Established hives are fully equipped to feed themselves, thank you very much! Feeding sugar water or high fructose corn syrup is almost never necessary--nor is feeding necessary when creating nucleus hives (nucs). In this blog, I hope to convince you that feeding your bees is not only bad for the health of the bees and bad for honey production, but is also bad for your bottom line! By learning about nectar flows, forage plants, and how the beekeeping season progresses in your area, you can increase your honey yields, your hive numbers, and the health of your bees.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that my bees know how to feed themselves and are healthier and more productive when I don’t interfere with their nutrition by feeding them “candy” or processed pollen paddies. When fed sugar water and corn syrup, the bees get lazy and do not forage for more nutritious fare. They use the artificial feed to make and store honey, thus greatly decreasing the quality, taste, and nutritional composition of the honey. Yes, the bees do build up more quickly when artificially fed, but they become addicted to this feeding. When the beekeeper quits feeding them and the bees must forage on their own, the momentum and any jump on the season are lost.

Some beekeepers think harvesting all of the honey and then feeding back sugar syrup for the bees to survive on is more economical, because the profit from the honey outweighs the cost of the syrup. I believe feeding ends up costing the beekeeper more in the health of the bees and in overall honey production. A healthy, strong, well-fed hive produces far more honey, and the honey is of better quality and taste. 

Currently, normal yields for my area are 40 to 50 pounds of honey per hive. Each established hive in my apiaries consists of 2 deep brood boxes and what I call one “eternal” shallow super. It’s always there. The nectar flow has finished here in Middle Tennesse, and after pulling honey for the last time a couple of weeks ago, I left these shallow supers filled with mostly uncapped honey. With this honey and what’s in the deeps, the bees have enough food to make it through the dearth of summer until the fall bloom. By that time, these top supers will be mostly empty, and the bees can refill them in the fall with the bloom from asters, goldenrod, and other fall flowers for their winter stores.

In addition to not feeding the hives, I took eleven 3-frame nucs from the strongest hives this spring during the nectar flow. So how did all this “hurt” my honey harvest? I averaged 73 pounds per hive! Remember, I said average for this area is 40 to 50 pounds. Yes, I could have squeezed out that last shallow super of honey and increased my yields even more, but I would have paid for such folly in next year's yields. And in addition to my honey crop, the bees produced the new nuc hives.

Not Feeding Nucs

Of the 11 nucs created this spring, 9 went on to make queens and are now thriving. The bees have mostly filled all the bottom deep hive bodies and, in most hives, are working to fill a second deep hive body (see photo below). I started the first 6 nucs just as the nectar flow was beginning and fed each nuc a partial frame of comb honey (frozen from last year) and then did not feed them again. Five of 6 of these were successful. 

I made the last 5 nucs a few weeks later, at the height of the nectar flow, and did not feed them at all. They had only the honey and pollen that were stored in the 3 frames taken from the original hives. I NEVER fed these nucs. Four of 5 of these were successful.

When I checked on these hives yesterday, I could not tell which hives I had fed with comb honey and which hives I had not fed until I looked back at my notes. They have all built up well.

I urge you to learn about the seasons in your area, learn when your nectar flows begin and end, learn what your bees forage on, and then adjust your timing for making nucs and for harvesting honey accordingly. You’ll benefit yourself and your bees.

Honey! It’s why I originally became a beekeeper even though that has morphed into so many more other good reasons to keep bees. I’ve been pulling honey for almost a month now and still can’t wait til tomorrow when I go out again, for the last time this season, to harvest this liquid gold.

This year’s honey is very light in color but has a very distinctive taste that I can’t quite identify. The first pull in early May was the most distinctive, and I’m not sure what it came from. Trees? yes, but which ones? the very early blooming shrubs and wildflowers? yes, but which ones? In the 3 successive pulls so far this season, the bees have gone from foraging on trees and shrubs to multiflora rose, honeysuckle, wild blackberries, and now clover. Each pull has become milder in flavor, with it’s own distinctive color and taste. 

Many beekeepers wait until mid or late summer to harvest all their honey at one time. The honey is pulled, blended all together, and so is of one flavor and color. If the beekeeper has integrity, this honey is a wonderful blend of the bees’ nectar gathering and the beekeeper’s season of toil. If the beekeeper values profit over craft, there is no way to know what you are getting. In a bad year, the beekeeper might be tempted to buy honey from elsewhere to mix with a paltry crop. Sad but true.

