Looking at the next seven day forecast, we should have some great spring weather for the bees. I put a pollen patty on all of the hives last weekend and this should start the queen laying again or at least encourage her to increase her laying. We have had a few good days of weather lately and the trees are really starting to bud. You can see the aspens, some maples and willows starting to bud out. With good weather for the next few days the bees should be able to get out and we should see some pollen coming into the hives. This is always exciting because you know that they are replenishing some of the used stores they had from last year. They use the pollen for the brood and if you see lots of pollen coming it is a good indication there is a lot available and more importantly you probably have a queen and she is laying eggs.
The first year of a hive, all the resources are going into building up a hive. I heard yesterday that it takes 7 pounds of nectar to create one pound of wax (not sure how accurate that is) and when you start with new foundation the bees are going to be putting all the resources they can into building wax so the queen has a place to lay and the bees have a place to put nectar and pollen. You are also starting with a smaller bee count so they are focused on building up the population which is taking a lot of resources. Unfortunately the first year they typically build up slower and you don't get much honey if any.
The second year hive is really fun to see. Assuming they are coming out of winter healthy, they are going to start building up population about 6 weeks before new hives are being delivered and started. A second year hive will already have a place for the queen to lay so they don't have to focus on building wax. These hives should really build fast. The queen is still typically young enough that she is still close to her prime and boom the hive starts to explode in numbers. They do this so that they will have strong populations when the nectar flows start in the spring and then in the summer. You also have to be really careful that they don't get too big compared to their space. If they start to feel too crowded about the first of April through June they will swarm on you. It is a good thing to have a big healthy hive, but you don't want them swarming or else you loose that big population to gather nectar and pollen.
Things I will be looking for this week will be the amount of activity and pollen that is coming in. I would expect the pollen will be a white or gray color coming in and hopefully we will see quite a few of the bees coming in with it. I may take a look at a couple of the hives that I am worried about to make sure they have a queen and big enough food stores to get them through bad weather days. They also really don't have any nectar sources until trees start to flower. If they don't have much honey it is a good idea to feed them sugar water or some type of feed since they need a carbohydrate source. You also don't want to break up the cluster in a hive unless it is at least 60 degrees or so. We should hit that the next couple of days. I will let you know what I see.
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