Reversals on overwintered colonies

Don't let your strong overwintered colony to get to this point. This beekeeper had the winter cover on too long. But in his defense, 2017 was a cold spring.

This time of year, strong overwintered colonies can be packed with bees. To the point, swarm cells can be seen in the hive. This is how to prevent this while we are waiting for queens to be available.

• If you have eggs in the top box, do a reversal. Top box to the bottom, bottom box to the top. If you see swarm cells remove them before the cells are capped. If the bees cap the swarm cells they may have swarmed on you.
• During your weekly visits to your overwintered hives, if you see eggs in the top box, do a reversal. You may do several reversals before you do a divide.
• Doing reversals on strong overwintered colonies, gives the queen more open cells to lay eggs into.
• If your colony is very strong and it is in two deep boxes and you have swarm concerns, add a third box to the hive. Having a third box on the hive makes doing the divide easier to do. When the divide happens, one of the boxes is removed. This leaves two deep boxes on the parent, which is where you want to be anyway. 
• If you do add a third box and all you have is foundation, you will need to feed the colony syrup or the bees will not draw out the comb. A strong colony may draw out this box very quickly. If you start drawing a third box of foundation, that box has to stay on top while the bees are drawing out the comb. If you need to, the lower two boxes could be reversed with each other, during this process.

Dividing usually happens in May or when you have 8 frames of bees and brood. This means you have 8 frames covered with bees on both sides. Plus, the 8 frames will have brood on both sides. The brood could be eggs, open larvae and capped larvae.
 The days are warming up, pollen will be widely available this week. Keep pollen patties on the hive. Strong overwintered colonies demand for pollen sometimes in the spring is more than the colony can collect from nature. Especially when the daily high temperatures are in the low 60's. A pollen patty is cheap insurance that the hives protein demands are being met.