The reason I pull multiple times in a season and get such variety in my honey is simply because I work alone. As an older woman without the muscle power of a man or of a younger person, I’ve learned to adapt, which means I have to work more slowly and to spread the harvest out over a month or so, little by little. The wonderful upside of this is the terroir of honeys that I harvest. Each is distinctive because of the flowers that happen to be blooming at the time.

Beyond this is the weather conditions. If it has been very rainy, even though a certain flower is in full bloom, the bees are unable to harvest the nectar, being stuck in the hive because of the downpours. If flowers bloom during a particularly windy time, the bees cannot fly in the high winds and do not harvest that nectar.

So, as you can see, each year’s honey will vary in composition and flavor. This is why I anticipate each year’s crop with such excitement! What color will it be? How will it taste? No two years and no two pulls are alike. This time of year is the highlight. I harvest and sell my honey and get feedback from my customers. Neither of us are ever disappointed!

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/honey-harvest-zbcz1406.aspx#ixzz34AoO2NsG

A couple of blogs ago, I described making nucleus hives (nucs) and the importance of timing their creation to coincide with the nectar flow (read last 2 blogs) and promised I would report on how it all turned out. Making nucs is paramount in keeping bees these days because so many hives die each year in comparison with hive losses of the past. Just to stay in the game and to keep the bees alive, beekeepers must add new hives every year. Making nucs during the nectar flow is a wonderful way to aid the bees, because they naturally want to swarm and nucs are artificial swarms! The bees win and the beekeeper wins--the bees get to do what they are meant to do and the beekeeper gets to keep more bees.

Fewer bees are lost in artificial swarms than if they'd swarmed naturally, so more bees are left to produce honey AND you have a new hive.

I made 6 three-frame nucs just as our nectar flow was getting underway here in Middle Tennessee. I made another 5 nucs a week or so into the flow. So how did they do? Did the nucs make laying queens and get down to business? A current Bee Culture article says that a 70 percent success rate is to be expected--so that was my goal.

Of the first six nucs, 5 successfully reared queens and are now laying and producing brood. I added the bees from the unsuccessful nuc to one of the successful ones. These 5 nucs each received one feeding of about 1/2 shallow frame of comb honey (frozen from last year's harvest) when I made the nucs. I did not give them anymore feed, and they are storing honey and making new wax.

I started the the last 5 nucs a week or so into the nectar flow and gave them NO supplemental feed. There was some honey in the frames, as well as pollen, brood, and unhatched eggs, at the time I made the nucs. Four of the 5 produced laying queens. Again I combined the unsuccessful nuc with one of the successful ones. Nine of 11? I'm satisfied with that. We'll see how they progress.

The picture above shows something interesting in one of the nucs that was unsuccessful in making a queen for itself. It was the last nuc I'd made that day and I was tired. After I'd chosen the 3 frames from the original hives and was installing them, I noticed that one of the frames was almost all drone brood! Crap! I thought, a bunch of useless bees that won't do the work of making a new hive! Well, a couple of days later, I walked by and noticed that the worker bees were dragging out drone larvae! Smart girls! They were in survival mode and needed to make a queen and gather food. The boys were a drain on already stretched resources, so they'd uncapped the cells and discarded them. The bees in this nuc did bring in enough honey to fill all three frames, but there was no laying queen, so I added them and their honey to a nuc with a queen.

The pictures below document moving a nuc into a regular deep hive body.

It's late April here in Tennessee and the nectar flow is on and should continue through June. In my first year of beekeeping, I made a lot of mistakes because I didn't understand what the nectar flow was or the importance of it. Since then, I've learned to watch the bees, learn from them, and work with them as the season progresses.

What Is the Nectar Flow?

The nectar flow is the time of year when the native vegetation is in full bloom. Here that starts about mid-April when the trees begin to flower and continues through May with blooming shrubs like blackberries, honeysuckle and, yes, even multiflora rose and privet, as well as a multitude of wildflowers. Then at the end of June, the summer dearth begins with little blooming other than clover. In the fall, we usually have another, smaller bloom of asters, goldenrod, and other wildflowers. In very dry years, this fall bloom can be pretty minimal. 

Why Is the Nectar Flow So Important? 

It's important to understand how the bees respond to the bloom. Even before the flowers begin to appear in the spring, the trees will begin to produce pollen. At the same time, the queen begins laying again and building up the hive population that will collect nectar and make honey. The worker bees bring in the pollen to feed all the new larvae that will metamorphose into adult worker bees. By the time the flowers begin to bloom, the population in a healthy hive is exploding and drone bees also begin to appear in preparation for future swarming.

