I came out of winter with four strong hives that were filled with bees and raring to go. They very quickly multiplied in response to the spring blooms, sending foragers out to gather pollen and nectar from flowers showy (dogwood) and small (dead nettle).
The challenge for beekeepers this time of year is keeping their hives from swarming. Swarms are a natural process by which colonies spin off new colonies in response to overcrowding and an abundance of resources. You know you're at risk of a swarm when you start seeing peanut-looking queen cells hanging from the bottom edges of the frames in a hive.
My answer to the swarm problem this year has been to make splits -- to take bees, larvae, pollen and nectar out of one hive to found another smaller hive. In the case of the new purple hive, I also had a Queen Cell to work with from the Yellow hive to jump start the growth of the new hive. Otherwise, the bees would have eventually made a new queen from existing eggs laid by the queen of the Yellow hive.
The purple hive brings me to seven hives at the moment from the four I started with in March. These three new hives are too small to produce honey this year, but they'll be the foundation for a new bee yard I'm hoping to start at Black Bear Composting in Grottoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment