Spring Beekeeping Management

What to do with your bees in the spring

Copyright 2014 by Michael Bush

Avoid Starvation

To raise one frame of brood it takes: One frame of honey One frame of pollen One frame’s worth of water The efforts of one frame’s worth of nurse bees

who need honey to generate the heat required

When to feed

If the hive is light feed If the hive is heavy with stores, don’t feed

When to feed?

"Q. When is the best time to feed the bees? "A. The best thing is never to feed them, but let them gather their own stores…better feed…than to let the bees starve." --C.C. Miller, A Thousand Answers to Beekeeping Questions, 1917

Switching boxes?

In my opinion, the only good reason to switch boxes is if the bottom box is empty and you want to know when they run out of room

Richard Taylor

Here's what Richard Taylor says in The Joys of Beekeeping:

"Some beekeepers, trusting the ways of bees less than I do, at this point routinely 'switch hive bodies,' that is, switch the positions of the two stories of each hive, thinking that this will induce the queen to increase her egg laying and distribute it more widely through the hive. I doubt, however, that any such result is accomplished, and in any case I have long since found that such planning is best left to the bees."

Don’t break up the brood nest

Spring is a fragile time and chilled brood leads to chalkbrood

Stimulation?

Things that stimulate brood rearing Pollen or pollen substitute (when there is no

fresh pollen available) Syrup (when there is no nectar available

Why? These things fool the bees into thinking it’s

later in the spring than it is.

Is this good?

Too Early Chilled brood and Chalkbrood Stuck on brood and starve Swarm before the main flow

Why do it?

Too late Build up on the flow instead of before the flow Little or no honey crop Too many mouths after the flow

The goal

Just right Build up before the flow Population peaks at the flow Population falls off during the flow so not too

many mouths to feed after

Northern Climate Beekeepers

Famous beekeepers who did not approve of stimulative feeding: Brother Adam G.M. Doolittle Richard Taylor Frank Pellet W.Z. Hutchinson

One quote

"The feeding of bees for stimulating brood-rearing in early spring is now looked upon by many as of doubtful value. Especially is this true in the Northern States, where weeks of warm weather are often followed by 'Freeze up.' The average beekeeper in the average locality will find it more satisfactory to feed liberally in the fall-- enough, at least so that there shall be sufficient stores until harvest. If the hives are well protected, and the bees well supplied with an abundance of sealed stores, natural brood rearing will proceed with sufficient rapidity, early in the spring without any artificial stimulus. The only time that spring feeding is advisable is where there is a dearth of nectar after the early spring flow and before the coming of the main harvest." --W.Z. Hutchinson, Advanced Bee Culture

Locality is key "In my earlier beekeeping years I was often sorely puzzled at

the diametrically opposite views often expressed by the different correspondents for the bee journals. In extension of that state of mind I may say that at that time I did not dream of the wonderful differences of locality in its relation to the management of bees. I saw, measured weighted, compared, and considered all things apicutlural by the standard of my own home—Genesee County, Michigan. It was not until I had seen the fields of New York white with buckwheat, admired the luxuriance of sweet-clover growth in the suburbs of Chicago, followed for miles the great irrigating ditches of Colorado, where they give lift to the royal purple of the alfalfa bloom, and climbed mountains in California, pulling myself up by grasping the sagebrush, that I fully realized the great amount of apicultural meaning stored up in that one little word--locality.“—W.Z. Hutchinson, Advanced Bee Culture

How well does it work in your locale? It varies even from year to year A late freeze An early spring

Feeding Bees

If you do need to feed, remember they can’t take cold syrup. Syrup has to be 50 F

Feeding Bees

What strength? I would still stick with 2:1 or 5:3 and not 1:1.

1:1 is just too much moisture in the hive and it doesn't keep well.

Feeding Bees

What kind of sugar? Cane or Beet?

Feeding Bees

Pollen Substitute?

Short lived bees Bees won’t take it if real pollen is available

Real Pollen? Patty? Dry and open?

Fresh pollen available?

Adding supers

When is too early? You don’t want too much room when it is still

frosty at night When is too late?

You don’t want to wait until the wax moths get into your supers

You don’t want to wait until the bees run out of room

Bees will not fill supers that are in the barn

How many?

You can double their space if they are almost out of space

Where?

Top supering Under supering Nadiring

Requeening?

It is difficult to get good queens early It is impossible to get Northern queens early Routine requeening removes selective

pressure for bees that can sense a failing queen

Failing queen?

Let them raise their own Get local genetics

Buy a queen Save the bees time Not local genetics AHB? Early queens are usually not good quality

Combine Saves you time

Replacing losses Packages

Quality has gone down in recent years Can put them on the kind of frames and

foundation you want Nucs

Are on whatever frames and foundation the nuc provider uses

Quality varies by the kind of nuc Full colonies

Usually local bees that have overwintered Splits

Kinds of nucs

Local overwintered nuc Locally assembled nuc with southern or

Californian queens A package put on drawn comb

Feral bees

Bait hives Cut outs Local swarm lists

Swarm Control

Prime swarm season in your locale will determine timing

Contact

bees at bushfarms dot com www.bushfarms.com Book: The Practical Beekeeper

Feeding Bees

Stimulative feeding Results in northern climates unpredictable "The reader will by now have drawn the

conclusion that stimulative feeding, apart from getting the foundations drawn out in the brood chamber, plays no part in our scheme of bee-keeping. This is in fact so." --Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, Brother Adam

Feeding Bees

"Very many, at the present time, seem to think that brood rearing can be made to forge ahead much faster by feeding the bees a teacupful of thin sweet every day than by any other method; but from many experiments along this line during the past thirty years I can only think this a mistaken idea, based on theory rather than on a practical solution of the matter…" --A Year's work in an Out Apiary, G.M. Doolittle.

Feeding Bees

"Probably the single most important step in management for achieving colony strength, and one most neglected by beekeepers, is to make sure the hives are heavy with stores in the fall, so that they emerge from overwintering already strong early in the spring" --The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping, Richard Taylor

Feeding Bees

"The feeding of bees for stimulating brood-rearing in early spring is now looked upon by many as of doubtful value. Especially is this true in the Northern States, where weeks of warm weather are often followed by 'Freeze up.‘ " --W.Z. Hutchinson, Advanced Bee Culture

Feeding Bees

"While it is often advocated that stimulative feeding be resorted to early, in order to build the colonies up to a sufficient strength, the author inclines to the belief that colonies in two stories will build up just as rapidly if there is an abundance of sealed honey in the hive, as is possible with stimulative feeding."--Frank Pellett, Practical Queen Rearing