(Information thanks to Tim Stumo, North Iowa Beekeepers Association)
Spring Feeding
When honey bees are clustered at 45 degrees Fahrenheit and below, they only feed directly on top of the cluster. So if in late winter, early spring you see your honey bees at the top of the frames and there is no food there
When outside temperature is above 45 degrees Fahrenheit, honey bees can move around throughout the hive to retrieve food.
Some like to feed dry sugar through the winter as sugar is cheap, good feed source, and it works well to absorb excess moisture. Sugar patties are a great feed source.
Some beekeepers like to feed liquid syrup in the spring, but when to start? It is recommended that when dandelions start to bloom in your area, that is a good time to feed syrup and pollen substitute if you want to stimulate brood rearing.
On the topic of switching your brood chambers?
Your first question to be is: Where is the brood? Some boxes may all the brood in the top, while some may have brood in each box?
Your second questions should be: If all my bees and brood are in the top box, can I cozy my bees down by reducing them down to one brood chamber?
Making Splits
You can make more bees or you can make more honey.
More Splits = less honey.
Fewer splits =more honey, but also increases the chances of swarming.
How many splits can you make? First, take an inventory, count:
- Frames of brood
- Frames of resources
- Empty frames
A successful split recipe:
- 2-3 frames of brood
- 2-3 resource frames
- 4-5 empty frames(drawn comb and/or bare foundation)
- A Queen
One of the most useful but most underutilized tools is the “Queen Excluder.” When making a split, shake all of your bees from your frames into a bottom box, add the queen excluder and move the brood frames that you are intending to make splits with into the top box. Your nurse bees will distribute between brood frames in the bottom box as well as in the top box, but your queen will not be able to move into the top box. This will ensure you can make your splits without finding the queen.
Need a queen for your split; there are a few options to choose from:
Adding a Queen
Buy a queen
- Cost around $35-45
- Starts laying right away
- Can be tricky to introduce and get accepted
- She SHOULD already be mated
- Quality is often a guess
Walk away split
- This is letting them make their own queen
- Free!
- You won’t get the best quality queens
- Takes 3-4 weeks before you have a new laying queen
Buy a queen cell
- Costs $5-$8
- Acceptance is almost guaranteed
- Mating can be a gamble once they hatch
- In Iowa, it’s hard to get them early enough
Spring Mite Control
Some prefer to use Vaporization of Oxalic Acid. Timing is everything. Read an article by Randy Oliver, “Simple Early Treatment of Nucs against Varroa.”
Swarm Prevention
Once a hive has decided to swarm, it’s hard to change their minds. The best control is prevention. Some of the warning signs for swarming are:
- Mild winter
- Early spring
- Old queen
- Drone rearing is early
- Back filling brood area with nectar- earliest sign. (Usually 2-3 weeks before swarming) If you’re looking at brood frames and you see where brood has hatched out and you see the bees starting to put nectar in the cells you may want to think about making splits.