Bee Chronicles May 2015

There seldom comes good from procrastination. But this time there is!

I can divine a better weather forecast. As I look out the window I see clear, cool, and tulip poplar prepetals falling through the bright crisp breeze. The next week is supposed to be 35 degree lows and 55 degree highs. I think that is a little cool.

We are having a compressed blooming season. It started 30 days later than normal. I mean 30 days later than the last couple of years. I mean it started at the time it used to be called normal. Isn’t nature wonderful?

But the cool (some freezing) nights shortened the bloom times for the early bloomers through Dogwood. Hence, the name Dogwood winter. Weeds down on the ground have been coming along right on schedule. The cooler period could prolong the floral development which would bee a good thing.

Now the wild black raspberry is starting to show white in the blossoms (April 26). I see the blackberry buds are nice sized but in my yard no color. The tulip poplar trees have buds on them. Different sizes though. The squirrels are eating these buds as they normally do. They take a bite or two and drop the buds on the ground so I can keep track of the flower development. Holding the buds together are the prepetals. It could be the cool evenings or the rapid development of the blosssoms shedding the prepetals, either way it is happening.

I think what it means is the normal schedule of blooming will be compressed and we had better get ready for the main nectar flow to start in about 3 weeks here in the mountains. Usually it is black raspberry open, 10 days ‘til blackberry and then 14 days ‘til tulip poplar. I think we will loose the time it takes for the black raspberry to open and set fruit. That means nectar may flow in 14 days. As raspberry and blackberry overlap.

What this means to honey collection is that we may not get a full amount collected. We will have fewer bees to work the flowers and the flowers may not stay in the nectar phase as long.

Start getting your honey supers ready. If you have supers that will have foundation in them instead of drawn comb, you might want to put them on the hive now and feed the bees sugar syrup. This allows the bees to use the syrup to make the wax comb instead of using the nectar for wax and not honey.

There has been some discussion about double hive body hives vs. singles. Especially the first year for a hive growing into a double will require all the work energy of the hive. Mostly making wax comb, but then they have to fill that comb with brood and food. They will not put up excess honey in the honey super until the double hive body is finished. You probably will not get honey from a double hive body that needs to draw out foundation.

My recommendation is force the package or nuc to grow into a hive body as fast as they will. Then, put on a honey super if it needs to be drawn into comb. This will require syrup feeding. You can accelerate the colony expansion by using as many blown comb frames as you can, reducing the work load. When the hive body is about full of honey, some (or all) of the frames have been drawn out, and the first nectar flow is about to start, stop feeding syrup. If the honey super has a little syrup honey in it, remove that super and place it 100’ from the hive so the bees can rob it out. This will not take 48 hours. The bees will bring that robbed honey from the super into the hive body and place it near the brood. Now the honey super is clean and ready for the nectar flow honey. Replace it on the hive.

You need to be monitoring queens now. Winter overed queens may be pooping out. We can’t count on queens going 2-3 years anymore, so just monitor them and be ready to replace as needed. The spring build up can be very demanding on an “old” queen. If she is laying too many drone eggs or the workers kill her, you need to be aware as soon as possible. You may not want to wait the 20 odd days for a supersession queen to start laying eggs. So you buy a mated queen as a replacement. If the queen is questionable you might want to replace her just as a management decision. I do not like to kill a queen. If she is still laying good eggs, but maybe slowly or a poor pattern, I will start her in a two frame nuc. Her few off spring will still be good worker bees just not enough volume for a booming hive. She can continue laying and slowly grow a 5 frame nuc over the summer. These bees can be added to a week hive or grown into a full hive body before winter. If you don’t want to winter over “the old girl”, kill the queen and combine this hive body with a weak/medium hive making a strong hive going into winter. I call these replacement bees.

Has anyone wondered if it should be “honeybee” or “honey bee”?

I loose sleep sometimes, but not over this.

The correct way is “honey bee”!

In taxonomic language (that is family, genus, species, etc.) if the first word differentiates the bug by what it does, but it is still a bug, then it is two words. Like house fly, blow fly, blue tail fly. They are all flies. It is just a description word. Hence, honey bee, blueberry bee, bumble bee, African killer bee. Sleep tight and don’t let the “bed bugs” bite.