With the bloom, the bees can build new wax. It takes several times more nectar to make a pound of wax that it does to make a pound of honey, so the bees can't make wax unless they have lots of nectar--only during the flow. As the spring bloom builds, healthy hives may produce queen cells in preparation for swarming, their normal method of making new colonies. The old queen and a large swarm of bees will go off and begin a new hive.

Knowing the specifics of the flow for your geographical location is important in managing your bees to maximize hive health as well as honey production. If you create artificial swarms or nucleus hives (nucs) when the bees would normally swarm, the bees get to start a new colony and you get to keep more bees. And because you won't lose up to half of your bees, which can happen in a normal swarm, more bees will be left to produce honey. The original hive will think it has swarmed and settle down to building their stores. The purpose of a spring flow, for the bees, is to provide food for the rest of the year. (Many of my customers are surprised to learn that bees do not make honey all year long and that a bee hive isn't a year-round spigot for honey.)

Knowing when the flow ends and the dearth begins also will help you know how much honey to leave in your hives for the bees. Feeding is an unnecessary expense of time and money in a well-managed hive. Nothing you can feed them will be as good for them as their own nutritious honey. Here, the fall honey from asters and goldenrod serve as supplies for the bees to winter on. I may share combs of honey among hives in the fall and winter, giving frames from overstocked hives to lesser prepared hives, but I won't feed them sugar syrup.

Another drawback of artificial feeding is that you can stimulate your bees to behave as if it is spring at the wrong time of the year, causing them to build up and collapse if nectar and pollen are not sufficient for their increased population and abundance of off-season brood.

Effects of Changes in the Native Environment

I have described a nectar flow in a native environment. City dwellers may have a more prolonged bloom, because people plant and water flowers for an all-summer-long bloom. This can benefit the bees and increase honey harvest for urban beekeepers. On the other hand, if you live in an agricultural area, native vegetation may have been plowed under for row crops. Your bees will have less natural forage and a more feast-or-famine supply, depending on the crops and when they bloom.

How Are the 2014 Nucs Doing?

It's been a month since the last post and I described making the first nucleus hives of 2014. At the end of last week, I moved all of those nucs into single deep woodenware (see pictures). The 3 frames from each nuc when into the center of a deep brood box. On either side of these, I added three empty, foundation-less frames for the bees to draw out. Remember, they can only draw out these combs during a nectar flow. I won't get any honey from these new hives until next year.

I found new queens in the nucs but no signs that they were laying. However, the bees were building wax and bringing in honey and pollen, so I should see brood soon. After checking all my established hives and adding supers to those that needed it, I decided to make more 3-frame nucs from the strongest hives. Doing so may cut down on the honey harvest this year, but since 2013 was such a dismal year for the bees, they need to rebuild and NOW is the time!

Making nucleus hives or “nucs” is a good way to expand your apiary without spending a lot of money and without the worry of introducing Africanized genetics from packaged bees. (Now that Africanized bees inhabit our more southern states, this is a concern.) You also will be creating queens that are best acclimated to your geographical area. To be successful in making nucs, timing is important. 




Timing

The absolute best time to start a new hive is at the beginning of the spring nectar flow, which is just about now in Middle Tennessee.

Healthy hives naturally cast off swarms at this time, because it takes a lot of nectar to build the wax necessary to establish a new hive. Honeybees will only make new wax when they have an abundance of nectar. In my area, the nectar flow occurs roughly from mid-April to mid-June. I pushed the season a bit by making my nucs this first week of April, but the 10-day forecast was great, the Redbuds were blooming, and I had a few frames of honey left in the freezer for starter feed. 

In making a nuc, essentially you are creating a controlled swarm--but without the queen. So along with taking bees for the new hive, you must ensure that you take newly laid eggs, less than 3-days old. In the new hive, the bees will discover that they have no queen and will go to work making one. To do this, they will choose one or more of these eggs, create a queen cell around it, and when it hatches feed it only royal jelly. Waiting for the nectar flow is important not only because the bees will have access to lots of nectar and pollen for food and wax building, but also because plenty of drones will be available this time of year for the newly hatched queens to mate with.

This timing is also important because bees from your bigger, more established hives will be busy gathering nectar and pollen from nature’s abundance and less likely to rob out the smaller nucs.

