Bee Chronicles

2 June, 2020

This is long and maybe confusing. Welcome to Spring 2020! We are going into the last month of Spring, ending officially on 21 June at 0200 hr. in the morning. I am sure Mother Nature and the bees will be paying attention.

It rained last night (May 17-18). We just finished about 10 days with virtually no rain. There were a few traces. Amazingly, it did not hinder the blooms. The soil moisture and dew kept the plants moisturized and the nectar flowing. We are enjoying a "normally" long slow spring which is good for honey collection. It also allows our packages to grow large enough to draw comb and maybe store some extra honey in the honey super. Any of your colonies working 8 frames should have honey supers on them. Some times the colony will not build out frames 1 and 10 but go up if they can. Having the honey super will allow that movement.

If you need to keep a very active queen out of the honey super put in a queen excluder. A queen excluder can be a honey excluder. It keeps the larger bees full of nectar from passing through to the honey super. I drill an extra entrance (now or two) (3/8" hole" in the bottom of the finger lifting groove in the front of the honey super. This allows the bees to have an entrance by passing the queen excluder. It does help put up honey faster. You will also need a plug or duct tape to close the holes when you remove the supers during honey collection. This keeps the bees from going back into the super as you move it to the honey house.

Watch out for blackberry winter! This was a warning written on 1 May. Sure enough, the weather report came out with the dreaded term "Arctic Vortex"! "A cold wind fast from nearly 310^o N. - due north (360^o).

This is like Batman's worst nemesis. Tradition says don't plant delicate garden veggies until after Mother's Day, we try every year to beat the system. The Farmer's Almanac has 15 May as the last frost day. May 6 & 7 it got to 32^o just after sun up. Some trees show just a little frost damage. My huge pecan tree, the top ½ had the blooms killed. Down toward the ground no damage. Where are the tree flowers the bees need the most? Up in the trees. But the ground flowers, Black berries etc, made it through just right.

Blooms we have missed by now:

Black Locust 25 April Was the finest bloom in history long and slow and all over the county. Some within flying distance of every bee hive. The secret would be to have enough to attract the bees close in and make a super of honey. Usually frosted out or mixed with other blooms. This year more stand alone as flowers go, purer collection. Was terminated by the frosty nights. Get honey supers on now (1 May) on strong hives for locust honey which is an extra good flavored and light colored honey.

Wild Cherry a long slow bloom I see some trees ending (1 May) and some trees where bloom clusters are only ½ open. This is good for an extended bloom period. I am still seeing some cherry trees with white blooms indicating they are still viable flowers. (May 18)

American Holly: I was walking around the forest and noticed a lot holly bloom petals on the ground. I missed the entire bloom by being quarantined. Or was it because I am busy putting up fire wood? The number of petals indicated it was good for the bees. They especially like hollies.

Black berries are starting in the sun, but not profuse yet (1 May). Now, 18 May, they are profuse. That means lots of them. Usually, blackberry is over when tulip poplar starts. That makes a longer nectar collection period. We need the extra time for the bee populations to grow.

Black raspberries. Where are they (1 May)

Tulip poplar (1 May) leaves are opening. Blooms come when hidden in leaves look for long prepetals on the ground indicating buds opening. Latest frost I have seen damage open blossoms was 9 April in 2009. Started blooming 10 May with very few tight buds on ground from squirrels. With in 5 days lots of open blossoms on ground from squirrels. Trees seem to have heavy bloom count. Not hurt by Blackberry winter frost (32^o May 6 & 7). I am hoping for an extra long bloom period (at least the 2^nd week of June or longer)

False dandelion: This is the tall dandelion looking flower you see by the roads. Useful for the bees if no better flower around.

Dandelion not seeing much???? 18 May, now seeing more. Dandelion will attract honeybees away from lesser quality flowers including Apples.

Spring asters: nickel sized very light lavender about 18" tall

Wild rose (flora bunda): White nickel sized bloom. Not to aromatic to us. Next will be a wild rose with a little pink in the bloom which is very aromatic. 18 May it is out. Later in the early summer you will see the pink road side rose (Cherokee rose), and the purple (escaped rose). About this time the Virginia rose (truly wild native rose, very pink 5 petals) will bloom. It is aromatic enough to smell a ½ mile away. Bees love it. Check to see what the bees are visiting.

