Bee Prepared for April 2014
2014-04-03 12:02:39Equipment:
- Get honey supers ready for honey flow
- Final touches for new hives and supers
Tasks:
- Comprehensive inspection
- Need good records
- Can you find evidence of a good laying queen
- Nice solid laying pattern
- Consider replacing if pattern is off
- Are plenty of eggs and brood present
- Continue reversing the hive bodies every 10-14 days
- Allows for better distribution of brood
- Stimulates growth of the colony
- Gives queen more room for brood laying
- Take top hive body and place on bottom board and then place the one that was on the bottom on top
- Equalize hives
- Combine weak hives
- Not worth trying to “nurse” them back to health
- Time consuming
- Re-queening cost
- Weak hive inviting pests and disease
- Possibly spread to other hives
- Keep your hives strong
Hive:
- Keep feeding
- Continues to help build the bee population
- No supers on hive yet
- Intake of sugar not going into honey production
- Feeding to help get hive off to a great start
- Pollen patties are still needed
- When bees no longer take the food you are supplying
- Stop feeding them
- Put supers on hives
- Bees are now collecting from early spring flowering plants
- Remove entrance reducers if you have not already done so
- Weather
- Can be a cold and wet month
- Limited opportunities to forage for food
- So you must continue to inspect the hive to be sure they have enough food stores
- Inspect hives for any abnormalities
- Swarm
- Check brood and queen for swarm preparations
- Honey flow preparation
- Place honey supers on top of the top deep around the 3rd or 4th week in April
- Packaged bees
- Installed as early as possible
- Take advantage of early blooms
