need to be cut out or moved to a nuc. This is a sign that the hive is full of food, full of brood, and not much work left to do. To stop the swarming (hopefully), increase the work load in the hive. Pull out some frames of comb and replace them with foundation (increase the work). Pull some frames out (the same ones) and start a nuc. This increases the space in the hive. Reduce the number of bees in the hive. Put the bees in a weaker hive.

You can move frames with bees on them or just switch the locations of the two hives during the heat of the day when the bees are out foraging. The strong hive bees will go into the weak hive and the few weak hive foragers will go into the strong hive. You can also just add another hive body or a honey super above a queen excluder and allow the bees to build new comb there. You can then use this new box to add bees to another hive or make a split. You can just lift off the new box with all the bees in it and move it to a weak hive. Place a sheet of news paper between the new box and the old box you are adding it to. Make a few small slits in the paper and in 3-4 days the two groups of bees will be one big happy family.