Honey Run Apiaries-A Beekeeper’s Blog

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.

We have had some weather in the mid 40′s to 50′s in the past week, plenty warm enough for bees to fly on most days.  I have yet to see any real pollen coming in, and the activity at the pollen bucket pretty much confirms my observation.  When it got into the 50′s the bucket of pollen substitute looked like a swarm of black and white bees covered with pollen.   

Maple trees may be a bit behind where they were last year and the buds on the trees in my yards don’t look like they’ll be blooming anytime soon.  The 10 day forcast doesn’t show any warm days yet either.  Still, I can smell spring coming and it shouldn’t be long now.

Yesterday was in the mid 40s and was a good time to do the first inspection of the season and install pollen patties on the hives.    The forecast was for a high of 50 with Monday being even warmer, but with a narrow window and rain being called for on Monday, today was the day.  Once the temperatures warmed up to 42 I headed off to the first yard hoping that what I found would be dramatically different than last year’s huge loss.  The bees weren’t very active at the first yard, but as it got a bit warmer though the day they were more active until the sun disappeared behind the clouds.  The timing for placing pollen patties was just about perfect.  While we are expected to get some very cold weather yet this week, it should only be 2 or 3 weeks until the maple trees begin blooming and the bees will quickly loose interest in the pollen patties when the real stuff is available.  So they really need to be on the hives soon so the bees will take advantage of them.

Much to my relief I found most hives were quite alive.  Most had fairly tight clusters still with the chill in the air from the snow pack, but many more hives than not were very strong.  Even with the smoker going to drive the bees down into the hive it was a challenge to place pollen patties on some hives without squishing any bees.  It was too cold to consider pulling frames a checking brood, but judging by a peak between frames and the warmth coming from the hives, they have started raising brood already.  It’s like night and day compared to last year where I could count the strong hives on my fingers.

It’s also very important this time of year to check the weight of the hives to evaluate how much honey they have left.  As the bees start rearing brood over the coming weeks they will accelerate their use of honey and hives that are strong now could quickly be lost to starvation.  I found a few hives will need some feeding soon myself, but most will be fine, at least until I get around to check them again in a couple weeks time.

The tally at the end of the day, 123 Live hives, 8 dead (including 2 I knew were dead months ago and 2 others that are so weak right now that I’m betting they won’t make it), and one very tired beekeeper.  Checking 131 hives in 5 yards in a matter of 6 hours by oneself, even if it was only a quick inspection, is exhausting work.  But it’s a good feeling when you get back home and peal off the soggy boots after finding only a 6% loss.

The local association’s meeting was canceled tonight due to snow.  This gave me a little bit of time to work on the honey stick machine that’s been left sitting for awhile while I caught up on other things.  I was able to finish and test the final 4 to 8 decoder previously built on a prototype board.  For testing I connected to the DC driver board simply to have a display of the output on the LEDs.  I was a bit worried at first because it didn’t work at all, but then I found some insulation had melted allowing two wires to come into contact with each other.  After fixing that issue the circuit worked perfectly while running it though some 20,000 on/off cycles.

One thing I learned building this circuit was how slow and tedious it can be building these circuits on prototype PCBs.  The boards have no circuit traces and every wire needs carefully positioned and soldered by hand.  Should I get to the point where I can produce even a small number of machines, I’ll definitely be looking to design a printed circuit board.  Fortunately that’s almost as easy as desktop publishing now with software like PBC123 that lets you design and order custom circuit boards in small numbers.

I Spent some time this evening making pollen patties.  I now have around 110 ready and waiting in the freezer to go on the hives the next warm spell we have.  Hopefully that will be in just another week or two in time to get the bees moving shortly before the maple trees start blooming.  When trying to raise early queens in northern climates as I am, early drone production is often the limiting factor and feeding pollen (protein) helps get them started.  It’s not the only limiting factor, but it’s one of the few the beekeeper can do anything about.  It also increases the size of the hives earlier to one can afford to make all the splits necessary for mating nucs.  With luck I’ll be running around 200 this year.