Bass wood blooms are in bud. Overlaps sourwood. A very light colored and tasty honey. It does not hurt the sourwood but gives you more volume. This kind of floral mix is what gives each of us a different flavored honey produced at the same time of the year.

Still cool nights with late start to flying in the morning. Scouts usually go out about 7AM with foragers getting going about 9AM and the whole crowd working by 10AM. Union dictated shut down time is about 7:30-8PM Work you bees around 2PM when all the foragers are out flying.

How are bees doing on brooding, drone cells, and queen cells? Swarming has started in full force. It is supposed to slow down (stop) during nectar flow. Don't believe all you read. You are inspecting the hive to determine queen health. They frequently disappear and you want to be ready to replace her as appropriate. Do you grow a new queen or buy one?

Be ready to prevent or catch Swarms. I hear real good report on swarm lure "Swarm Commander Super Lure". It is supposed to last 90 days. That gets us through Sourwood season.

Should you still be feeding sugar syrup? Maybe, Yes. If you are trying to keep a week hive expanding or draw out comb in nucs where you need a lot of nectar but don't have a lot of bees feeding makes sense. I do it in side the hive so the honey producing bees don't mix sugar water with the nectar. The easiest way to do this is just put an empty hive body over the brood chamber and set the syrup feeder on top of the top bars. Feeding small colonies keeps the honey storage bees working at max capacity while the foragers are flying back and forth to the flowers.

Also, should you keep feeding patties? You probably don't need to. There is an abundance of pollen. Substitute patties are to stimulate egg laying and nurse bees to feed larvae. If your queen is producing young slowly the problem may be not having enough worker bees to be nurse bees and foragers. Switch the location of the weak hive with a strong hive. The strong hive foragers will come home to the weak hive and vice versus. The increased population in the weak hive might stimulate the queen to work harder. This trick should have been done 3 weeks before nectar flow giving the new bees time to hatch out and go to work. This is called equalizing the populations.

Varo mite treatment? jelly or fumigation or strips. I like to watch the daytime temps to guide me on which style of chemical to use. Fumigation is the best tool when it is hot outside. You should do sampling for an accurate idea of how many mites you are dealing with. You can't tell much by looking at live bees. Drone rolling can help you estimate. With your hive tool or a decapping comb pick out the drone brood from their cells. Look for red dots on the white lave bodies. Roll out 10 drone larvae and hope to see very few mites. Drone frame (green or drawn) can be a useful way to get varroa mites out of the hive. Cut or freeze the frame after it is capped over and before they start to hatch. Cutting can leave some mature mites on the frame. Put the frame outside of the hive for 24hr then back in. You don't have to freeze them. The bees will clean the frames up when you put them back into the hive. You should be done with any chemical treatments during honey collection.

Grease patties for tracheal mites. These clog up the breathing tubes of the honey bees. No one talks about them any more. I don't think they are gone. Mix a hamburger sized patty of either granulated or powder sugar and Crisco and place it on the top bars. The mite goes into the bee when it is 4 days old. If the mite can't smell the mite because of the grease on the bees body it does not go into the bee. Don't treat during the hottest part of the summer as the patties will melt down through your brood chamber. Store in the refrigerator.

Bear trap number 770 535 5700 The Department of Natural Resourses.

Be prepared to draw off nucs as a swarm management tool as soon as the tulip poplar bloom stops.

In your colonies collecting honey don't fiddle around with "Frame Management". Just let them draw comb and collect honey as they can.

In weak hives or ones like nucs that you are growing you can draw comb and switch the frame to a colony collecting honey. You will get more honey that way. The nuc or weak hive just keeps working. They can get their nectar from the syrup.

This is a busy beekeeping period. Don't slack up! The bees will get ahead of you.

It can take only 10 days for a strong colony to draw the comb out on a honey super, fill it with honey, and cap it off.