Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association

If you were not able to do the first hive inspection of the year in January or February, it must be a top priority now.  The following five paragraphs are repeated from the notes about January and February for your convenience. 

The day you open your colony must be perfect:  sunny, warm, the temperature above sixty degrees, and no wind.  No exceptions to any of these criteria! 

Checking the pattern of the brood is a good way to get a feel for your queen – a very, very important member of the hive at all times, but especially right now.  She should be laying eggs furiously, getting her work force ready.  Open the hive, remove one frame near the center, and inspect the pattern of the eggs she’s produced.  Be sure to hold your frame over the hive box while you look at it!  The last thing you want is for the queen to accidentally fall off into the grass or onto the ground while you are looking at the brood.  You could step on her without even knowing it or she might not make it back into the hive since she’s so full of eggs and not able to fly well, if at all.

The frame should hold a half-circle of brood in some stage of development.  Hopefully it will be capped.  This brood should be surrounded by capped honey and possibly some pollen (baby bee food).  You should have at least three or four frames that look like this.

If there are cells within the brood pattern area without any stages of brood, don’t worry about this unless there are lots and lots of empty cells. There are various reasons why an egg doesn’t make it and might get pulled out.  Usually it’s because a queen was bred with her own off spring-drone.  The workers are able to detect this anomaly and they pull that egg out.  If there are too many empty cells your queen might be failing or getting old and you might consider replacing her.

Make a note about the position of the cluster in the hive boxes.  Carefully replace all frames in exactly the position you found them.  Replace the inner cover.  Make sure the bees have a full jar of 2-1 syrup.  Replace the outer telescoping cover, making sure to elevate the back of the outer cover on a twig for ventilation.

By mid to late March things are really starting to happen! Babies are hatching, at least some nectar is coming in, the weather is warming up, there’s a lot more pollen available to use as food for the baby bees, and the queen is happily laying her eggs.

In preparation for this, the workers build queen cups in which the queen lays eggs. These are nurtured and turned into queens by feeding them royal jelly.

Then the workers put the queen on an exercise program, running her around the hive until she loses weight, stops egg production, and her ovaries shrink. She has now lost nearly one-third of her weight.

Next, some worker bees begin to engorge themselves with honey which stimulates their wax producing glands. The entire hive is disrupted because the normal duties of the bees have been halted.

The old queen eventually gets pushed out of the hive, and thirty to seventy percent of her loyal workers fly with her to the spot where she lands.  All the bees that are flying with her land in a ball around her and hang there, waiting for scout bees to give them a direction. This mass of bees is called the swarm.

Scout bees fly around in search of a small hole with a nice cavity behind it, such as the hollow of a tree, the small spaces in the siding, or the eaves of a home. When they have chosen a place, they get the rest of the bees excited and then lead the way to the new home site. The engorged bees begin to draw wax and the queen begins laying eggs again. Most likely she will be killed or superseded in a few weeks time to assure that the colony has a young queen to lay the eggs.

In the meantime, back at the parent hive, the newly forming queens are continuously fed royal jelly. The first queen to emerge from her cell at maturation will usually kill all the others.

Thus nature has produced an off spring in the honey bee world. A swarm is the way honey bees perpetuate their species.

Crisco patties: Place some Crisco patties inside the hive as a means to eliminate tracheal mites. These are made of Crisco and sugar, either powdered or granulated, and are non-toxic. They can be left on the hives year round. However, they also attract small hive beetles, so you may want to avoid their use in the hotter months. Tracheal mites are more of a threat in the early spring anyway.

Equalize your hives: If some of your hives look weak, you can swap brood from a stronger hive to boost a weak one. Do this only on a warm, windless day as mentioned above. Bees will always accept another hive’s brood, but you’ll need to be certain that the weak hive has enough house bees to feed and maintain the proper temperature for the transplanted brood.

Cut queen cells: In strong hives that want to swarm, the beekeeper can cut these cells to prevent swarming.

Package bees: If you’ve ordered package bees, they may be delivered this month. Be ready with your hive stand and wood ware. Keep your package in a cool, dry, dark place until you are ready to install it in its hive. I like to install a package later in the day if the temperature is going to be at least in the mid 50’s for several hours. This gives the bees all night to settle in and prevents immediate robbing since you’ll feed them once they’re installed.

Feed: The nectar flow will typically begin in the Piedmont region around the end of March. Once the bees begin bringing in nectar, reduce the mix of their feed down to a one-to-one syrup.   They won’t build up food stores too much at this time since most of it will go to sustaining, building up, and feeding the hive.

Split: If your bees from last year are doing well enough you may want to make a split. To do this you can either order a new queen or let the bees make their own queen by giving the new colony some very fresh eggs. However, if you let the bees make their own queen, you may experience a set back in production time since it would take less time to receive a new queen in the mail and have her up and running as an egg layer. You’ll actually split your colony in two making two hives out of the one strong one.

Swarms: March typically begins swarm season. Speak to some seasoned beekeepers and see if they might let you watch a swarm collection when one occurs. This is a fascinating phenomenon! It continues through April and into May.

Swarm traps: I like to strap together a solid bottom board, an empty brood chamber, an inner cover, and a top cover. I then hang this assembly from a strong limb of a tree. Bees like to be at least ten feet up, so throw a rope over the branch and hoist up your swarm box. Have some drawn foundation in there if possible as a lure.

Frames: If you’ve been keeping bees for a while check your brood frames for color. If they’re dark, remove the two end frames – the frames in position one and position ten – if they’re empty of food stores, and replace them with fresh foundation. Never keep really dark or black wax in your hives. Continue to replace some frames every year to maintain the health of your bees.

Things are at their peak this month because the nectar flow is very strong. Among the first things the bees bring in during a major flow is blackberry and clover nectar. They’ll begin storing these nectars and needing more and more room. As the month progresses the tulip poplar trees will bud out and produce the most important nectar flow in the Piedmont region. Because of this, swarming is now at its peak.

Strong hives that overwintered successfully and those started earlier in the spring from a nuc are the ones that may be expected to make enough honey that you can take some for yourself. If you have placed empty honey supers on a hive, and you plan to remove those supers to take the stored honey for yourself, stop feeding sugar syrup. Honey is not made from sugar syrup.

If, on the other hand, you have new hives or others that are still in the process of developing the interior structure of the hive and increasing the population of bees, you should continue feeding the one-to-one syrup to them.  As the availability of nectar in the environment ebbs and flows, they will consume the syrup at varying rates. You may well feed them continuously through the year depending upon the weather during spring and summer.

Cut queen cells: Continue to use swarm prevention methods.

Add supers: Adding supers relieves congestion, discourages swarming, and provides space for storage of more honey.

Water: Providing water for your bees is very important! As the weather warms up be sure there is a bird bath, lake, pond, or other source of water for them. They not only drink it, but will cool the hive with it as well.

Bee Institute: Sign up for the Young Harris Bee Institute. It’s a wonderful way to meet lots of beekeepers and boost your beekeeping knowledge.  You may also work on the various levels in the beekeeper certification program.