Honey Bees

Pollen flow starts in east texas early february

Queens starting to lay eggs here

Spring around the corner !

bill
 
Only one hive without activity yesterday, much better than last year. Spring cannot get here fast enough.
 
Pollen flow starts in east texas early february

Queens starting to lay eggs here

Spring around the corner !

bill
How soon do you start getting swarms TreeDaddy? Dad is spending the winter in north Florida, thought about asking him to put out a swarm trap, he will be coming back around mid march. Any chance of catching a swarm that early?
 
traps go out first of march

prime team seems to be April - may here although I caught one in march last year

Its great fun to "run the traps!"

bill
 
Was a nice day here in the upper 40s. The girls were flying and it looks like 5 of 7 have made it so far.
It was nice to see the survival rate so far but kinda disappointing seeing them break cluster this time of the year when the next 45-60 days are the hardest part of the winter. Hopefully we don’t have any sudden sub zero type weather
 
Checked on the girls this weekend

Her majesty is laying eggs......larvae and capped brood in all colonies

Reversed several boxes

Elm,willows,dandelion,henbit flowering with pollen

Spring Magic around the corner !!

bill
 
I’m 2-3 months away from swarm season here🙃. Looks like them girls have a lot of room yet
 
I have 3 hives and im in wi, we have had the warmest winter on record with some pretty wild swings in temps , today we hit the 50's and i was able to observe my hives. I had assumed one didnt make it from an earlier check. The other two i had seen some activity on a warmer day a couple weeks ago, today those two hives had a lot of activity when it warmed up to the 50"s. I even had bees 100 yards or more from the hives buzzing around my head.
I opened up the suspected dead hive and confirmed it was dead. They appeared to die in cluster and there was some bees in cells butt out. My undeducated guess is they starved since they were some honey in a few frames but most of it was quite a ways from the cluster.
Im concerned this oddly warm winter has them using more honey stores than normal and we are a long ways from any kind of flow . Tommorow we will hit 60 degrees and im wondering if im ok to peak into the two living hives and try to determine how much food they have left? Also , would it hurt to put some of the full capped frames from the dead hive into the other two if it hits 60 degrees to insure they have enough food to make it to april/ may, or am i better feeding them dry sugar somehow. I felt they had enough honey going into into winter (two larger supers each) but now am having doubts.
 
John I have 60 hives so maybe I can help. Bees often die because they can not move to honey because they cluster and then it gets colder and they have to pull cluster together tighter and pull away from honey. The honey may only be 3 inches away but they won't be able to move to it until it warms up so they slowly run out of energy. What helps bees in winter is to periodically to have a day warm enough to break cluster and move and a chance to leave hive to use the bathroom because they won't defecate inside. No it will not hurt to go inside if you need to when they have broken cluster on a warm day and yes it is fine to add frames of honey or to move frames around just don't put any eggs on the outside. If they are low on honey a simple candy recipe could help as a backup in fact I add candy to every hive in the fall as insurance. Recipe, I mix with drill in 5 gallon bucket
25 pounds of sugar
1 quart of apple cider vinegar
3 table spoons honey bee healthy
2 table spoons of citric acid

This be enough for like 4 or 5 hives and would help an entire yard if divided equally. Put spacer box on top and put candy on layer on newspaper above frames, it will harden into candy. I know many bee keepers that spin out all honey in fall and then force bees to cluster on candy and not honey and then they can add all winter and they know bees will not be removed from food. I am not that brave but I do put in as back up food. Good luck
 
John I have 60 hives so maybe I can help. Bees often die because they can not move to honey because they cluster and then it gets colder and they have to pull cluster together tighter and pull away from honey. The honey may only be 3 inches away but they won't be able to move to it until it warms up so they slowly run out of energy. What helps bees in winter is to periodically to have a day warm enough to break cluster and move and a chance to leave hive to use the bathroom because they won't defecate inside. No it will not hurt to go inside if you need to when they have broken cluster on a warm day and yes it is fine to add frames of honey or to move frames around just don't put any eggs on the outside. If they are low on honey a simple candy recipe could help as a backup in fact I add candy to every hive in the fall as insurance. Recipe, I mix with drill in 5 gallon bucket
25 pounds of sugar
1 quart of apple cider vinegar
3 table spoons honey bee healthy
2 table spoons of citric acid

This be enough for like 4 or 5 hives and would help an entire yard if divided equally. Put spacer box on top and put candy on layer on newspaper above frames, it will harden into candy. I know many bee keepers that spin out all honey in fall and then force bees to cluster on candy and not honey and then they can add all winter and they know bees will not be removed from food. I am not that brave but I do put in as back up food. Good luck
thank you for the advice! what you described makes sense based on what i saw inside my dead hive, the capped frames were on the other side of the super from the cluster - im going to go into the two active hives tomorrow and see if i can slip a full frame or two of Honey in there as insurance, thanks again, JV
 
I have trouble during warm winters. Hives start building too early before there is adequate food - I lose more hives in warm winters than any other conditions
 
Interesting others saw bee activity today as well. Had a honeybee checkout a spot where spilled a bit of gas from filling chainsaw. I'm thinking where the heck did you come from and why gas but maybe any strong aroma is worth checking out when nothing is blooming. Have heard of bears chewing on gas cans for similar reasons of attraction to the smell?

Hope the missus goes back to taking a nap, bloom time is hopefully at least many weeks away but strange year.
 
Lost one hive out of four, much better this year. Put feed shims and sugar bricks on a couple weeks ago, will check today to see how much they have used, only about a week away from bloom.20220220_134829.jpg
 
Glad to see this thread crank back up

Plan to hang swarm traps today!

bill
 
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