Bee Chronicles

April 3 2018

A start to another weird Spring.

Last week’s frost (14 Mar) knocked back the blooms. Most of the early bloomers have ended. Pear trees, henbit, Maple. The bees could only work them about half the regular time. Long cool morning kept the bees home. There were some down right breezy days that dropped the temperature be low allowable bee flight.

The good news, is the next batch of stuff is starting to bloom. Most important is probably the Pagoda Plant. It looks a lot like Henbit, 4” tall light lavender. But it has more blooms per plant. Sweet bush is start tin to put on color. Eastern Redbud is open (bright pink). Most years Redbud and Sweet bush overlap. Last year there was a distinct gap between the two. There will be some over lap this year.

Some plant leaf budding has been interrupted. The buds got frost nipped. I have some places where plantain on the ground was frozen out, no big deal to the bees, but an indication of too much cold. The leaves will recover but what damage to that plants flower buds??

With the multiple days of frost at night and low daytime temperature some of my hive lost larval brood. The brood pattern was larger than the cluster during the cold nights. This is not a serious problem for the bee colony but it does set the colony expansion back a little. Some of the larvae are eaten or recycled as protein and some are thrown out the front door. The outside carcasses can make you think you have chalk brood, but not so.

You can treat for varroa mites now if your technique does not require warm weather to evaporate the stuff like formic acid and thymol. You will need 70 degree days for that.