May in Your Central Oregon Apiary

Now I remember, we live in a temperate climate.  The days are now occasionally in the 70s and 80s, and the nights are frequently above freezing.  Although those below freezing nights are still sneaking in occasionally.  I think it’s a conspiracy by the local nurseries to get us to buy the tomatoes and squash plants over and over again in May.

Many of the fruit trees have bloomed, although some white and pink ones continue.  Another tree with yellow catkins is blooming.  We are hearing from some folks that there seems to be a dearth in some areas before the late spring and early summer plants start blooming.

If your bees are not pretty well provisioned, or if you’re not planning to let them increase as the environment allows, consider continue to feed 1:1 sugar syrup, and perhaps a pollen substitute.  For the most part, though, in particular in town, they can manage fine and existing overwintered colonies are often “bursting at the seams.”

Speaking of bursting at the seams, the next thing that will happen, and it’s natural but not necessarily what you’re looking for, is swarming.  Swarm season starts in earnest in about 2 weeks, and continues until end of June or so.  As you know it’s a good/fun way to capture some new bees.  But they have to come from somewhere.  We can’t really control the swarming tendency of our hives, but can work to mitigate them.  Remembering what causes the swarm tendency to occur is a combination of overcrowding, too many nurse bees, genetics and perhaps a less than stellar queen (and sometimes the second Tuesday of the month 😉  ).  To mitigate, we need to address all four of these issues.  Overcrowding can be addressed by splitting your colony (or a manipulative equivalent (Snelgrove board)), stealing some brood and associated workers to equalize another colony, adding space (another hive body or super or “ready to use” drawn comb.  Too many nurse bees can be addressed using the same techniques, with an emphasis on using open brood and associated bees in the equalizing and splits, or perhaps with shaking some nurse bees into a weaker colony.  Keeping your queen new and strong, and requeening “swarmy” hives will help with the last two issues.

If you are thinking about splitting a strong colony, this month is the month to do it.  Walk away splits are the easiest (break the hive in half and let the bees create the new queen in the queenless half).  If you have access to a queen, a split is really easy (break it in half and install your queen in the queenless half.  Make sure your colony is strong enough to support being split.  If you catch the colony as it’s preparing to swarm (queen cells near capped or capped) an artificial swarm can work where you replace the existing hive with a new hive with drawn frames, and move the old hive to the side of the new hive.  Find the queen from the old hive and move her plus the frame she’s on and another with brood and eggs, sans queen cells, into the new hive.  Voila, the bees think that they’ve swarmed and the flying bees will return to the new hive and old queen and a new queen will (hopefully) emerge from the swarm cells in the old hive, mate and start laying.

Assuming it is strong, your colony has been outgrowing the mites.  The bees will start slowing down at the end of the month, so it’s a good time to think about mites.  Do a mite count.  If it’s too high, I’m looking for 1% or less, treat.  Remember, you’ll want to take into account the temperatures, when you’ll be putting supers on and what kind of treatments you’re willing to use.  Check the HBHC tools for Varroa Management for specific decision-making criteria.

Happy beekeeping,

Allen Engle