Bees in Grain and bird feeders

This time of year on the first warm days of spring, bees will look for pollen. Sometimes there is no pollen yet. Bees will go to forage on anything that may give them something to feed their brood. Bees will go to corn bins, bird feeders and even saw dust. They will collect the dust off of these and bring it back to the hive. A beekeeper may think that this is pollen coming in, but it is not. There is some pollen coming in in many locales, but not everywhere.

Package Bee Update 4/5/2019

Nothing new to report as of today. We hope to get some delivery dates very soon. 
 As soon as I know something concrete I will post it.
Everyone getting bees from Nature's Nectar LLC should be ready for bees by April 14th. Meaning, you should have purchased your bee equipment, the hive should be all painted and set out in the beeyard by then. 
 Nature's Nectar LLC has a very good selection of bee supplies and equipment right now at their Oakdale store. Their prices are the lowest in the area. Call or email them for a quote.
 If you need to put up a bear fence, do it now if the frost is out at your location.
Bear Fence Design  a bear fencer should put out 2 joules of power.

 DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE BEES COME TO GET YOUR BEE EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES.
 
 When we get a delivery date there may be very short notice before the first delivery arrives, so don't get caught off guard. There may be no more than a seven day notice that the first delivery is coming.
 Everything may happen very quickly. Olivarez Honey Bees tries their best to stay on schedule. So once things start moving, be ready.
 We will begin posting video's on how to install package bees soon. All of the pickup information, location of pickup, pickup schedule and everything involved with the deliveries will be coming at a fast clip. So stay tuned to the blog and try to check it everyday if you can.

Checked a bee yard today

I finally was able to get to this beeyard on a four wheeler today. I have been nervous because the battery for the bear fence was not there. I put on a fully charged battery and the bear fence is on. The bear fence I have really packs a wallop.
 I looked at all my hives. I wintered seven hives in this yard. Six of them made it. Actually all of the six looked great. I put pollen patties on everyone and fed syrup and moved a few frames of honey around. I will leave the winter covers on for another week. When I go out a give them their first reversal, I will remove all the covers then.
 So I lost one colony out of 10 that I wintered. The plan is to run more hives this coming season. I actually heeded my own advise this year. I did all the mite treatments at the proper time and the bees were all heavy with honey going into winter.

You can see winter covers on seven hives. One did not make it.

All six of them looked like this. Packed with bees. They should give me some great splits in May.

Nosema, a late winter killer

This video is about a deadout colony that quickly came from a strong overwintered colony to a very weak colony in a matter of a few weeks. The symptoms make it look like Nosema.
  Nosema is a late winter disease that can cause the demise of a colony. Nosema is a stress related disease and causes bee diarrhea in a colony. The stress is caused by winter related issues. Mites can sometimes be a contributing factor. Beekeepers used to treat for Nosema using Fumigillan, an antibiotic, mixed in syrup. It is no longer available for sale.
Life without Fumigillan

Package Bee Update 4/2/2019

I talked to our bee supplier Ray Olivarez today. He did say that they have been caging queens. So they have been getting some queen mating done, even with the tough weather. The weather in the near term is improving in his area where he is doing queen mating. He is hoping to get some type of delivery schedule together soon. Probably after this weekend. So with any luck there may be a delivery date in our future.
 I will update again as soon as I know anything.
The 14 day outlook for weather is much improved from what we have been seeing. With partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures at the mid to end of the forecast.
Orland, California 14 day forecast

Bee Strategy: Easy Way To Draw Comb In April

The bee strategy is: by adding a new box of frames with foundation on this strong overwintered colony. The bees will draw out the foundation because I am feeding them syrup. The queen will move up and start laying on the new comb. After a couple weeks, as the daily temperatures warm up, I will remove the bottom box. I will use the bottom box for package bees that come at the end of April. This will give me an advantage of starting package bees on drawn out comb. The package bees will increase their population quicker because the queen has the whole box of already drawn comb to work with.
  If I had started the package bees on the new foundation, the population of bees would grow slower. As I only have about 7500 bees in a 3 lb package of bees working on the foundation.
 Using a strong overwintered colony to draw out the new foundation, I will have probably 15,000 bees working on it today. As the population grows in the overwintered hive, there will be more workers to make comb on the frames. The bees should have this new box drawn out in about three weeks.

Doing a Reversal on an Overwintered Colony

Sometime over the next week, reversals should be done on strong overwintered colonies. The temperatures are warming up, with 60's forecast for later in the week. Reversals are needed to expand the brood nest. By doing a reversal, the queen will move through the colony more efficiently. On strong overwintered colonies, after this first reversal, whenever you see eggs in the top box, do another reversal. A beekeeper may do two or three reversals before a divide is made on the colony in May. At the same time as reversals, clean the bottom board off on all colonies, weak or strong.
 Weak colonies with two or three frames of bees should not be reversed at this time. When the colonies are weak like this, the bottom box should be removed and the hive should just be in one deep at the moment. This will make the hive easier to keep warm compared to a two deep hive. If a beekeeper has another strong colony, it would be helpful to take a frame of brood sometime later in April and add it to the weak colony. This little increase in brood can turn around a weak colony and it will start increasing the bee population almost immediately. The extra bees will aide in covering more brood, this will give the queen a better opportunity to increase egg laying.
 New Package bees are reversed usually only once in June.
 The first reversal on a three deep colony should go like this. The three deeps are numbered to keep it straight in this example.
Boxes:

1  should end up with  3

2                                   1

3                                   2

After this first reversal on a three deep hive setup, any new reversals will be switch the bottom box with the top box.