Bee Chronicles

July 10, 2018

Yoyological beekeeping. Has anyone noticed the ups and downs of every aspect of beekeeping this year? If it is not up it is down. Or is it a “sleeper” when you might as well “walk the dog” just to create some action. We would rather be in the hectic “around the world” movement.

It is 10 June. I went by the Union County Farmers’ Market to check the sourwood tree. Yes, there is one there, next to the right end of the building near the propane tank. I count this tree as the number one earliest sourwood in the county. It is protected from bad weather, gets full sun, and heat off the paved parking lot. The buds are full and white. I am guessing one week to blooming.

I am looking around my house along Rich Gap Road and see virtually no signs of sourwood. 50 yards from my apiary I have several sourwood trees in full sun. What is going on???

I collected very little spring flow honey. It started raining on the first day the tulip poplar started blooming and stopped raining the day tulip poplar stopped blooming 22 days later. I check the status of my tulip poplars by looking at the condition of the flowers that the squirrels drop ½ eaten. They were eating and dropping lots of flowers. You can tell the difference between squirrel dropped and weather beaten by the condition of the flower. There was virtually no weather beaten. Teeth marks mean squirrels.

Last fall (2017) there was a record acorn drop by the oak trees. This spring each female squirrel had 6 kittens. A family group of baby squirrels is a scurry, just in case you do crosswords.

Back to botany! The drizzly rain dilutes the nectar in the tulip shaped flower. Lots of rain washes the nectar out of the flower. When the sun shines the bees come out but there is virtually no nectar to collect. The nectar builds back up in the flower after 2-3 days, but we never had 2-3 days for that to happen.

My best hives collected about 1 ½ supers of honey. With 22 days of bloom they would have collected 4-5 supers in the cool sun.

Now we wait to see what sourwood will do. I have seen sourwood season last from 3-7 weeks. It is starting about a month earlier than “normal”. I don’t know how old you have to be to remember normal? I am not that old! If it stays cool with just a little rain every week the sourwood season will last longer. Hot dry sun will dry the nectar out of the blooms around 2 PM. The nectar will build up overnight but the collection day will be shortened.

“Normally” after tulip poplar comes the Japanese Privet. A shrub up to 10’ tall and spreads into thickets. You know it is blooming from the pungent spell. Honeysuckle is sweet to smell. When you breathe deeply and the smell takes your breath away it is privet. It has lots of small flowers in large clusters about the size of 2 golf balls (similar to wild cherry). The bees love it. They will finish off the spring honey supers and fill out the hive body before sourwood starts. NOT THIS YEAR! The last day of rain had several torrential down pours. The privet had had just started to bloom. The honeybees and butterflies were on it. The rain ripped all the petals off all the flowers. This is not an exaggeration. The ground was covered in white and no color left on the bushes. Hence, no privet nectar.

The bees started eating the honey stored in their hives. You hope there is enough in the hive body to feed them instead of going to the not finished off spring honey.

You might have noticed your honey supers were not quite full of honey. Maybe some were started to be capped in the center of the super. Most of the frames appear to have honey completely filling the cell but not capped. The left and right outer frame might not be completely filled with honey. This uncapped situation is attributed to the ambient humidity being so high the bees cannot dehydrate the honey to 18% before capping. I had one year when the honey did not get capped until August. As long as it is in the hive under the stewardship of the bees it is okay. The lack of nectar coming into the hive does not interfere with the capping process. The bees will extract honey from the cells to cap the other honey needing capped reducing your amount of stored honey.

The lack of food (pollen and nectar) coming into the hive has also slowed the rate at which queens are laying eggs. I observed a very slow build up. I have continued to feed my nucs and small hives syrup water using in hive feeders. I don’t want to put out field feeders because the hives collection nectar will mix it with their honey. This is not an acceptable practice. I monitor the natural pollen coming into the hive. If the natural flow of pollen is okay (a judgement call) I don’t put pollen substitute patties on the colony. Rain makes the pollen gooey and hard to collect by the honeybee.

You might want to inspect your colony populations now to make sure they don’t swarm before sourwood starts in your area. Pulling 2 frames of bees might help. Start a nuc, with or without a new queen. The nuc can grow a queen if you desire.

If you have queen cells you might want to pull 2 frames with the old queen on one of them, brood, food, and enough bees to cover on the other. Let the old colony grow a new queen. The old colony will assume the hive swarmed and happily go on collection nectar throughout the sourwood season. The new queen will hatch out and have plenty of drones to mate with. After sourwood you can level the populations between your new nuc and the established hives. This is the start of getting ready for winter.

Happy 4^th of July HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA