What's happening in the hives

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.

Treating for mites

If you did a mite check and found two or more mites, treatment with a miticide is on the agenda. The miticide of choice is formic acid. Either Formic Pro or Mite Away Qwik Strips (MAQS). They both use formic acid as their active ingredient. The applications are a little different from each other.
Follow the directions on the label. Don't use expired strips. Expired strips delivery system gets compromised from age and using expired strips may injure your colony,
 Best to treat a colony before doing a divide. Do not treat a weak colony with formic acid.

MAQS application video


Formic Pro Application video:

Queens For Thursday May 9th - Delayed Until Noon

 Nature's Nectar LLC told me today that the queens that will be available on Thursday May 9th, will not be available until noon. Slight shipping delay from UPS.

Check for mites in overwintered colonies

Now is the time beekeepers with overwintered colonies should check for mites. There has been brood in the colonies since February and the mite numbers can be increasing. Checking for mites can give the beekeeper the ability to assess whether to treat the colonies or not.
 If you don't check for mites, and it turns out they are currently high numbers of mites right now in a colony, the colony can possibly perish by early July.
 It is easy to check for mites. The more times you do it, the easier it gets.
 Package bees should be checked for mites starting June 1st.
Mite checks should be performed once a month until October 1st.
 Mite test kits can be purchased at Nature's Nectar LLC.

More Queens Coming On Thursday May 9th

Nature's Nectar LLC will be getting a fresh shipment of Queens on Thursday, May 9th.
 Carniolan, Italian, Saskatraz marked and unmarked.

Check for eggs now

Everyone that put in package bees, need to check their bees now for queen acceptance. If you do not see eggs or larvae on the frames your queen probably has not been accepted and you need a new queen. Right now the larvae should be easy to see because they will getting big. There should be eggs and larvae on a couple sides of frames by now. The first delivery beekeepers maybe even be starting to see some capped larvae. If you do not check for queen acceptance and your hive is queenless, the hive will die because they cannot make a new queen for themselves.

Not the greatest egg pics. The bottom pic does show a typical frame. Eggs in the lower two thirds of the frame. The dark multi colored muddy looking substance in the cells is stored pollen. You can also see glistening nectar in the top cells of the frame.

How do honeybees get their jobs

This is a good video on the breakdown of jobs that honeybees do at different times in their life.
See the Varroa mite on the back of a drone at 1:12 of the video.