Bee Chronicles

4 May, 2020

By the time you read this the early start of nectar flow will have begun.

15-20 April these plants have been blooming. It has been a beautiful slow, not to hot spring. The blooms have lasted a long time each different plant in its own time. This has helped the bees collect a lot of nectar and pollen.

That said I am feeding syrup and pollen patties to stimulate the queen to lay as many eggs as possible. This is purely a "bee farming" technique. I need as many young foragers as possible when the honey nectar flow starts with the black berry bloom. I also want sufficient nectar to keep wax production at the highest point possible. Even though I have drawn comb for the bees to raise larvae and store honey and pollen, I need to draw out brood frame and honey frame foundation as I rotate out old comb in those two type boxes. I would rather draw wax with syrup than waste good honey doing it after the main nectar flow starts.

What is blooming? And, why it matters? You are now a naturalist. You need to be able to read what nature is doing and how the honeybees are reacting to it. The weather controls the plants, and the availability of blooms controls the honeybees.

Dwarf Red Buckeye, Blue Flag Iris, Garden Iris (coming), Snowball bush, Golden Seal, and Foam Flower. Most of these are local native plants. The natives are attuned to our local weather fluctuations making them better predictors than nursery landscape plants.

Black Locust (acacia tree) is in full bloom in Cleveland GA. That is 2-4 weeks ahead of us. It is a superb honey and lots of it. The trees are too tall for me to see how far along our buds are. Watch for blooms with your binoculars. It frequently gets frosted out like what might happen tonight (21 April 2021). It has large white bloom clusters, be ready with honey supers.

Black Raspberry is just starting to show little bloom buds, small balls the size of a wooden match head. (28 April 2021) Black raspberry bud are swelling. I can't tell if they were frosted or not on the 21^st.

Blackberry should be 10 days behind raspberry. Then Tulip Poplar is 10 days behind blackberry. For the past 2 years Tulip poplar has bloomed before blackberry, 4 weeks early. You never know what will happen. Bee Ready!

(28 April '21) Tulip poplar are leafing out. The wind has knocked the leaf prepetals off. They look like tan fingernails on the ground. This is okay. Be looking for the flower bud prepetals. They are about 1 ½ inches long. But, shaped like a finger nail. The next bloom marker is: squirrels love tulip poplar blooms and will start eating the buds before they open. Look on the ground for half eaten flower buds. Squirrels are notoriously clumsy.

The dogwood trees are ending a very nice long bloom period (nearly 5 weeks). The frost might have ended their blooming. This is a "Dogwood Winter" with night time lows at 23^o. The next frost will be a "Blackberry Winter" if it freezes when the Blackberries are blooming. According to the almanac, the last frost date is around 13 May. Just figure, don't plant above ground gardens stuff before Mothers' Day. Potatoes, onions, spinach and lettuce seed, turnip seed, they are all okay.