Bee Chronicles
7 May 2019
To bring us up to date: 10 April my Carolina Silverbell trees started blooming. About the 12th the blueberries popped out. The 15th Azeleas started. I have flowering Quince (which bees love). The Rose breasted Grossbeaks have arrived. Goldfinches have been yellow for 3 weeks. The 14th my humming birds returned. Basically spring is here.
In the hive the bees are collecting plenty of nectar. Lots of ripened honey for the brood. I am not seeing lots and lots of pollen coming into the hive but it is an adequate amount as I see plenty of "bee bread" for the brood. I do not want to get "pollen bound". This is where there is so much pollen around the brood chamber that the queen has no where to lay eggs. The bees will consume and move honey but they only feed the bee bread as needed to the larvae. They won't move it out of the way.
I put in a lot of new frames with wired wax foundation as an aggressive rotate the comb out program. I was a little behind in getting old comb out of the hives. The bee populations are large enough and there is enough food to support the wax drawing operations.
This year when I replaced dead hives I did five double packages. I wanted to make sure the colonies would be large enough to collect spring honey, so I combined a 3 lbs. package with queen and a 3 lbs. package without a queen to make a 6 lbs. colony. It is working well. Comb drawing is going double speed. I hope the queen lays faster than normal. I will have to monitor the colonies to make sure they don't swarm. If all goes well I will be able to split the five colonies pulling off a strong nuc between spring and sourwood nectar flow.
The purpose of that split will be to break the egg laying cycle by moving the old queen. The new queen when she starts laying will have less varroa mite in the hive at the start of sourwood season. I will treat the nuc to bring the mite count down in it. The test is to see how affective breaking the egg laying cycle is compared to just treating for mites. I hope to see the benefits in the fall with the broken egg cycle hive doing better than normal with mite count.
4 of my overwintered 6 hives grew population fast enough I pulled 2 frame nucs off them to expand my apiary. I can't really tell yet if the populations are growing fast enough to get any early honey out of them. It might be possible if the spring goes slowly enough allowing days to hatch out bees.
This coming week, after Easter, I will have enough time to go into my hives and thoroughly inspect for queen quality, brood volume, food storage, and frame condition.
Do I have fat actively laying queens? If I think she is slow (some are) I will put the slow queen in a 2 frame nuc and order a new laying queen from a reputable dealer. The slow queen can lay replacement frames of bees for a weak colony. She also can be used to replace a queen that unexpectedly disappears. I call it a "repair parts nuc".
Am I getting a good brood pattern? If not, why not? Is it Varroa Mites? Is it some other disease? Do I need a new queen? I have to have a dense large, multiframe pattern.
Are the bees putting up honey and bee bread? All honeybees do not collect honey at the same rate. Some queens produce lazy colonies. Off into the repair nuc for her or maybe the French Guilotine.
Are the bees drawing comb at a rate I can tolerate? Again some bees are slow wax builders. I can take drawn comb out of my better hives and put foundation in the good wax builders. Or again, this is what the repair part nuc is for.
Should I keep feeding? Maybe! Some hives with fewer bees might need the help. If I do feed I will switch to an in hive feeder so the strong hives are not getting the syrup I want for the weak hives. This could pertain especially to nucs. I will use a quart jar feeder on the top bars of the brood chamber enclosed in an empty hive body.
I think there is enough pollen coming in right now so I don't have to feed pollen substitute. If we go into a rainy period and the bees can't forage I will feed patties.
Our weather is still borderline where feeding can even out the good foraging days and the cool rainy days allowing the queen to sense a more even food arrival pattern. She is measuring what is coming into the hive and placed around her versus what is stored. If incoming food slows she will slow down egg laying. I want to maximize egg laying.