It’s May 28th.  Do your hives look like this in Ohio?

10 of the 14 hives in this apiary look this strong right now.   The 2nd to the top super was added to the hive just 2 weeks ago and most hives already have a significant amount of honey in it or have it filled and were building comb on the top of the bars.  They desparately needed more space and I added yet another super this trip (the top super shown in the picture).    Also keep in mind that 3 or 4, 5 frame mating nucs were made up from each of the hives in this yard just 6 weeks prior to this picture.

Not all hives look this good, but a large number of them do and I account much of it to the effort made last year to requeen nearly all of my hives and improve the stock.  I must say I’m very happy with the result.  The down side is that it’s going to be a real chore lifting off all the honey to get down to the brood nest to pull larvae for grating on some of these that are breeder queens.

I’m still here in spite of my absence from the blog for about a month.  Not to worry, I’ve suffered no tragic accident, I’ve simply been busy with work and bees from dawn till dusk and sometimes much later.

The weather here has been cool and wet and we are still consistently well below the average temperature for this time of year.  It has made it difficult to keep the queen rearing on schedule because there have been very few days warm enough for mating flights.   It hasn’t been as bad as it was a few years ago where a 3 week cold spell April and May caused a complete halt to production and loss of all queens in the mating nucs because it simply took too long for them to get mated, though I did have one batch of queens that was about a 50% loss.  Fortunately it looks like things may break this weekend and temperatures may be above normal for awhile at least.  I’m looking forward to it.  We shouldn’t have to be running the pellet stove in May.

It’s always a busy time of the year, inspecting hives, splitting up hives for mating nucs and for sale, grafting, etc.  and the weather can make it even more difficult.  Still, it’s nearly done….nearly 200 mating nucs are in production, hives have been inspected and supered if needed, nucs for sale have virgins running around in them just waiting for a warm day later this week to mate, and I’m starting the first batch of  II queens this week.    It’s a couple weeks behind because there have been very few days were drones were flying to collect for II. 

One thing I would change for next year…If we have such a wet spring, I need to buy a pair of waterproof boots.  Carrying equipment and bees though water because you can’t get the truck back to the apiary isn’t fun, but it’s worse with wet feet.

The spring season has started in earnest. This past Saturday the silver maples started blooming and by Sunday enough was blooming that the bees were completely ignoring the open feed pollen substitute. Probably a good thing as real pollen is better for them and I was starting to run out of substitute as they had consumed nearly two 5 gallon buckets worth.

The weather Sunday was quite warm in the upper 60\’s. Many of the hives had a significant amount of drone brood and the strongest had adult drones. At least one hive had several hundred adult drones…which means it\’s time to start grafting…right on time. I made up one queenless hive, reducing it from 4 medium boxes to 3 from the strongest hive I had checked and grafted the next day, Monday. Checked the grafts on Tuesday and found almost all were accepted so things are progressing nicely. The real work begins late next week…inspecting hives and making up dozens of mating nucs.

Today was the warmest day we’ve had in quite some time, reaching the mid 50′s.  All the hives were very active and there was more activity at the open fed pollen than I have seen so far this season.  Apparently there was too much  traffic at the bucket to satisfy some bees, so several hundred were working over the fresh pile of sawdust composting in the garden.  Bees are know to work bird feeders and animal feed for the dust that collects there, but this was the first time I’ve seen any significant number working on sawdust.   I’m not sure what value they can see in it.  Shortly after adding a second bucket of open fed pollen substitute an placing additional substitute on the bucket lids, more than half the bees abandoned the sawdust pile in favor of the substitute.  I saw a few bees nosing around the maple trees, but no significant pollen is coming in from them still.