Bee Chronicles June 2015
I have to change my approach to documenting what I see. I need to put specific dates so we can get a more precise comparison year to year.
2015 has been a very confused nectar year. The spring didn’t warm up until around the 1st of May. I would call that normal for the Mountains of NE Georgia. In the olden days several years ago first hay cutting could be as early as the 2nd week of May. That is what we got this year. For the past 10 years April has been warmer with the end of March having serious freezing.
The affects on the bees was predictable. The honey bee populations grew slower. Many beekeepers in this area installed packages around the 25th of Mar. The weather was warm enough the bees took in syrup very readily. The populations expanded at a predictable rate resulting in good populations by the end of April. But, (the proverbial “but”) most of them were not “ready” for the main nectar flow.
My signal for the bees to be “ready” is: in the evening they are sitting on the front porch not wanting to go inside unless bad weather comes along. We are talking about southern bees here. With a solid bottom board you might have 1-2 pints of bees bearding off the front porch. You don’t get so much bearding with screen bottom boards because it is more ventilated inside the hive.
When I pop the lid on a “ready” hive I like to see a layer of bees on the top of the inner cover, a layer of bees upside down on the bottom of the inner cover, and at least one layer of bees on the top bars, some times they will be 2 deep on the top bars. Anything down to just a lot of bees covering the top bars is acceptable, more bees are better. I only had two hives with bees on top the inner cover, and they were not completely covering it.
The signal for the start of the main spring nectar flow is when the wild black raspberry blooms. Two weeks later the wild blackberries bloom and about two weeks later the tulip poplar starts to bloom. This year the blackberries were blooming while the black raspberries were in bud. I had tulip poplars blooming on top of the blackberries ahead of the black raspberries. The small population hives could not collect as much nectar as when the flowers are spread out.
On the 16th of May, I find a closed tulip poplar bud on my truck. The squirrels eat them and drop them with one bite out. What is going on, I can’t see to the top of the 90’ trees. All is progressing off cycle until the 18th of May. I see some tulip poplar blossoms starting to fall indication the end of the spring nectar flow. Only 2 weeks of nectar flow is terrible. Then On 20 May a rain storm hits. No hail but just as damaging. I cannot see 100’ off the front porch. When the rain is over all the tulip poplar petals are on the ground. For sure the death nell to the nectar flow. Yes, there are other flowers out there but not enough nectar to call it a flow. Maybe we will continue to collect honey until the sourwood blooms three weeks after tulip poplar ends.
Okay, I go to bed hoping to wake up from this honey producer’s nightmare. With binoculars I can still see “normal” tulip poplar blooms in the upper half of a lot of the trees. Cold settles, did one of the frosts in early April set the blooms off schedule in the lower part of the trees. Wait a minute that would be backwards. The bottoms of the trees bloomed first. Did the warmer ground ward off the frost in the bottom half of the trees? The top of the trees were normally cool and were not budded far enough to be damaged. They are blooming on the normal schedule.
As I check with other beekeepers in the area, I am finding the full spectrum of results. No one had the rain intensity that I had. Some have hives collecting record levels of honey. Some have hives that are collecting nectar at a rate the beekeeper is not happy about. The best I can say is this is starting out as one weird year.
I have had several queen failures. In an abnormal manner the queen disappears leaving no queen cells. Of course by the time I discover it there is not much young brood. The only recourse is to buy a queen and install her. My concern is that the hive was progressing very well with a young queen. If she were superseded, there would be queen cells. If she swarmed there would be queen cells. I can’t figure it out.
My approach on the hives that have turned into weak hives is to grow bees for next year. I will be fighting the varroa mite to keep real healthy bees in the hive and just let the queen lay eggs. These colonies will be behind on honey collection for their own use so I don’t expect to collect honey off them. If they turn strong enough I might grow them into double hive bodies before winter.
I will be doing “fall requeening” on all my hives this year. Here in the mountains we can’t grow our own queens for the spring build up. If we buy queens from south Georgia they will be new baby queens in the spring. The new queen ramps up to about 1000 eggs a day the first year. Hence, her early laying in the spring is between 500-750 a day hitting 1000 in August. The queen that ramps up in the fall will restart in the spring as a 2 year old because her hormone cycle stopped and restarted. She will start in the spring trying to lay 2000 eggs a day. The only thing holding her back will be the size of the overwintered colony and the availability of food stores.
That said, I also have a few hives that are splits from colonies which survived as wintered over colonies. These queens will have a chance to over winter on their own rights. I want to try and find that queen gene stock that will survive locally. As I discover hearty colonies with local strength I will grow queens off of them. These queens will grow their first year in a nuc/hive getting ready for honey collection in their second year. I hope I can grow the strong queens into double hive bodies the first year. It remains to be seen if I will get more than 2 years out of a queen. I will remain optimistic and hope so.
I am recently back from a “Bee Convention”. All of those “experts”. All of us “learners”. The new shocker: You do not have to use fumigilian B. It is in affective and may make nozema ceranae more virulent. Over the last couple of years I have heard don’t use fumigilian B on n. ceranae because it is in affective. It will help reduce the n. ceranae but then the n. ceranae comes back more virulent. And then use it but use it longer to ride out the ups and downs of treatment. Now “they” say it is just a waste of money. What can we do? The “expert” says NOTHING. We are just wasting money on fumigilian B with no affect on nosema apis or nosema ceranae. Rather disappointing guidance without much hope. Your bees are going to die.