As discussed in the previous lesson, the queen begins to lay eggs in January. The size of the brood nest grows gradually until by April the bees have a brood nest that is very large. This increased adult population of the hive causes crowding if no additional space is provided by the beekeeper and swarming is a natural result of this rapid population growth. 

 In  the photograph of the hive to the right, it is easy to see that something is wrong.  

When bees become crowded, they will begin to congregate on the outside of the hive. This is a sure sign that something needs to be done by the beekeeper.   There must be six pounds of bees on the outside of this hive.   What should the beekeeper have done before all these bees were forced to cluster on the outside of the hive?

The peak population of the hive is reached by the end of May. Brood production depends on the flora and weather conditions existing in the area where the bees are located. It is not uncommon to find completely different conditions existing within the same state.  Spring brings a flurry of flowering plants and trees producing nectar and pollen.  When bees have available large amounts of resources to feed larva, the queen will lay near to her capacity (maybe 2000 or more eggs per day) during this period of the year.

A very important point we want to make is: bees are consuming a vast amount of nectar and pollen at this time of the year. It is said that it takes one frame of pollen and one frame of honey to equal one frame of capped brood. A strong colony of bees will be able to store some surplus honey during this time and needs to for survival if the weather turns cold or rainy conditions exist for any period of time. The bees within the colony will also build new comb if given the opportunity. This is a very important stage in the development of the hive. Depending upon the area, beekeepers can expect nectar (honey) flows in very predictable patterns. The beekeeper needs to become aware of the plants that will contribute to the build-up period and understand the importance of having a strong population of bees ready to bring in the major flow of honey when it occurs.

If bees are kept in a stationary location, the beekeeper will not have the advantage of helping his/her bees find large sources of nectar for a honey crop. Stationary bee hives are limited to the distance bees can fly from the hive to locate sources of nectar and pollen.  Not much emphasis  is put into this topic because the person keeping bees is limited to where the bees can be kept.  The location of that property is going to be situated according the beekeeper's job (where the beekeeper makes a living). The honey bees will just have to adapt to the owner's personal situation. In other word, the bees are kept as a hobby and the production of honey is not all that important. Every beekeeper will still want to produce a honey crop and thus, it becomes important to know the available nectar sources for the bees. The beekeeper also should realize that bees forage usually within two miles of their hive but have been recorded to fly six miles from the hive.  Bees use up a lot of energy flying great distances from the hive to gather nectar.  Thus the closer the nectar and pollen to the hive, the more efficient the bees will be.

What you need to do:

• Start a notebook listing the dates when various flowering plants bloom.
• Drive through the area that your bees will be foraging and determine what sources of nectar exist for them and how much of this sources is available.
• Keep production records - How much honey is harvested and what kind of honey you think it is.

Some beekeeper go so far as to keep daily records. One can observe rather easily whether bees are bringing in pollen. One can even go so far as remove pollen from the legs of bees and examine it under a microscope to determine exactly what plant source the bees are working. One might even set up a scale hive - a hive set on a scale to measure hive weight. Records from the scale hive would indicate days when weight was being added. A strong hive of bees can add weight (nectar harvest) rapidly.

Spring Management

Under Spring Management we are going to make a number of points. These are very important to the success of a colony. As we have tried to point out, the real management of bees begins in the fall of the year. Spring management is designed to help each colony of bees  build up rapidly so those bees will be in a position to harvest a surplus of honey.

• A colony of bees should have a young vigorous queen.
• A colony of bees should have at least three pounds of worker bees at the start of spring build-up.
• The beekeeper must be aware of any queen failure or break in brood rearing.
• The beekeeper must be aware of any signs of disease.

Problems the beekeeper will face:

1. Replacing colonies lost during the winter season.
2. Avoiding excessive swarming
3. Maintaining strong colonies

Let's attack each of these tasks:

Replacing colonies lost during the past season

I always recommend that beekeepers have two hives (colonies) of bees. The reason for this is: if you have only one colony and it dies or needs additional brood, you have no where to get more brood or bees unless you are willing to purchase them.  If you have a second hive, you can usually make a "split." A split is taking some frames of brood and bees from the strong overwintered colony in the spring and making up a new hive.