How to Make a Nuc

You can see in the picture that my nuc hardware is about one-half the size of a normal deep hive body. In fact, it is a normal deep hive body that I’ve cut in half, nailing on a board to create the side. You can make your own, or you can order them from your favorite beekeeping supply company. For those of you using all medium boxes, you could simply use a whole medium box. I have topped mine with a shallow super, also cut in half, so I can put the starter feed (chunks of honeycomb) on top of inner cover inside that box.  

The hive I take the nuc from must be healthy with lots of bees and a good laying queen. A healthy hive will have a good solid brood pattern and by this time should have lots of eggs, larvae, and capped brood. Drones should also be present by this time of year.

I choose 3 frames, one with the less than 3-day old eggs that have not yet hatched into larvae, one with pollen and honey, and the other with lots of capped and uncapped brood. This is the one time during a hive inspection that I make sure I actually see the queen and not just evidence that she is present. I don’t want to accidentally take her away from the original hive on one of the frames. The frame with the eggs goes in the middle of the nuc box. The honey and pollen frame for feed goes on the outside. The frame with brood at various stages goes on the other side and should have lots of bees crawling over it to keep the brood warm. They tend to want to stay with, feed, and protect the brood. These are house bees, but with a lack of foragers in the new hive, they will soon learn to take on that responsibility. 

If you have still have empty space in your box, these 3 frames go in the center and either drawn comb if you have it or frames ready for the bees to draw out should fill the space.

Ideally you should move the nucleus hives at least 2 miles from the original hives so the bees do not return to them. I’ll admit I don’t always do this. This year 3 of my nucs came from a distant apiary, but the others came from hives on my own farm. I moved them as far as I could from the original hives and left them screened up for a day. I find that since the new bees are mostly house bees and have the brood to look after, they don’t return to the original hives.

The next day, I partially removed the screens. This allows the bees to come and go but makes it harder for bees from stronger hives to rob them.

Fellow beekeepers, have you wondered why Monsanto has purchased Beelogics, a honeybee research company? Or why Bee Culture magazine has suddenly drank Monsanto's Kool-ade and are openly singing Monsanto's praises? (See "Future Opportunity in Honey Bee Health" in the current issue of Bee Culture, written by Gregory Heck, whose title at Monsanto is the "Weed Cotrol Platform Lead in the Plant Biology Program."

I believe it's because they know their chemicals are killing our bees and they want to genetically modify bees as they do plants, a sort of "Roundup ready" honeybee if you will. They would have us believe that this genetic engineering is safe and that horizontal gene transfer does not occur. Studies have been done that prove it does occur. 

Inform yourselves. This is the next big thing in beekeeping that we beekeepers will have to deal with. Here's an interesting link on research by the Pew Trust. 

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Food_and_Biotechnology/pifb_bugs_012204.pdf

On a happier note--I will be making nucleus hives today! I've been up since before dawn--so excited I can hardly stand it, but must wait as the day warms. Read about how it goes in my next post.

The spade bites into the earth and I turn over a shovelful of garden soil. It’s a windy March day, but the sun is warm on bare arms blanched from a winter of layered clothing. A male cardinal sings out his cheery presence, and in the distance, crows scold some unseen interloper.

 I am reworking my garden beds, turning up earthworms and little clumps of grass and weeds as I go. At the end of the row, I lay down the shovel and kneel in the path along the newly forming row and begin to crumble the clumps with my hands, shaking loose the toupees of grass and throwing them upside-down into the path to compost.

The earth crumbles in my fingers and smells clean.

I work my way back down the row on my knees, then stand, retrieve the shovel, and begin turning over another row. I continue until the bed is 4 feet wide and 50 feet long then make another path on the other side, about 2 feet wide, throwing the topsoil from the path back up on this bed that I am creating. I cover both row and path with old straw mucked from the goats’ shed. Behind me are four completed rows neatly tucked into their straw blankets, snoozing out the last weeks of cold weather. The first bed already has onions peeking out of the straw, and further down the row, potatoes will soon make their appearance. Working a little each day, I hope to complete one or two more rows before it’s time to plant the warm-season vegetables. 

My brother has offered me the use of this tiller, but I’ve declined. He thinks I’m crazy for doing all this hand digging. How do I explain to him that I actually enjoy the quiet, solitary labor, and that the roar of a tiller’s motor and the jarring way it lurches through the soil would ruin it for me?

Why do some of us love the work of a homestead and others look at it and think drudgery!

