Bee Chronicles

June 2019

May 15 Rain knocking tupip blossoms from trees

May 8 tulip blossom blown out of trees

May 1 Black locust in full bloom (should be in mid April) Rain knocked Locust blossoms out of trees. Some still left. Privit starting to bloom looks like a very short spring flow nectar season

Bee populations still too small to do a real good job of nectar gathering for honey. 3 hives out of 22 have bees all over top bars with a few on bottom of inner cover. Now hives with bees on top of inner cover which is an excellent sign for nectar gathering. Bees need to be forced up into honey super due to crowding. All the work is going into hive bodies and brood feeding.

Spring nectar flow "normally" should start about 1 June. This creates the situation where the bee populations and the maximum blooms coincide. I don't believe in global warming but over the past few years, the blooms are coming up to 6 weeks early. The bee populations are expanding at the normal rate. Hence, they are not large enough to gather large quantities of nectar until late May or early June.

Spring nectar flow ideally is 6 weeks long with the different blooms coming sequentially.

Black locust, honey locust, blackberry, tulip poplar, and privit all blooming simultaneously. Privit should come after tulip poplar and provide the brood food for the period between spring nectar flow and sourwood nectar flow. This period is usually 4-6 weeks long. Sometimes there can be a nectar dearth between the two nectar flows.

Something goes wrong with sourwood we will need to be prepared to feed syrup all summer long. I would recommend feeding small hives now to reduce the round trip time to collect nectar so the small colonies can still draw comb quickly and have enough food for the growing brood populations. About every 21 days you notice a large increase in bee population. This allows more foragers, more wax builders, and more storage bees. The bees won't bee good at honey supers until the brood chamber top bars are covered shoulder to shoulder with bees. I put my honey supers on when the brood box is 7 out of 10 frames being worked by lots of bees.

Queen excluders below honey supers is an option on single hive bodies. A queen excluder is a honey excluder as a fat bee full of nectar may not be able to get thru the excluder. I drill a cork sized hole in the front of the honey super between the handle grip and the top.

It is not too terrible to have the queen lay eggs in the honey super, but it will stain the honey super wax browner. Dark wax will stain the honey darker. It is just a cool thing to do to have nice clean whitish to light yellow honey comb wax so the honey color comes out true no matter how light or dark the honey is.

May 18: Starting to see flower fingers on the earliest sourwood trees. That is 3-5 weeks early depending on where the trees are. This tree is at the Blairsville Farmers' Market, on the right side of the cannery building next to the propane tank. In bright southern sun next to the asphalt parking lot. I think it is the first one to bloom in Union County, elevation about 1900 feet above sea level.

The Chinese Chestnuts which bloom before sourwood but can overlap are in full bud and starting to show color. Chestnut honey is darker and when mixed with sourwood, will darken the sourwood crop.

25 May: We are in the middle of a two weak draught, or better called a dearth. The bright sun and heat will dry the nectar out of the tulip poplar blooms by 3PM. Then, depending on the tree root depth and moisture content of the soil the tree may or may not recover producing much nectar over night. The bee hive should have enough stored honey to get it through to the next rain. Incoming nectar/honey will slow and the queen will slow down laying eggs.

There are lots of weeds out there. The thistles are good hardy ones. Some have blossoms the honey be can get into. The big purple ones (Russian Thistle) butterflies love but are too deep for the honey bee. Also, the weeds will be drier. The shady side of the mountain and along creeks will still have nectar due to abundant moisture.

Hungry bees will theoretically fly 2 miles for food and water (for air conditioning). This slows down the life inside the hive due to the distance/flight time of the round trips. Having A/C water closer to the hive will help. This frees up more bees for nectar/pollen collection. You can just turn a hose on to a very slow drip. Let it run out on the ground. The honeybee can get water out of mud. If you drip it into a bowl/bird bath put gravel or floats in for the bees to stand on and not drowned. They will stand on each other sinking the one on the bottom.

If you still have hive bodies that are not full of food and you are not collecting honey you can/should feed the bees sugar water to keep the queens laying and the populations growing . If you have some hives with honey supers and some without, feed the weaker hives with inside the hive feeders. You can just set a quart jar upside down with the smallest holes possible in the lid on the top bars. Cover the feeder with a super (for pint jars) or medium/deep (for quart jars) box with the hive lid on top of that. This will keep the strong hive from mixing syrup with already collected honey. It also is not attractive to other bees so no robbing gets started.