Like the sailor adrift at sea, water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Yes,we have flowers, but it is too cool for the flower to produce nectar unless you still have dandelions and when it is warm enough for nectar then it is raining and the bees can’t fly. What’s a beekeeper to do?

Check the hives for weight and if light feed, feed, feed. This is an unusual spring; we are in the middle of swarm season, but not enough food for a proper bee buildup. I have heard of several hives starving to death. If feeding. they are building and drawing comb… give lots of room to prevent the swarming instinct from kicking in, but keep feeding. If we continue with a cool and wet June the bees will have a hard time building. Prevent them from shutting down brood laying by feeding and hopefully we will be ready in bee strength when the honey flow starts.

Beekeeping 101 Bee Day

In our day-to-day activities and work in the hives, sometimes we forget to look at the big picture. So the bees are building up and doing well. If you were monitoring them and gave them lots of room they didn’t build or sneak any queen cells by you and there has been no swarming (Yes this is the month for swarms). But now we will go into a cooler time and the dandelion honey flow is almost over so there will be a small “dearth”. How do you want to handle it? One school of thought is don’t worry it will all work out and balance in the end and honey is not guaranteed, but you should always get some. Another school of thought is feed the bees even though there is lots coming in because they are raising a lot of brood and to slow that down or stop it would weaken the hive for the upcoming flow. Feed, “sugar”, its cheap compared to the nectar/honey the bees will be eating to produce wax and babies.

The main honey flow usually occurs June 25 through July 31. Sorry there is no indicator light and it can be early or late, long and slow or fast and short. There are no guarantees! Most beekeepers think it will be early this year and the rest will depend on the weather and moisture. Here is the Main Point… if the queen has not laid the egg by June 26 the bee will NOT be contributing to the main honey flow effort. Here is where most fail to maximize their honey yield, they end up with a hive with 35,000 bees during the flow, but could have had a hive at 70,000 bees during the flow. It has been proven that double the bees will produce 1 ½ times more honey. So if you want the honey, it is time to feed, especially when the weather turns cool and rainy.

What is done in the spring affects the whole season and “early” decisions will have a great impact on the bee’s success. So, we now have Bee Day, the day by which all the raising of bees for honey flow is over and I think that day is June 26.