Humans are designed to perform and enjoy work and to reap benefit from it. Along with physical exercise, the benefits include the satisfaction of producing something useful or beautiful with our own labor, the sheer joy of using mind and body, the expression of creative and aesthetic impulses, and the creation of a soul-satisfying life.

Good work is one simple secret to a fulfilled life. We’ve been taught that work is drudgery to be avoided or hurried through just to get it over with, to seek out labor-saving devices to eliminate it, and to delegate it to others or pay them to do it for us. Of course, this may be true of work that is directed by someone else and that must be performed in a prescribed way without our own creative input. Yes that is drudgery!


But the work performed by entrepreneurs, artists, writers, musicians, hobbyists, and yes homesteaders can offer this type of fulfillment. Homesteading can give us freedom and variety in our activities, can provide an outlet for creativity, and can bring joy. Those of us who love this work become engrossed in the life we are creating, lose track of time, and enter that flow state that makes it so enjoyable. It is that place that makes the work itself, and not the finished product, the whole point of our effort.

To find this place, to enjoy where we are and what we are doing right now, we have to unlearn some old habits and rethink some things we may have learned about work.

Physical labor is beneath us. Our bodies actually crave physical labor! That’s why so many people run, go to gyms, play sports, take up physically challenging hobbies--they see the benefits of and enjoy the way their bodies feel with physical activity. The physicality of homesteading chores can condition us, body and mind, at the same time we are producing something of value. Even seemingly monotonous chores such as hoeing a long garden row can become a meditation for the mind while using the body. I cannot count the number of times I have started a task that at first looked daunting and soon become lost in the work and my own reverie. The next thing I know an hour has passed and I actually have something to show for it! The reward for a day spent outdoors using large muscles is a healthy body and a good night’s rest.

Work is something to be endured and hurried through to get to the finished product. On the contrary, work is it’s own reward! Physical labor can be a feast to the senses--especially when performed outdoors. The sights, sounds, and smells of nature are all around us. We can feel the way our bodies move and become part of the landscape. While carrying hay and water to the goats, a month-old kid gambols up, full of curiosity. Before he knows what’s happened, I’ve reached down and scooped him up, holding him against my face to breathe in his sweet smell. His belly is full of his mother’s milk and his eyes are bright and clear. Little nubs of horns appear through the tufts of fur on his head. He wriggles against me until I set him down again. He runs off to check in with his mother as if to undo the indignity I’ve foisted upon him.

Most of our work is, by necessity, about eating, either directly or indirectly. We work in the garden or with animals to produce our food, or we work for money to buy our food. Is it any wonder then that along with being labor-intensive, food preparation can entail the most sensuous and pleasurable of activities? From the field to the fork, we use all of ourselves and all of our senses to produce what we eat. From the outdoor work of gardening; to the color, aroma, and sizzle of cooking; to the pleasure of eating, this work is to be savored. 

Work is something we need to let others do for us. We miss more than we gain by delegating away all of our physical labor. Being engaged in physically producing something ourselves develops resourcefulness and creativity as well as a sense of pride and accomplishment in a finished product. Tell me, which potato tastes better--the one you pick off the grocer’s shelf or the one you dig from the earth with your own hands, slice thin into a skillet along with your own homegrown onions, and sauté in a little olive oil until the potatoes are golden brown and the onions caramelized? 

As I finish my work on this March day, I look again at those little green spires in the onion bed and check the straw over the potato bed. I can already taste their promise.

While we are all anxiously awaiting spring, here is a link you might enjoy.

http://www.homestead.org

it is chock full of articles about homesteading, gardening, cooking, livestock, etc. and well worth a visit.

I especially hope you will enjoy an article about Homesteading in Later Life by yours truly!

http://homestead.org/BettyTaylor/LaterLife/HomesteadingLater.htm?utm_source=Homesteading+Later+in+Life+-+March+8%2C+2014&utm_campaign=3-8-14&utm_medium=email

Beekeeping is about weather watching. On February 18th, the Sandhill cranes flew over my middle Tennessee home on their migration north, the mercury on the front porch hit 68 degrees, and the honeybees broke their cluster, flying madly about the farm. By the next day, the bees were bringing in light tan pollen. The weather service predicted a few more warm days before winter returned. This was the break in the weather that I had been waiting for.  

Our spring bloom is still 2 months away, but this was a great opportunity to check on the bees. I had not opened a hive since last fall, when I’d inspected and prepared them for winter. (See Late Fall Hive Inspection.)

