Here is is May 12th and in the outskirts of Stillwater, dandelions are just starting to make an appearance. Normally Dandelions appear here around May 1st. The spring has been cool and has held back the early flowers. Natural pollen has been later than normal. By now we should be seeing the fruit bloom, Flowering Crabs, Fruit trees and other spring flowering plants which have been currently delayed.
I am sure if your locale is in the Twin Cities metro area and points south, dandelions and the fruit bloom has already started. The fruit bloom should be moving into high gear this week. The temperatures should be in the 70's.
My colonies have been a little slow of building up. The cool weather has made it harder for the bees to expand their brood nest. Some colonies are coming along nicely, but some others are a little weak. Over the next week I will add some brood and/or switch colonies.
Switching colonies and adding some brood is a great way to fix a weak colony.
Adding brood: I have a strong hive that I will be able to divide. I plan to make a divide. Leave the divide queenless overnight, then the next day, add the divide to the top of the weak colony using the newspaper method.
The newspaper method works the best for combining colonies. I take one sheet of newspaper and lay it on top of the weak colony. I take my hive tool and push it into the newspaper creating a slit about and 1-1/2" long. Not a hole, just a slit. This gives the bees a starting place to chew open a hole and slowly get used to each other. I then add my queenless divide on top of the newspaper. It takes about a week for the bees to chew a big hole in the newspaper.
You can take a frame of capped brood from a strong colony, shake the adhering bees off, be careful, look for the queen on that frame before you shake the bees off. Take the frame of brood and put it in the main cluster of bees in the weak colony, or new package of bees. Just add one frame of brood, a weak colony may not have enough bees to cover more than one frame. In about 10 days do it again. This influx of bees will quickly turn around a weak colony.
Switching colonies: I have a couple colonies that just need some more bees to get rocking. This is a really easy may to equalize colony strength. Just take strong hive A and weak hive B. Move hive A to hive B location. Move hive B to hive A location. What happens is the field bees fly out to forage, then come back to where they think they live. Now, the weak hive gets more field bees and gets stronger. The strong hive gets weaker. This method can also be used for swarm control.
Package bees are building up. Beekeepers should have inspected their package bee colonies for queen acceptance. If you see eggs, you are good. If you are drawing out new foundation, you need to keep feeding syrup. Syrup should be on these colonies until around mid June or until the foundation is finished.
The second box is usually added when the colonies have been drawing foundation on eight of the 10 frames. That takes about a month from installation.