Making increases is easy. I know of many beekeepers that start the year with two colonies and end up with five or six by the end of the year. The best way to make an increase is as follows:

Plan for the increase. Order a new queen for the number of hives you intend to split. Select only the hives with strong populations of bees. A strong hive is one with bees wall to wall. What does that mean? Bees cover the frames from one side of the hive to the other. A hive with only 5 frames of bees is not going to make a strong split. You will end up with two very weak hives.

Do not move large amounts of brood without enough bees to keep the brood warm. I would rather make my split in the following way:

Prepare all the equipment you will need before you start. Identify the colonies that you are going to split. Then plan to move the original strong hive to a new location in your bee yard. Why do we move the original hive? We move it because the nurse bees will stay with that hive and it will be the stronger of the two splits. In its place we will set up our equipment to receive at least two or three frames of brood, bees and field bees from the original hive. If we set this new split up away from the original location, many of the bees on the frames will return to the original location and rejoin the bees that they  had been taken away from. Thus it would leave the new split with frames of brood and not enough bees to keep it warm. Much of the brood would be "chilled" and as a result - die. If we move the original hive and queen to a new location, some of the bees will return to the old site, but most will relocate with the queen and little damage will be done.

Remove frames of brood from outside the main brood area. These frames will contain smaller areas of brood for the bees to keep warm. Hopefully you will not transfer the queen into the new split. It is important to find the queen and make sure she is with the hive moved to the new location. Provide the new split with either combs of honey or a feeder. They will need food for survival. Introduce a new queen. This can be done at the time the new split is made up or one can wait for several hours - but not more than 24 hours. The bees in the new split will attempt to raise a queen if left without a queen for longer than 24 hours. If for some reason you are delayed in introducing the queen, it will be necessary to examine each frame of brood in the new split for signs of queen cells and remove them before you then introduce a new queen. Otherwise, you have wasted good money on a queen. The bees will not accept her and allow the young developing queens to emerge. A beekeeper could make splits and allow the bees to raise their own queens but much time is lost during this  very valuable period of time. Time lost in the spring can not be replaced. The time to make splits is in the spring - not in the summer or late summer.

A split will often develop just as fast as a nuc or package of bees. It should give the beekeeper a honey harvest if done at the correct time. Remember-it takes 16 days for a queen to emerge from a queen cell after the egg is laid. It takes another 10 days or so for her to lay her first egg. That means a period of almost one-month has expired during which no new bees are replacing bees that die. The brood cycle is broken by a long period of time. The brood cycle may be broken for only several days if you start a split with a new queen. What does 20 days mean to the life of a colony in the spring of the year? 20 days x 1500 or more eggs can be laid by a queen.  (30,000) bees could be added to the hive's population during  the time the virgin queen develops,  mates and  starts to lay her first egg. Or I could put it in another way, the hive with an introduced queen will take eight weeks to build a colony strong enough to gather a honey crop or do a good job of pollination.   A colony without a queen and forced to raise a queen from emergency queen cells will take fourteen weeks to reach the same strength.  The new emergency queen raised this way will in all probably be a poorly developed queen as well.

Swarming

Strong hives of bees will swarm. Swarming is the way honey bees increase naturally. Swarming season occurs in early spring when fruit trees are in bloom. This is approximately a month after the first sources of nectar and pollen are brought into the hive. If one is present during the time a hive swarms, the memory is not easily forgotten. The air is filled with bees flying in circles. It has been described as a cloud of bees. The bees will move slowly (you can keep up with a swarm by walking briskly). Most swarm will alight not far from the hive and remain there for a few days. However, some swarms  just seem to take off.  I have lost swarms as they cleared a line of trees - they flew over the trees and I was left to guess where they went from there.  I have seen swarms settle high up in trees (too high for an intelligent person to think about getting them) and I have seen them settle low to the ground and even on the ground. However, the vast majority of them will be easy to recapture because they seem to prefer to settle on tree branches four to six feet above the ground.