On the first day of the warmup, I visited my 3 apiaries and each of their hives. I was careful not to disturb the brood chamber where the bees cluster in cold weather and where the queen was beginning to lay brood, but I did manipulate the boxes. It has been my habit to run 2 deep chambers topped by one shallow super of honey all year. In all but one hive, I found that the bees had moved up into the 2nd deep brood chamber. I momentarily set asked the top shallow super of honey while I reversed the 2 deep chambers, so that the bees would have room to expand upward this spring. One hive had bees in both chambers, so I did not reverse this hive. Reversing would have split the cluster area and any brood that the queen had laid--spreading it out and making it difficult for the bees to keep it warm. If temperatures dip quickly, as they are likely to this time of year, the brood could have been susceptible to chilling.

I was happy to see the late winter vigor of most of the hives. The bees formed a thick mass over the top frames of the brood boxes and were up in the top shallows getting honey. I did find one dead hive in each apiary, but I was not surprised. Last year was a bad year for me and most everyone else in beekeeping. These hives had never completely recovered and had not produced any honey in 2013. In each of them, I found only a fistful of bees, their heads stuck inside empty honey cells. The cluster had been too small to survive the winter, and nearby, stronger hives had robbed them out on warm days. The few remaining bees had starved and frozen. I could tell they’d been robbed out by the massive amount of chewed up wax discarded on the bottom boards. When the bees in a hive eat their own honey, they do it neatly and systematically, as the bees were doing on this day. When a hive is robbed, the robbers swarm in and tear the wax away, leaving ragged edges and chewed-up litter behind.

Two other hives that had been so-so in the fall were doing quite well, but they both were low on honey stores. I doubted they’d make it the 2 months until the nectar flow began without starving. Fortunately, I had partial frames of honey in the freezer that I’d stored in the fall. I would thaw and add a couple to each hive the the next day. If I hadn’t had these frozen frames, I could have traded a few empty frames with full ones from nearby hives, as these were still stocked well with capped honey.

Finally, I performed a manipulation called “checkerboarding” that I’ve been experimenting with the past few years. The gist of the whole thing is to prevent swarming later in the season by breaking up the honey dome above the brood chamber and thus giving the bees room to expand upward. It also is supposed to increase honey yields. The idea is espoused by Walt Wright and a full explanation can be found by searching him or by searching “checkerboarding” at Beesource.com.

In my setup, the honey dome is that top super of honey. In most of the hives, this super was still full of honey. After I’d reversed the deep chambers, I replaced this super but removed every other frame of honey. I refilled these slots with empty drawn comb that I’d saved, frozen, from last year. Above this, I added a second super of drawn comb interspersed with the frames of honey that I’d removed from the first super--in a checkerboard pattern. The key to this is having the drawn comb on hand.

This is the 3rd year that I’ve performed this manipulation, and with my healthy, survivor hives, I’ve had very good results so far: hardly any swarming and much greater honey yields. Let me say though that this is a controversial topic and that I have not had enough experience with it yet to wholeheartedly recommend it. But so far, my results are very promising.

I also love this method because I’m a lazy beekeeper. I won’t have to go through my hives and cut out queen cells in an effort to prevent swarming later--usually to no avail anyway, and I won’t have to manipulate the boxes again until next year. All I have to do now is wait for the spring bloom to begin and add supers for the bees to fill with honey!

On the second day of the warmup, I observed the bees bringing in tan-yellow pollen! Probably elm and/or maple pollen. Amazing how quickly nature springs to life when the chill is gone even for a day! The appearance of pollen coming into the hives is a good sign that the queen has begun spring brood laying. The workers gather pollen as protein to feed the larvae. According to Mr. Wright, this is perfect time for checkerboarding. I’ve found a great site to stay informed about what plants are producing pollen and when. It’s really for allergy sufferers, but I think it’s a great resource for beekeepers as well: www.pollen.com. You can type in your zip code and get a list of what plants are currently producing pollen in your area.

These late winter hive manipulations now done, I will go back to my weather watching. I will be waiting for signs that the nectar flow has begun. In middle Tennessee that occurs sometime in April. After that, I hope to watch the bees fill super after super with honey! Yes, beekeeping is about weather watching, but it is also about hope.

Question: Can you tell that this is a healthy hive hive just by looking at this picture?

Answer: Yes! Notice the melted snow on the top cover. This cluster of bees is large enough to generate enough heat to cause this melting on their roof!