pics

nice swarm.
Photo by Forrest Houle

hot bees
Photo by Dick Rienke

Don't make a honey of a mistake.

Now that the honey flow is going, a warning of a common mistake that many new beekeepers make.
Honey supers have to go on now. Don't make the assumption that I will leave it for the bees and put on supers next year.
What happens if the bees don't have supers to put excess honey? They will fill up the brood nest
with honey. The brood nest gets plugged up with honey the queen has no place to lay. Now the hive will start to dwindle. The hive will not have enough bees to overwinter and will not survive.

My GPS says a bee yard is here

With warm temperatures it is important to keep the grass down in the bee yard. This will help to prevent swarming.
There seems to be a good nectar flow going in the Stillwater area.
My package bees are starting to move up into the supers.
I have four supers on many of my over wintered colonies and they are in all the boxes.
Still getting swarming reports, I hope this will wane with an increase in the nectar flow.
If you haven't put you supers on yet, in the words of Basil Furgala, You can't make any honey if the supers are still in the garage.

What are my hives looking like right now

My over wintered hives are in two deep and have one or two supers full of honey on them.
The package bees are all in two deep and will be getting honey supers this week.
I have reports of new beekeepers with foundation putting on their third deep last weekend. One persons hive had two deeps.
She had stopped feeding it and the brood nest is slow to expand. On foundation, feeding is needed until mid June.
If it gets into the 80's I think the entrance reducer could be pulled, or for sure by mid June.
Time to put on honey supers now.
I see the black locust have been blooming for about 10 days. I am seeing yellow sweet clover in the ditches. Alfalfa and other clovers should start blooming shortly.
An old beekeeper once told me that the main nectar flow starts 10 days after the first clover bloom is spotted.
Get ready and check for swarm cells. The swarming season is upon us.

Package bee cage

This customer will not get a refund on her package bee cage. Bad Girl.

Drone brood

The picture above was sent to me. The question was are these swarm cells?
The bees build this brood comb on the bottom of frames. It is drone brood comb. The picture shows drone capped larve that looks like the tip of a bullet. They are not swarm cells.

My Hives Are Bursting

Overcrowding leads to.......

Swarm cells that lead to....

This!

I checked my hives today. I had a few dead ones show up from late season starvation.
A colony in one yard was crowded with bees but it has a brood disease. I always look at the larvae, I am looking for a nice glistening white color. When I looked at this one frame I new there was trouble. The larvae was a dark mustard color. It didn't rope when I punctured the larvae with a twig, the American Foulbrood test. The larvae that was dead was curled off center in the cell. I think it is European Foulbrood. Now is the time to put Terramycin on the hive.
I had a few hives that had swarm cells. Some were so overcrowded that they were hanging out side in mass quantities. I went through the hive and cut out the swarm cells. One hive had twenty cells.
I hope I didn't miss any. I saw eggs in the hive so I am assuming the queen is still present.
If I come back in four days to divide it and I see queen cells on the sides of the frames and no eggs, I will know that they have swarmed.
Had I not dealt with the swarm cells, the hive was set for departure. With the swarm goes all my honey for this year off this hive.
It was warm today and bees will hang out the front of the hive on hot days. In this case they aren't likely to swarm, they are just hot. Today though I new they were overcrowded.
It was funny, the most crowded hive had very few bees inside. I am sure by later this evening they will be back inside as it cools off.