A swarm is made up of a number of older worker bees, drones, and the old queen.  It may also be an after swarm (sometimes called a secondary swarm) that contains a number of virgin queens. The swarming behavior of bees has been used to make increases and many beekeepers have started beekeeping by capturing swarms.   It is also a way to lose a valuable queen - one that is purchased and considered to have special characteristics.  It is still possible to find a swarm of bees but the number of swarms available now has diminished because the wild bees have mostly died out.  It is not a dependable source of bees today.

Swarms will vary in size. Some can be quite large. It is not unusual for after-swarms to be small and sometimes the swarm will be in a divided cluster. I found a swarm a few years ago in a tree. There were seven different clusters of bees - each had its own virgin queen.

When bees leave the hive, they leave in such haste that the grass in front of the hive is matted down from bees that were pushed by those coming from behind. The queen follows rather than leads this charge. When a swarm does leave the hive, you should check the ground in front of the hive to see if you find a small cluster of bees in the grass. Sometimes the queen will be in this cluster and she can be caged and held for later use. The bees in a swarm without a queen will not go very far and within a short period of time will return to the hive. If the queen should have been lost, the bees will wait until the young queens in the queen cells emerge and will leave again with one of them.

A number of things have been done by beekeepers to prevent swarming. Queen and drone traps have been placed at the entrance of hives to prevent swarming. They don't really work. They  fill up with drones and catch the queen but virgin queens can pass through them and the swarm will leave anyway. Other beekeepers have clipped the wings of queens. A queen with wings clipped can not fly and will drop to the ground as she tries to leave the hive. Again, the bees will leave when a virgin queen is available to fly. Others have followed the practice of cutting queen cells every ten days. What happens if just one queen cell is missed? So what is a beekeeper to do?

If you are interested in raising some excellent queens from an outstanding stock of bees, swarming time will give you the opportunity.  You will need equipment to do this--mainly a hive for each queen you plan to save. These hives do not need to be full size hives. (See lesson nine for information on raising queens)

 What are the signs that a hive of bees is about to swarm?

You need to know what queen cells look like. They are peanut shaped.  They hang down from either the face of the comb or at the bottom of the comb as pictured to the left.  They are quite distinctive.

1. The bees will be building queen cells along the bottom of frames. Maybe 20 or more.
2. If the hive is in two brood chambers, the beekeeper can separate the two hive bodies and check the bottom of the frames in the upper hive body.  One can spot the queen cells if they are there. Looking at the space between the frames in the lower brood box may expose some queen cells that were tore away when the two boxes were separated. If cells are present, you know the bees are in the process of getting ready to swarm.
3. Bees will often be hanging on the front of the hive. (This is called a beard) During very hot weather the same behavior may be observed but the bees are not preparing to swarm - they are just trying to stay cool.  Do you remember the picture at the beginning of this lesson?  This was more than a beard.  It was a swarm that had returned to this hive after the queen was lost.   If nothing was done to this hive, it would swarm again when the young virgin queens emerged from their cells.
4. A hive will have no room for brood expansion. Bee hives with queen excluders will require more management because the queen will be limited to laying in the brood chamber. Sometimes, the bees refuse to carry honey up into the honey supers through a queen excluder, thus, they fill the brood chamber with honey and the hive becomes honey bound. What this means is simply - the queen has no place to lay eggs. The cells that were once available to her are now filled with honey and brood.

What can be done?

You might just now be asking yourself, how many hives could I make up this way and how long can I pull frames from the brood chamber to build new hives? Our answer is only during the swarming season which last for about six weeks. If one wanted to sacrifice a honey crop to make increases by removing frames of brood from the brood chamber, the process might be carried on for another four weeks. But we do not recommend this after mid July.  A hive must have time to build up honey stores to survive the winter and this will depend upon the amount of nectar and pollen that can be gathered from the time the colony is made up until all nectar flows stop.   A beekeeper must be willing to feed bees to help them survive if no honey surplus can be gathered in time for the winter season.