Bee Chronicles

5 May 2020

Okay, what is blooming now and what to watch for. The weather has been excellent for the bees to work. Except for the real bad storms that have passed through, the first week of April, the second week or April, and Now the third week of April. The storms only lasted one day each so the bees could return to work. Ironically, they did not destroy many blooms.

Flame Azalea: blooming but the bees will avoid it if there are better blooms. It makes "mother-in-law" honey which is poisonous to humans but does not bother the bees. There is another story about this.

Wild cherry: Blooming well in the sunny warm spots. I have some starting to bloom and some still in bud. This is good as it creates a longer nectar flow. I am on the north shady side of the mountain which slows my bloom down. Wild cherry will add a little tart bite to your honey. This is better than over sweet.

Pagoda plant/henbit: Both these plants are off schedule. The henbit should have been in full bloom when the red maple bloomed. It was somewhat. The pagoda plant follows right behind. The red maple is long gone but the henbit and pagoda are out in abundance (good). The bees are working very actively working on both. I had to get on my hands and knees to check this out.

Apples are in full bloom. Hope fully you also have some native Crab apples in your neighborhood. Not only do they smell wonderful on the breeze they are a favorite for honeybees. Lots of nectar hear.

Black locust and blackberries are blooming just north of Cleveland GA. We can expect ours in 10+ days. The black locust is a premium light delicious honey if we can collect it separately. It usually gets frosted out (maybe not this year) or there are so many other blooms it is just mixed into the spring honey.

The good and the bad. All of this nectar and pollen will cause your colonies to expand rapidly. Be prepared with extra frames and boxes.

The Bears are out. I have had probably 8 different ones in and around my apiaries. I am working with the official DNR trapper. He has taken 3 out of my neighborhood. Now when defining the neighborhood, you have to think bear large. They generally range over a 10 square mile area. Try the trapper telephone number first. There is an official nuisance bear hunting license but you will get hit by the bear several times before you get the license to kill him or his cousins. There are secret but not nice ways to also manage the bears, but these can backfire on you.

You should have a more powerful electric fence that is well built with lots of very tight wire. The best charger runs off 120 volts from the house. The most convenient away from the house is a good solar charged system. These may not be hot enough to get your above average tenacious bear. I have resorted to the older style charger that runs off a 12 volt car battery. A little more expensive to set up and manage. You have to have the fence charger, the car battery (in a weather protective case), and a battery charger at home to recharge the car battery. This will smoke the hair on a bear. Strong tight wires with a good ground are the secret to an effective electric fence. I do hot, ground, hot, ground, hot wires with a copper grounding rod at the charger.

There is good ground moisture right now. But it does not take much dryness to affect the ground circuit on a fence. This moisture is excellent for flowers though.

Be prepared for good honey season, bees are happy and expanding. They will be putting up a lot of honey fast. Plenty of blooms, with plenty of bees, with good flying weather can result in a colony putting up honey starting with foundation in a 10 frame shallow honey super and ending with 10 capped frames in 7-10 days. Have extra supers ready. I calculate 3 supers per single hive body. Other wise you may have to extract honey to stay ahead of the bees.

Manage to prevent swarming. You will lose your best queen. When she goes so goes 60% of you bee population which inadvertently is 100% of your foragers. The hive will not recover to the level necessary to collect extra honey for you.

Lots of bees, lots of brood, lots of food, no room to work will cause the queen to swarm. No work to do makes the bees nervous and signals the queen to swarm. There is the "10 day rule". You have to be prepared to act quickly to prevent swarming. The hive is full of honey and brood. The forager bees have no place for the nectar to go when they come in loaded. The storage bees stop servicing the foragers. They stop foraging and spend all day nervously flying around the outside the hive. You can see and hear this confusion. The queen stops laying eggs because there is no space for them. This makes the nurse bees nervous that the queen has failed and they start drawing queen cells. Now remember, it takes 16 days from egg to emergence for a queen. So about 10 days (the 10 day rule) for the queen to be in flying condition to swarm, she takes off and then 5 days later the new queen emerges. It is all magic.

Adding empty frames/foundation to pull out will give the bees more work and storage space hopefully preventing a swarm. You have to do this early. Once you see queen cells the process has started. There is a point before the queen cells are capped on about day 8 (from egg laying) that you cannot stop the swarming process.

If you have queen cells even uncapped you might as well create an artificial swarm by moving the queen and a bunch of bees to a new hive. This gives the queen lots of room. The disturbance hopefully will discourage her from continuing to prepare to fly. I like to put a gate on the hive opening made our of old queen excluders that will keep the queen in while allowing the foragers to come and go.

This is a good time to collect propolis to slow bees growth/swarming down. This will keep the bees busy and slow down food gathering. Most people don't collect propolis until after the honey season as to not distract the bees from honey collection (or wax drawing). However, this is the season when the trees are putting out the most leaf resin which is the raw material for the propolis. Put your propolis traps on your best hives which might swarm.

Get wax drawn out in hive body and honey supers. This will keep space in hive and the bees busy. Pull fully drawn frame out of the hive body and replace them with foundation. Place honey supers on the hive body so the bees can start drawing out good new clean honey comb. This should be done before you see queen cells. You can place drawn comb that already has honey in it out away from the hive and allow the bees to rob it. They will bring the honey back to the hive where some of it will be used to draw new wax. This saves the bees a lot of work. Store the newly emptied comb for splits and nucs later.

If you use single hive bodies use queen excluders to keep the queen down in the brood box. As the population increases the queen will want to go "up". Drill a 3/8 " hole in the honey super at the lifting handle slot. This creates a door so the bees can go around the excluder instead of through it inside the hive. A queen excluder = honey excluder Bees come in small, medium, and large. Large bees full of nectar can not get through a queen excluder which will reduce the amount of honey put up in the honey super. If the honey supers nearly completely drawn out remove them and add anther one. Place the honey supers with a little honey out in the field to be cleaned out. When the blackberry starts blooming leave the honey super on the hive. The book says when heavy nectar flow starts the colony will not swarm. Maybe!

Set out swarm traps. The old time lure was a gob of bees wax about the size of a marble in the trap. A newer trick is placing a few drops of lemon grass oil on the inside surface of the entrance to trap. The latest seems to be using "swarm commander lure" in the trap. Get it from the catalogue. Folk say it really works.

Collecting swarms is a good way to expand.

Keep the hive entrance exactly 3/8" high to keep Japanese/European hornets out. Can be longer but must not bee taller. Do wood work to add shims, etc. to close down entrances

Treat for mites, Formic acid good with temp below 75^o. Oxalic acid when temps get warmer.

I have a new mite treatment. Try beer mast residue patties. It works like Hop Guard strips. You have to make them yourself. Alpha and beta Acids are what gives hops (and then the beer) the bitter flavor. The higher the acid content the better. You want plus or minus 17%. Go to the beer and wine making store. The hops have the acid content on the back of the package. Dampen the hops make into a "hamburger" patty and place it in the hive on the top bars near the brood. You can get the aluminum hamburger press and squeeze the moisture out of the patty. You do not have to remove the patties the bees will do that for you. It does not interfere with honey collection. You can do it more or less continuously. The beekeeper who told me this sounded really scientific and claims a .001% mite count. Claims this is his only mite treatment and has keep his bees alive for years.