EARLY MAY IN THE FLYING SQUIRREL APIARY by beekeeper Fred

What’s happening at the Flying Squirrel Apiary?

I ignored the advice of a recent club newsletter to check that all overwintered hives have sufficient honey to tide them over to the beginning of the honey flow.  I noticed a decline in flight activity from one hive.  Opening it, I noted a 6 inch diameter cluster of dead bees.  Inside the cluster were 3 frames of capped brood.  Outside the cluster absolutely zero honey throughout the hive.  More attention to detail could have saved that hive. 

If there is any question on adequate food I provide the colony with one gallon of 1 to 1 sugar syrup. 

I had previously reported on a hive that had 50% drones, which is odd for this time of year.  In the recent warm spell, I looked at this hive in detail.  There was one capped emergency queen cell of doubtful vitality.  No worker brood.  Plenty of drone brood, but in the random distribution normally seen with laying workers.  I will attempt to re-queen the hive by inserting several queen cells, but don’t have a lot of confidence this will succeed.   I also detected what seemed to be a second queenless hive when writing this article.  Immediate action is needed to prevent them become hopelessly queenless. 

About April 19^th I began seeing dandelions.  Although not a big source of nectar for our bees, the dandelions is a sign that spring is here.  

On the warmer days where temperature got above 60F I was performing three actions.  First, I simply verified hives are queenright.  Next, I lift the two brood chambers off the bottom board to permit a quick scrapping of all dead bees from the board.  At that time, I also determine if the brood chambers need to be reversed.  If I see the queen is laying in both boxes, I leave things alone.  If the queen is only laying in the upper brood box, I do the reversal.  Bees always want to move upward.  If there is no open comb above the brood nest the bees don’t always use the option to move into the lower brood box and instead decide the hive needs to swarm.  This gets amplified if there is a strong honey flow and the bees are filling the lower brood box with honey. 

Although conditions were not ideal, I made my first attempt at queen grafting April 18^th.   About 60% of the queen cells were capped.  On April 28^th I candled the cells and it appears about 80% seemed viable.  Not bad for this early in the season.  On April 30^th I was starting to see movement in about 25% of the cells.  By the morning of May 1^st of the initial quantity of 24 cells, 13 queens had emerged, 7 the queens were moving in the cells, one (1) still looked as a probable and 3 duds.   Now the scramble starts to get the new queens into mating nucs.   This time of year, it takes about 3 frames of bees in the nuc to keep the new queens warm if we get a cold night.  Hopefully, mature drones will be available and the weather will be favorable, when these queens are ready to mate about May 6^th.  Time will tell.  Raising queens this early in the spring is always a gamble. 

Things to accomplish in May.

1)      If you haven’t done it already clean your queen excluders of excess wax and propolis.  A heavily propolized excluder may inhibit the movement of bees from the brood chamber to the honey supers. 

2)      Honey supers and excluders for overwintered hives will get installed in mid-May.  Consulting my notes, the honey flow doesn’t really begin in our area until late May.  Minor sources are available prior to that and extremely strong hives can begin storing honey as early as mid-May, but that is an exception.

3)      Make sure you have inspected and repaired any damaged honey super frames beforehand.

4)      If this is your first year at beekeeping the honey frames will not have drawn comb on them.  In that case the bees are even more reluctant to cross the queen excluder barrier.  It is recommended that you not install the excluder until the bees have started to draw comb.

5)      The tendency of the bees is to store honey ABOVE the brood chamber.  They are sometimes reluctant to refill the side honey frames around the brood nest.  Experienced beekeepers do not add the honey supers until they see that new white wax on the honey frames around the brood chamber.  The new white wax is an indication the bees are actively filling the outside frames. 

6)      Change the entrance excluder to the 4 inch setting. 

7)      Order supplies if you intend to perform a June mite knockdown treatment. 

If you have hives in which the bee population is exploding you may want to consider: a) doing a split or b) removing bees and brood to start a nuc or c) removing bees and brood to aid a weaker hive or d) add another brood chamber box until you figure your plan of action.  Failure to take action will probably result in the hive swarming.  Although swarming isn’t inherently bad you will be losing about 50% of the hive’s work force and also the hive’s queen.  This will set the hive back at least a month because of the time it takes the hive to raise a new queen and get the work force back up to snuff.   By the time the hive recovers the major honey flow in our area could be over.  Also the hive will only successfully re-queen itself about 60% of the time.  Note to new beekeepers: A new hive started from a package or nuc rarely swarms in its first year.