Saturday, March 2, 2019

Package Bees 2019 will be delayed

I talked to our bee supplier, Ray Olivarez, (he is in Orland, California) today. He told me due to their cold and rainy weather our bees will be delayed two weeks. So at the moment, we are looking at delivery dates of around the 21st of April for the first delivery and the 27th of April for the second delivery. These dates are NOT solid dates and they may still change. All of the queen suppliers on the west coast are in this same predicament.
 Here is the 10 day weather outlook for Orland California. You can see the temperatures warming up later in the forecast.
Orland California 10 day forecast
 The cold and rainy weather has held back the Almond trees from blooming at their normal time. They are starting to bloom now. There are several varieties of Almond trees with different blooming time frames, such as early and late blooming types of Almond trees.
 The bees need the Almond trees to bloom to gather fresh pollen. It is this large influx of pollen that spurs on bee colonies to make drones. The queen producers in California need the large drone populations to properly mate with the new virgin queens that will be produced. The virgin queens need at least 60 degree weather, to go out on their mating flights. So you can see many things have to click right for queens to be produced in large numbers.
 Here is a video of the Almond trees in California.