Two More Weeks

The bees are about to arrive.  We will be picking up 20 packages of bees on April 14th.  It should be a lot of fun.  I have spent the last two months building hives and now I am ready to focus on the bees.  For those who are just getting started, now is the time you want to set up your hive.  Pick a good sunny location.  An ideal location would have the entrance facing South East so that the sun can wake the girls up early.  A little afternoon shade isn't bad and some kind of shelter to protect them from the North wind in the winter is good too.  If it were me I would lean towards too much sun vs. not enough.  Set your hive on something so that it gets it off the ground and high enough to avoid vegetation blocking the entrance.  You will want your site as level as you can get it.  I then put a shim or two on the back so that it tilts slightly forward.  This makes it so that if any water does get into the hive it will run out the entrance.  Once you have your site located and prepared.  I would put your hive in its place.  You will start with the bottom board and then one box on top of that.  You will want to put your feeder in, but I would not fill it up yet.  If it is a division feeder, I like to remove 2 frames.  I would wait to fill it on the day you get the bees, but good to have it all in place.  You then will put the inner cover on and the top cover.  Your hive is ready to go.  You can put your entrance reducer on if you would like, you will want it on when you put the bees in.

Over the next two weeks you will want to make sure there is a water source for the bees.  This can be a natural source or a man made one.  You will want to make sure you have all your safety gear (suit, gloves, hive tool and smoker if you want).  I would go to youtube and watch a few videos on how to install a package of bees.  This will get you even more excited and when I show you on the 14th, it will look really familiar.  The night before the bees arrive, it is a good idea to make up the sugar syrup.  For spring feeding it is 2 parts water to 1 part sugar and I do it based on weight.  In volume I think it is almost 1:1.  You will want it room temperature when you feed it to your bees.  On a new package of bees I like to feed them until they have the first two boxes filled up or until they don't take it any more.  A lot of times there will be a natural nectar flow and the bees will prefer it over the sugar syrup. You are ready to become a beekeeper.

It is extremely good to read up on how to keep bees and youtube is a great resource as well.  I will not be able to explain everything in the short time we will have on the 14th, but there are tons of resources and info that are available either in print or on the internet.

Beekeeping is a great hobby and you will love keeping bees!         

First Year vs. Second Year Beehives

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.