Bee Chronicles

1 May 2018

What a month (April2018)

After killing 1/3 of the package shipment needed by all the local beekeepers. It was a bumpy month for bees and beekeepers.

Nature thought about cooperating. First the packages were delayed 2 weeks for pickup. This was because it was so cold in south Georgia the queens could not get mated. Most of the big bee producers were experiencing the same problem. While we were parked for 6 hours waiting to load 2 neighboring producers came by to see if Gardner’s Apiary could spare some packages so they could meet their orders. Gardner could not. The workers were bringing queens in from the finishing yards but did not have enough queens total to fill our order of 500. No one else was making a big pick up that day. The workers had to go back out to other yards until they had 500 queens.

This may not sound like a complicated problem but Gardner’s Apiary had 25,000 bee production hives and 40,000 queen finishing hives. Usually there are not 100 hives at any given location because the bees would not be able to find enough food to forage. This is called spread out all over south Georgia.

Mike Gardner said that the Thursday, Friday, Saturday (pick up day) was the first 3 days in a row this year that he did not drop below 45 degrees. There also was a Semi-tanker truck there off loading 40,000 gal of high fructose corn syrup for bee food. Each truck load cost $12,000. This is the first year Mike has not seen blooms in February and early March. He was feeding 2 truck loads of syrup a week. No pollen, no brood, even with syrup.

Now I have sympathy for Mike and his 53 full time workers.

So how are we doing here in the mountain? Today, 21 April is rainy and they expect up to 3” over the next couple of days. Even without the rain, it has been scrimpy food for the bees. They don’t visit dogwood too much. There are Carolina Silverbells blooming and Sarvice (Service) berry. The Eastern Redbud (although it shows color) is too mature to produce pollen and nectar. I have been hit with 4 separate frosts which each killed some other kind of current bloom. The last one 2 days ago nipped some of the azaleas that were in the open. This last frost with the dogwoods blooming is called a “Dogwood Winter”. 3 weeks ago the Spice bush got nipped (and the bees liked that one). We had a good Bradford pear season but that ended a month ago. Bees are currently working blueberries but they don’t get pollen there only nectar through the bumble bee hole as the base of the flower. Some folks report blueberry frost but not me. Early Apples have gotten a pretty heavy frosting but maybe not enough to hurt the over all crop. Usually you have to thin the young apples so they will grow larger. The Crab apples (which are wild natives) probably have been frosted. Bees like crabapple.

So, what are the bees bringing into the hive? Depending on your sun, the henbit is still blooming (long and good this year). The Pagoda Plant (looks like henbit) is doing well (bees like that). The Spring asters are starting (great nectar and pollen). The life saver Dandelion has been doing its duty. False dandelion is getting ready to start.

What is all that pollen on my car? And, why is my hay fever kicking up? One the grass is blooming (no food value to bees). Two the Oak trees are blooming (catkins, no food value to bees). Three the Pine trees are starting to bloom (no food value to bees). While I am at it let me insert corn pollen (when it does come) has no food value for bee either.

Next, start watching Wild Cherry (I think I might be seeing some in the sun) and Black Locust. Then look for Black Wild Raspberry. Ten days later the Blackberries should start and 10 days after that the Tulip Poplar tree (the volume spring honey). This could be 3-4 weeks from now. Maybe a little sooner if you are in the open sun. If it freezes during blackberry bloom it called a “Blackberry Winter”. Anything after that is called “a late frost”. We expect nightly frosts until 15 May. Some locals just say ‘til Mother’s Day.

Flower garden plants don’t contribute much to your bees because, on average, you just don’t have enough to be more than a snack for you bees. Bee like weeds and lots of them.

My mitigation program to get and keep my bees going in the “too early” spring is to feed 1:1 sugar syrup and pollen patties. This just keeps the queen producing at her optimum egg laying rate with enough food for the brood. Cool or rainy spells can slow the queen down if no food is coming into the hive for several days. If I am wanting comb pulled they need lots of nectar (or syrup). There may not be enough bees in the colony to forage far and wide. By having food at the hive the round trip is shortened for the forager bee allowing more work to be done inside the hive.

Swarms are starting. First reports last week (18 April). If you have one you are 21 days late. Check all your hives weekly. The queen stops laying eggs 10 days before she swarms. She has to slim down and become aerodynamic. That is when the workers start drawing queen cells. Swarm stimuli is hives full of brood, food, and bees. The foragers stop foraging because there is nowhere to store the nectar. This makes them nervous and they just fly around the hive. The queen stops laying eggs because there is no place for that. The worker bees get nervous and draw queen cells because the queen has gone puny. The noise level goes up in and around the hive because all these women are upset. Can you imagine?

Early on you need to keep adding work space to accommodate the increasing number of bees in the colony. You can add hive bodies to make double hive body colonies, or honey supers that need comb drawn out in them. You can spit colonies making new “nucs”. You can make 2 frame nucs in 10 frame boxes or use nuc boxes if you have them. If you make small nucs the bees will be more temperature sensitive. Make sure you are moving enough bees to keep the queen warm.

You pretty much have to buy mated queens if your spits are early in the season and you don’t see many drones. You have to have lots of drones for mating. You also need warm weather for several days in a row. The drones have to warm up and leave their home colony flying to the “drone congregation alley” (that is akin to the local bar). The virgin queen needs to warm up and fly out to find the drones. Here in the mountains warming up can be fairly late in the day. Then the queen won’t mate with her allocated 20 drones so she has to come back tomarrow.

Why does this have to be so complicated?

Don’t forget your mite treatments as the bee populations expand! This can make the difference whether that colony survives next winter. OH MY! OH MY!