Another sure sign spring is coming: emails and calls daily from other beekeepers wanting to order queens.  The earliest queens have been booked for some time now and recent orders are starting to book the summer and late season queens.  It seems like the demand is as high as ever, and the supply seems to be diminishing.  So if you need to order queens, get your orders in now if you can regardless of who you are ordering them from.

Snow was still on the ground today with temperatures only reaching 35F.  It was sunny and calm so some bees took the chance to make cleansing flights in spite of the temperature.  Some unfortunately didn’t make it back to the hive and died in the snow.  The sight of dead bees in the snow around the hive and on the landing board can be worrying to the new beekeeper.  They aren’t suppose to be flying when its near or below freezing, right?

In truth they will take short cleansing flights on calm sunny days even when it’s cold.  It was common to find discolored spots in the snow and a dead bee here and there when I returned from work on a calm sunny day.  Overall it’s a good sign, no bees and it means your hives are dead or missing.  A few dead in the snow means they are alive and functioning normally.  After all, with 10-20,000 bees in a hive over the winter, quite a few will die of natural causes every day.  Normally they will try to leave the hive or will be dragged out once dead (and sometimes even when not quite dead). 

Pictured below is my new bee yard.  Actually it’s not so new anymore and this post is a bit out of order as this picture was taken last April.  I was approached this spring by my wifes insurance agent for her business about placing some bees on his property.  It’s a beautiful location on a high (20-30′) bank above a river well outside of the floodplain with large groves of locust and catalpa within eyesight, as well as alfalfa fields planted by local farmers.  It will be interesting to compare how well these hives do, and their honey as the forage available here is considerably different than that available near my other apiaries.

Simply because it was easier, I started this yard completely with package bees and drawn foundation (and honey from deadouts).  They were installed this past Saturday as previously mentioned.   It also proved a good yard to test the effect of queen excluders on honey production, but more about that later…

I’m not really sure if Winter is here or not.  So far this year  we’ve had 0 degree weather followed by temperatures in the high 60s.  Then snow, temperatures in the teens and sustained 40-50 mile winds.  Followed by 50′s, thunderstorms and significant flooding.   And it looks like it will be snowing and in the single digits again this weekend.  Feels like we are on a roller coaster.

So how are the bees fairing in all this?  I still find it amazing they are able to cope with all this with no more protection than a drafty wooden box.   I was able to do a quick check when the temperatures hit 67 degrees in January and all 61 hives at the house were flying.  Only one showed signs of trouble, the tell tale marks of dysentery on the front of the hive.  It wasn’t unexpected, that particular hive wasn’t really thriving in the fall.   It’s cluster was far too small when I inspected it and it looks like it froze in the last cold spell since then.   You will always loose a few hives over the winter and I expect that one won’t be the only one.  Still, the hives looks far better than they did last year and I expect losses to be well within the normal range.  But we still have a month and a half until maples will bloom and nearly 2 months until April, so there is still plenty of time to worry.

It’s getting quite late in the year for mowing lawns, but I’ve been putting it off for several weeks waiting for the leaves to fall so they would be mulched up.  Of course most have fallen a fe weeks ago and I couldn’t even use the ‘bee work’ excuse as to why it hasn’t been done.   So this past weekend I finally got around to it.  Pumped up the now completely flat tire on the tractor (another item on the needs-fixed list).  The day was cool in the low 40′s and overcast, promising rain later in the day.  So the bees were all tucked in quite nicely and weren’t likely to get stirred up by the exhaust from the tractor that blows out the side of the engine cover.   A good time to mow the bee yards.

Not a good time, however, to zip though the bee yards not paying attention where the ends of the landscaping timbers the hives were sitting on are.  The bees quickly let me know that they were less than happy with the new orientation of their hive, flat on it’s back.  Fortunately the hive boxes were firmly stick together with propolis so it was a quick matter of setting the hive upright  as hundreds of bees pored out the front entrance.  Given the temperature few took to the air and were back in the hive as nothing had happened a few minutes later.  Sorry, no pictures.  It’s just not the kind of thing you run back to the house to get a camera in the middle of.