Late Spring/Early Summer Inspections
You have 3 missions for the summer:
1. Look for signs the bees are rejecting the queen, and support them during this process of queen replacement;
2. Keep up with the growth, including with getting honey supers drawn out in July and August,
and support it, with feeding and with giving more space on time;
3. And look for signs that the bees are preparing to swarm.
At the very beginning of your journey with the bees, it's a good idea to treat for mites. One option is to use
Apivar strips - 2 of them - to mop up any mites that came along for the ride.
If you can test for mites, you check in August to see if you need to treat. If you can't, instructions below for treatment options.
Supersedure in a New Hive
Below is a comb with a 2 week old queen on it, and a supercedure cell. It's from a mating nuc, where for some reason known only to the bees this queen was judged unacceptable. I cut out the queen cell, but they superceded her later anyways. I've come to the conclusion that the bees are a better judge of queen quality than I am. ABout 10-15% of queens from a package are either rejected immediately or rejected eventually. This could be due to poor weather when the queen was mated in March in the South, or due to shipping conditions damaging the queen. Trust the bees, they're trying to fix it!
Why is a supercedure event a risk for the hive? Unfortunately, sometimes the only virgin queen that departs for her mating flight doesn't make it back. Bees don't think in terms of "plan B". Instead, it's one queen to rule them all.
- Signs the hive is rejecting the queen:
- Slow growth in the amount of brood. A rockin' queen can lay half a frame of eggs every day; in a week, that's a lot of eggs and larvae! If after 3 weeks you still only see palm-sized patches of eggs, bad sign.
- Slow growth in the amount of comb. This can also be due to a lack of sugar syrup intake (cold weather, poor beekeeping). Good comb growth looks like 2 frames drawn out (80% complete) in a week, at week 3 of a new hive.
- Supersedure cell. Note the date, and whether the cell is open with white goo at the bottom, or capped. A cup that is only deep enough to fit the tip of your pinky is called a play cup and doesn't predict anything accurately.
- Also note whether there were eggs, and capped brood, in the hive with the supersedure cell.
- Note that once the supersedure cell is capped, you won't see eggs from that queen until 2-3 weeks have gone by. See my queen cells page for more.
- No eggs, no capped brood, in fact never capped brood, and 3 weeks out from install? Time to introduce a frame with eggs from somewhere else. That's the worst case scenario. The bees will not be able to accept a new queen; don't waste your time and money. Don't be surprised if a queen supplier is still happy to sell you a queen though.
- Inspections through June - Keeping up with growth
- Your mission: to help the bees make all the comb they need for winter, AND for summer.
- The bees need either 2 deep boxes (8 or 10 frame), or a deep and a medium for their winter quarters.
- Every week, feed about 1 quart a day. You can feed 4 quarts at a time, so feed twice a week.
- Every week, cycle one undrawn frame in to the center.
- Once there are 2 undrawn frames left, leave them at the outside, and add the next box.
- Why so eager to give more space? Every frame of capped brood becomes two frames covered in bees That's a quick population expansion!
- But comb drawing is not as efficient if you just give all the boxes at once. Time it as above, and you'll get great progress - 2 combs a week.
- Inspections through July - Getting honey supers added and drawn out.
- At this point, the 2 brood boxes are 2/3 drawn out, or so. Dive into bottom box, take out partial and undrawn frames. Replace with drawn frames. You want them all up top so it's easier to keep track!
- Even if you have 4-5 partially drawn brood frames - time to add the honey super. Because the bees need room! Remember, one frame capped brood becomes 2 frames covered with bees - you likely have 6 frames of capped brood right now...time to add a box.
- No need for a queen excluder, but I do recommend you continue to feed. You'll get "funny honey" - honey made partially from sugar syrup - so no selling it, but it will taste like honey.
- If you don't feed sugar syrup, the progress on comb building might continue... might not. Depends on the flow.
- It's really important that you end up with 2 brood boxes, and 2 honey supers, that are drawn out. In fact, you should plan on extracting honey once both honey supers (so, the 3rd and 4th boxes) are drawn out. Just because you aren't feeding anymore doesn't mean there's no more nectar!
- Once the first honey super is about 3/4 filled with comb, and full of bees, time to add another honey super. Just put it on top of the first one. Cycle partial frames in the bottom honey super (so, 3rd box) inwards towards center of the box.
- Inspections through August - Finishing with feeding sugar syrup! And mite treatment time.
- Once the second honey super is about 3/4 filled with comb, it is FINALLY time to stop feeding. Cycle the undrawn/partially drawn frames from the outer regions in to the center, and then place that super BELOW the first one you put on.
- Once the second honey super has been on for 2 weeks or so - extract the honey in the honey supers! Replace on the hive ASAP, same day, because the bees still need that space...
- At some point in August, time to kill some mites. Use Formic Pro when there will be a 4 day stretch where the high temps will be 80 or less. To be honest, you might not get that kind of break in August in Ohio... better to not treat that to fry the bees.