Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

 Snakes on a Plane?  Nope, just bees.  Most beekeepers just picked up their bees by car or truck, but this Michigan beekeeper saved some time by air.

The package bees arrived this past Friday and most beekeepers who had ordered a packaged picked them up on Saturday with the remainder picked up on Sunday.  I must say I was impressed with the quality of the packages so far.  The bees were in very good shape with fewer dead bees than I’ve ever seen in packages, plus the packages weighed a full 2.5-2.6 pounds of bees in the couple I checked.  Very good for 2lb packages.  I only got a few for myself as I really have enough bees.  It’s too soon to see if the queens are as good, but it’s a very promising start.

There is nothing quite so wonderful and calming as walking by a tree in full bloom and listening to the tree literally humming with activity.  This was the picture today (Thursday) as the pear trees were blooming today under a perfectly clear sky.  Some trees were just starting to bloom, and others like the one pictured were in full bloom with dozens of bees working the flowers.  I would have loved to just take a nap under the tree watching the bees instead of heading back inside to my day job….. perhaps one day…

Finally…. The dandelions and pear trees have started blooming.  A good sign that spring may finally be here to stay.  You can see the large load of pollen this bee has already collected on her back legs.
 

April has generally been cold and wet seriously limiting the number of days that it’s been possible to do spring inspections, reverse hive bodies and make splits for mating nucs.  While it’s only 55F right now, this weekend is suppose to be very warm so hopefully a lot of bee work can be caught up.

The picture below shows a few of the mating nucs that were setup last Friday.  I ended up having to introduce virgins into the nucs because the cold weather earlier in the week didn’t allow for setting up nucs before the queens were to emerge from the cells.  They were released from their cages yesterday and most were accepted.  With some luck they may even make mating flights this weekend when it’s suppose to be up to 80F, if it doesn’t get too windy.

 

I has bee a  fairly cold start to April.  I should be thankful it’s not snowing, but the consistently cool weather has made it nearly impossible to begin any inspections or other bee work that involved more than peeking under the inner cover. The hives do appear to be building up well and drones are starting to appear which is a good sign.  We have fortunately had one day that hit the upper 60’s and a few days in the mid 50’s that allows me to setup a cell builder and begin grafting with great care not to chill the brood.  I use a portable incubator to transport the brood frame to graft from into the house where it’s warm and then to transport the grafted cells back to the hive.  It does seem to work quite well and the brood is only in the open for a few seconds at a time.

On the plus side I’ve had more time to catch up on building equipment.  Not exactly what I planned on doing this time of year, but with rain and a high of only 40F today I can’t do much else with the bees.

It’s May 28th.  Do your hives look like this in Ohio?

10 of the 14 hives in this apiary look this strong right now.   The 2nd to the top super was added to the hive just 2 weeks ago and most hives already have a significant amount of honey in it or have it filled and were building comb on the top of the bars.  They desparately needed more space and I added yet another super this trip (the top super shown in the picture).    Also keep in mind that 3 or 4, 5 frame mating nucs were made up from each of the hives in this yard just 6 weeks prior to this picture.

Not all hives look this good, but a large number of them do and I account much of it to the effort made last year to requeen nearly all of my hives and improve the stock.  I must say I’m very happy with the result.  The down side is that it’s going to be a real chore lifting off all the honey to get down to the brood nest to pull larvae for grating on some of these that are breeder queens.

I’m still here in spite of my absence from the blog for about a month.  Not to worry, I’ve suffered no tragic accident, I’ve simply been busy with work and bees from dawn till dusk and sometimes much later.

The weather here has been cool and wet and we are still consistently well below the average temperature for this time of year.  It has made it difficult to keep the queen rearing on schedule because there have been very few days warm enough for mating flights.   It hasn’t been as bad as it was a few years ago where a 3 week cold spell April and May caused a complete halt to production and loss of all queens in the mating nucs because it simply took too long for them to get mated, though I did have one batch of queens that was about a 50% loss.  Fortunately it looks like things may break this weekend and temperatures may be above normal for awhile at least.  I’m looking forward to it.  We shouldn’t have to be running the pellet stove in May.

It’s always a busy time of the year, inspecting hives, splitting up hives for mating nucs and for sale, grafting, etc.  and the weather can make it even more difficult.  Still, it’s nearly done….nearly 200 mating nucs are in production, hives have been inspected and supered if needed, nucs for sale have virgins running around in them just waiting for a warm day later this week to mate, and I’m starting the first batch of  II queens this week.    It’s a couple weeks behind because there have been very few days were drones were flying to collect for II. 

One thing I would change for next year…If we have such a wet spring, I need to buy a pair of waterproof boots.  Carrying equipment and bees though water because you can’t get the truck back to the apiary isn’t fun, but it’s worse with wet feet.

The spring season has started in earnest. This past Saturday the silver maples started blooming and by Sunday enough was blooming that the bees were completely ignoring the open feed pollen substitute. Probably a good thing as real pollen is better for them and I was starting to run out of substitute as they had consumed nearly two 5 gallon buckets worth.

The weather Sunday was quite warm in the upper 60\’s. Many of the hives had a significant amount of drone brood and the strongest had adult drones. At least one hive had several hundred adult drones…which means it\’s time to start grafting…right on time. I made up one queenless hive, reducing it from 4 medium boxes to 3 from the strongest hive I had checked and grafted the next day, Monday. Checked the grafts on Tuesday and found almost all were accepted so things are progressing nicely. The real work begins late next week…inspecting hives and making up dozens of mating nucs.

Today was the warmest day we’ve had in quite some time, reaching the mid 50’s.  All the hives were very active and there was more activity at the open fed pollen than I have seen so far this season.  Apparently there was too much  traffic at the bucket to satisfy some bees, so several hundred were working over the fresh pile of sawdust composting in the garden.  Bees are know to work bird feeders and animal feed for the dust that collects there, but this was the first time I’ve seen any significant number working on sawdust.   I’m not sure what value they can see in it.  Shortly after adding a second bucket of open fed pollen substitute an placing additional substitute on the bucket lids, more than half the bees abandoned the sawdust pile in favor of the substitute.  I saw a few bees nosing around the maple trees, but no significant pollen is coming in from them still.

It’s been in the mid 40’s and still below the average for this time of year for several days and we even received a light dusting of snow last night.  Still the bees have been active almost every day when it’s sunny and breaks 40 degrees.  I’m actually rather surprised by how active they are given the temperature.  While my father reported the bees at his house have been working the early blooming bulbs, there is not yet any significant pollen source for them to work and they continue to fee on the open fed pollen.

The weather forecast predicts this week will warm up some, but won’t get above 50 until next Monday.   The buds on the maple trees are swelling and it will only take a couple good days for them to really open up.  A few in my yard have just started to open, but aren’t yet producing pollen.  These unspectacular buds could easily be missed by most people but are typically the first good pollen source in the spring and there is nothing quite like walking under a maple tree in late March and listening to it literally humming with busy bees.  The maples do seem to be running a week or so behind previous years and it still could be a bit longer before they really bloom if it stays cool.