Bee Chronicles
5 February 2019
Whoa is me! Trying to figure out what to do now and next causes me to blow a fuse.
It is now 20 January 2019. We are having the 3rd cold spell of the “bee winter”. First two were in December 2018. This is the same pattern we had last year but not quite as cold for any of the incidents. 2018: we had snow twice in December 2017. Then a warm start to January. I still had queens brooding 1 January of last year. Then it got cold and the queens stopped laying. With the warm up mid- February 2018 the queens started again. That was about 3 weeks of no brood.
It is important to have a break in the brood cycle to break the life cycle of varroa mites. It is good to have the queens brooding early to create young bees to replace old bees before there is much foraging to do. This will get your populations increasing faster and be more ready for honey collection whenever that is in March.
The only negative to early brooding, here in the mountains, is that the bees will experience short cold spells causing them to recluster. If there are not enough bees in the colony to completely cover the brood area when clustered the brood out side of the cluster will die overnight. These larvae are typically the youngest and uncapped. This will set the population growth back a little but you still have a positive population growth. The cluster will cover older larvae including capped brood which will continue to develop and hatch on time. The good news is that the bees will eat a lot of the dead brood. The nurse bees will use this protein source to help feed surviving larvae.
A negative to this positive is: you probably have extra small hive beetles in your colonies. As you and your neighbors’ colonies died off last fall the hive beetles moved next door. Next door can be up to 5 miles. Fumigating with oxalic acid will kill hive beetles. Gassing the cluster of bees does not kill the mites deeper inside the cluster. The honeybees are so nice that they keep the hive beetles in the center of the cluster so they don’t get cold. They also feed them thinking they are cute pets. Hence, if you fumigate the bees when they are clustered you will not kill very many varroa mites and probably no beetles. Wait until there is a warm day. You can pop the top cover and inner lid to determine if the bees have loosened up the cluster, then gas ‘em. It may be cold enough at night that the bees recluster, but you have already done your good deed.
Oh, and, hive beetles are supposed to eat bee eggs and real young larvae if they are hungry enough.
I have seen yellow, orange and red pollen coming into the hives (8 Jan 19) but cannot identify what is blooming. It must be very small plants close to the ground. Most blooming plants that I monitor are holding their own. Pussy willow should be the next thing that blooms. The catkins are out but not blooming yet. This is good for this time of the year. We need mid-February for the start of blooming so the blooms don’t get frozen prematurely.
I am adding the birds I see to the list of “what to watch in nature”. You can’t fool mother nature. Some birds are very specific in what they eat. Hence, they will not move into an area where there is no winter food. Robins will not be where there are no earth worms. I have seen some large flocks of robins. 18 Jan 19 I saw 6 blue birds together. 15 Jan 19 the goldfinches are starting to turn yellow, but the red finches are ahead of them a little bit. I will be watching for rufous sided towhees and brown thrashers. They are ground birds so must have food down where the flowers bloom. I have one male flicker. Over wintering birds won’t be much help. Chickadees, sparrows, woodpeckers, wrens, nut hatches, tufted titmice, juncos, cardinals, blue jays. It will be interesting to see when the South American wintering birds come back and match that to what the bees are doing. Early to arrive will be the hummingbirds. But all the warblers are important. If you are lucky to find them, most of the owls birth in January. Mom and dad have to work the woods and fields to keep them fed. You might notice the increased hunting during the day.