Bee Chronicles

5 April, 2022

1 Mar: Red Maple and, Henbit in full bloom, pagoda plant coming along okay, bluets and field pansies in full bloom. Hellebores blooming and bees working them.

3 Mar: Jonquils, quince, French magnolia, alder ending; croci and hyacinths ending. Sweet bush expanding buds

7 Mar: heavy rains and big wind: red maple flowers on ground, early demise will hurt nectar for brood build up

11 & 12 Mar: freezing night, down to 15^oF Killed the remaining red maple, the quince, and French magnolia blossoms; hurt forsythia, jonquils, and pears

Hellebores survived the frost

This major loss of food will require syrup feeding and maybe pollen substitute patties (inside the hive) to maintain population expansion.

15 March: Bees stopped taking field feeder powdered pollen substitute

I don’t see any pear blossoms

Who knows what other buds were damaged to affect early spring nectar flow which is necessary for brood production?

17 March red buds starting to swell. Had my first bear visit. He did not get through the electric fence but it was stretched.

The early flower blooming stimulated the queens to start brooding. When frost comes the cluster may be smaller than the brood area. This will “chill kill” some larvae. Some will be eaten (cannibalized) as they are high in protein. Some may be thrown out the front entrance and you think you have chalk brood but not really. The good news is you have a net gain in population over a late start to brooding.

With the cool nights and rainy days food coming into the hive is not even day to day. To level out the food, feed syrup and pollen inside of the hive. This will stimulate the queen to lay at a continuous rate, building you population faster.

I have seen drone larvae in the brood. As this brood is capped off dig out some brood larvae and look for immature mites (red dots on white larvae). This is an easy way to test the effectiveness of your mite control program.

It is too early for that, but try to tell the queen. She may be a weak or old queen and is preparing for supersession. Just be aware and keep watch. A new queen will not get mated well this early in the year. Hence, she will go sterile in July. A weak queen may show spotty brood laying. Be observant! When the second batch of brood is laid and the first batch is hatching out you will have a doughnut hole in the center of the brood pattern. There will be capped brood and larvae around the hole. The queen will relay in the center. As the brood pattern expands the doughnut will disappear.

I know there have been incidents of dead hives. Some with bees piled in the bottom, some with no bees, some showing the signs of starvation.

Current rule of thumb is those dead in the bottom of the hive died from the affects of varroa mites passing viruses around the colony.

Those with no bees in the hive died from Nosema Ceranae which has no visible symptoms. Bees get weak and can’t return from a flight. Nosema Apis, shows signs of diarrhea in and around the hive. Ceranae is passed around at the flower, Apis is passed around by the “house cleaning” licking it up where it gets mixed with the grooming and feeding around the colony.

Starved bees either ran out of stored honey or pollen. The bee needs both food sources to make it through the winter. When the stored pollen is consumed, the bee relies on fat stored inside their bodies. The varroa mite is eating this fat also. If there is no pollen to be gathered the bee will waste away (starve) for lack of fat not carbohydrate (honey). This is why I feed powdered pollen substitute during the winter.

If you have a colony with out a queen combine the bees with another colony. If the queen is obviously too weak, kill her and combine the colony. A weak queen will expand too slowly. Save the bees which can help another colony expand faster. Then you can get another queen and split you really large colony back into two colonies before nectar flow.

There is a lot of work to do in April. Make sure you have enough frames for expanding colonies. Packages expanding into full hive bodies and winter overed colonies expanding into double hive bodies. Don’t worry about honey supers until the first of May.

You want to expand your colonies until the hive bodies are full of bees right before they are so full they swarm. This is a challenge. Know the signs of swarming. Hives full of food, brood, and bees. Once you see queen cells you are behind the power curve.

Making wax is the most energy consuming job in the hive. Move drawn comb with or without brood and honey to the expanding packages. This reduces the work load in the package and creates more space and work for the loosing colony which will reduce their stimuli to swarm. Keep feeding the large colony so they have extra “nectar” to draw more wax and feed the brood simultaneously.

Use the “checker board” technique to keep the strong hives working overtime. Leave 3-4 frames of brood in the center. Alternate, foundation and comb through the rest of that brood box. If you have enough bees, in the upper brood box, place foundation over the drawn comb below and drawn comb over the foundation below. The bees will work extra hard to “correct” the orderliness of their hive.

You want to expand you packages as fast as possible also. You wintered over queens will expand faster than a new package queen. So, help the package by taking frames out of the strong wintered over colony. Moving honey will help stimulate the package queen. Moving brood will also stimulate the package queen and also provide more bees as they emerge. The more bees the more work getting done in the package colony. The more foragers the more food coming into the hive which stimulates the queen to lay more eggs.

Now that you have done everything correctly, all your hives are getting full of bees. Place honey supers on so the bees can start drawing out the comb in preparation for the nectar flow. Using syrup to draw comb will save the nectar for honey production. If you already have drawn honey comb you might want to rotate your darker comb out and get some new pearly white comb for sourwood honey. Dark comb can stain light colored honey darker.

If you still have a noticeable difference in population between colonies, you need to balance the populations. I use three ways to do this. 1. Switch the entire stack of hive components from the strong location to the weak location and vice versus. Do this during the heat of the day when the foragers are out working. The foragers will return to their home location entering the other colony. A bee bearing gifts is accepted. 2. Switch frames with brood and nurse bees from the strong colony to the weak colony. Remove the brood frame with the bees on it and shake it very gently. A few bees will fly off, the younger nurse bees will stay put. Place it in the weak colony and the empty frame from the weak colony with no bees on it in the strong colony. A frame full of brood covered with bees can move 3-4 thousand bees to the weak colony. 3. Spray a honey super with frames in it with lots of sugar syrup. Place the honey super with frames on top of the strong hive’s hive body. The bees will go up in the honey super to lick up the syrup. After about an hour, remove the honey super full of bees and place it on top of the brood chamber of the weak hive. Tomorrow there will be few bees in the honey super as they took all the syrup down to the weak brood chamber. You can now remove the honey super if you desire.

In the hive feeding of weak (packages) colonies will discourage the strong wintered over colony from robbing them out.

Constantly (weekly) be inspecting for queen cells. Queen cells are capped on day 11. Once swarm cells have larvae in them you cannot stop the swarming instinct. Cutting out queen cells only causes them to make more. If you have cut out all the queen cells after the queen has quit laying eggs in preparation to swarm there will be no queen develop after the swarm leaves. Once you have queen cells the best practice is make “replacement parts” nucs by moving the old queen and 2 frames of brood and food. In about 45 days you will have the new bees from a young vivacious queen.

Ironically, this situation can occur just before main nectar flow. You don’t want to lose all those foragers to a swarm. No queen, no swarm! During the nectar flow there will be a reduction in brood that needs feeding. Hence, you will put up more honey in the honey super.

You want to see your colonies with so many bees that they do not all go into the hive box in the evening. The landing deck will be covered, up the outside front wall can be covered, and maybe they will be bearding off the front lower edge.

As long as the bees are calm, you are not getting ready to swarm. When the bees are anxious, hoovering around the hive and cannot unload their nectar you are close to swarming. The anxious bees may enter the hive in the evening, but you can tell, something is not right. The bees are loud and anxious.

Get your hornet traps ready. By trapping European hornets early you will be trapping queens which will reduce the numbers for the rest of the year.