This Month in the Bee Yard
April
April, this is the month most beekeepers in the Piedmont area of North Carolina have been waiting for. The tulip poplar trees will start blooming around the middle of the month and then the blackberries will start blooming about a week later. The poplars started blooming on April 18th in 1995 and on April 17th in 1994. George W. Barkley in his booklet, Beekeeping in Forsyth County, wrote: "The earliest I have known the poplars to bloom was April 10th in 1977, the latest, April 29th, another year." So for planning purposes, we should have all equipment in place and our bees ready for the nectar flow by April 15 (just in case).
Before starting the April checks, you should have a queen excluder and at least two extracting supers available for each hive.
Again in the early part of the month, check each colony as follows: 1) Evaluate the food stores, 2) remove any chemical strips that have been added, 3) check and equalize the brood, 4) place the queen excluder above either the second shallow super or above the second brood chamber. The extracting supers are placed on top of the queen excluder and 5) remove the entrance reducer.
1) Evaluate the food stores. Check and make sure that each colony has at least fifteen pounds of reserve honey. If the colony has less than the above-recommended fifteen pounds of reserve honey, then they should be fed. Steve Taber (1980, Bee Behavior, American Bee Journal, 120-8, 565) put it very nicely when he wrote the following: "The problem of wintering your bees is not over until the honeyflow has started in the spring. Read that sentence again; it's really important."
2) Remove any Apistan or Checkmite+ strips as well as any other chemicals that have been added. Both of these strips are used to control the Varroa mites. The Apistan strips are impregnated with fluvalinate (a contact pesticide) and the Checkmite+ strips are impregnated with coumaphos. Coumaphos is a member of the organophosphate group of pesticides. The residues can accumulate in wax and be harmful to bees if at high levels. Thus these strips need to be removed before adding any supers that are to be used for human consumption.
3) Check and equalize the brood. Brother Adam (1987) used equalization as a method of management and he described it as follows: "Equalising means attempting to establish all colonies throughout the apiary or apiaries at the same level of strength, so that at a given date in early spring all the colonies will be starting the season on a footing of equality." He also wrote that during the first spring inspection, "A note is made of the number of combs each colony covers and from these notes the overall average strength is assessed. Thus, we know in advance which colonies are in need of help, the exact amount of help they require, and at the same time which of the colonies can give up combs of bees and brood." Brother Adam, a monk at Buckfast Abbey, Devon, England, was the head of the monastery's internationally famous bee department for 73 years (1919 - 1992). It was during that period that he developed the Buckfast bee. The Buckfast bee is significant because it appears to have some degree of resistance to the tracheal mites.
Equalizing the brood is quite labor intensive but it is a good system that will help the weaker colonies by giving them more bees and at the same time will help to control swarming by reducing the number of bees in the stronger colonies. Unfortunately, this system will only work if you have more than one colony. A frame of mostly sealed brood with adhering bees is moved from the strong colony and exchanged with an empty comb from the weak colony. Before any frames are transferred, the queen should be located and set aside. Also only move that amount of brood that the weaker colony can keep warm. If both the strong colony and the weak colony are in the same yard, you must keep in mind that most of the older bees will return to the parent colony and will not be available to help keep the brood warm in the weak colony. Even though you move brood and bees, there is no way to predict how many adult bees will remain.
After all of the brood and bees have been moved, return the queens to their respective hives.
4) During the last four or five years, I have tried to give each hive either two shallow supers above their brood chamber or give them a second brood chamber. These shallow supers are “their supers” and are always a part of that hive. None of these frames are ever extracted. I use a queen excluder on each of my hives from April through October. For most hives, the queen excluder is either placed above the second shallow super or above the second brood chamber. The extracting supers, normally two, are placed on top of the queen excluder. Supers with new foundation should not be added at this time. Wait approximately two days after the nectar flow starts and then add one super only with new foundation to a hive (with no extracting supers).
The supers noted above, as "their super" are always a part of that hive and none of the frames are ever extracted. They serve both as a food chamber and as a brood chamber. It is used, most of the time, as a part of the colony's food source but is used for brood in the early spring before the queen excluder is put in place. As this early brood emerges from "their super" (now above the queen excluder), the bees will fill these cells up with honey that the colony will then have for their winter stores. With "their super" now above the queen excluder and the queen below, it will be necessary to check this super for queen cells in five or six days. Sometimes a strong colony will start queen cells above the queen excluder even though the colony has a laying queen in the brood chamber below.
If you plan to start with new foundation, be sure to use ten frames in order to get these frames drawn out with a minimum of burr and brace comb. After the center frames are well started, move the four outside frames to the center and the center frames to the outside. Switching the frames around in this manner will encourage the bees to work on all ten frames simultaneously instead of working only on the center frames. This is especially helpful if the colony is a little weak or if the temperatures are on the cool side. If you would like to get near perfect combs, reduce the number of frames to nine when all of the combs have been drawn out and about half filled with honey. Nine combs, when filled with honey, will result in thicker combs that are easier to uncap. These combs, when extracted, will be some of the best combs that can be made. Also this is a good time to add a second super of foundation. Place this new super of foundation either under the first extracting super or under the super of new foundation that is mostly drawn out.
5) And finally, remove the entrance reducer. The entrance reducer can normally be removed early this month. However, if unusually cold temperatures are in the forecast, just delay the removal a few days.
After the colony has built up for the nectar flow, then the next big concern is swarming. Most swarming takes place in our area during April and May. Swarming should be prevented, if at all possible, because a colony that swarms will produce little or no honey. The cause of swarming is normally associated with a crowded brood nest but Richard Taylor (1992) identifies the cause of swarming as follows: "What causes a colony to swarm is, primarily, its becoming congested with brood, not with bees. The way to keep swarming down, therefore, is to keep what is called an 'open brood nest', that is, one in which there are always plenty of empty cells in the center for the queen to lay in. The hive can become as populous as you like, so populous that the bees are not only occupying the supers but even hanging out on the front of the hive, and they are still not likely to swarm if there is empty, broodless space right in the center of the brood nest."
Dr. Taylor proceeded to explain how to obtain an open brood nest. "And the way you get that, of course, is to replace the combs that are full of brood with empty ones, or with foundation. More precisely, you take out two or three or four combs of brood from the center of the brood nest - three are about right - and replace them with empty drawn combs or frames of foundation. It goes very much against the instincts of the bees to swarm when there is that kind of emptiness in the middle of the brood nest. They want to get that filled up with brood first. So, having made that exchange of empty combs for brood, you repeat the exchange in another ten days or so, to make sure that open brood nest is preserved."
The brood and bees that are removed may be given to a weak colony, as they were during brood equalization, or they may be used to start additional hives or nucs. kgp
Updated:
11-17-09