I have several hives at a friend's house where there are several acres of apple, peach and blueberries. Bloom is in mid April. The bees are never built up enough to make a surplus honey that I can rob. What can I do to build them up early enough?
Feed 1:1 sugar syrup to stimulate brood growth. After you start feeding, make sure you continue to feed as needed until there is natural nectar available. Feb is a good month for bees to starve in this part of the country.
When is your main flow? Most feed 45-60 days before main flow. Three brood cycles before the main flow is a good target.
And remember give them the room they need!!!
If you want to harvest orchards for speciality honeys, which occur early in the year, you need to do it like the big guys (commercial beeks) and use a single deep with a queen excluder and medium or shallow supers to pull after the bloom is over. You build the hive to 2 deeps afterward on mixed nectar sources.
Quote from: Brian D. Bray on February 12, 2009, 11:59:20 PM
If you want to harvest orchards for speciality honeys, which occur early in the year, you need to do it like the big guys (commercial beeks) and use a single deep with a queen excluder and medium or shallow supers to pull after the bloom is over. You build the hive to 2 deeps afterward on mixed nectar sources.
But confining the bees to one deep would increase swarming. What do they do to balance it out?
Quote from: heaflaw on February 13, 2009, 12:04:33 AM
Quote from: Brian D. Bray on February 12, 2009, 11:59:20 PM
If you want to harvest orchards for speciality honeys, which occur early in the year, you need to do it like the big guys (commercial beeks) and use a single deep with a queen excluder and medium or shallow supers to pull after the bloom is over. You build the hive to 2 deeps afterward on mixed nectar sources.
But confining the bees to one deep would increase swarming. What do they do to balance it out?
The orchard pollination is only for a week or two, so there's time to catch those that switch to swarm mode. You manipulate the hive so that they won't swarm by removing one of the brood chamber frames just before placing them in the orchard. Usually bees drawing comb in the brood chamber won't swarm until it is complete. Drawn comb in the supers is also usually used so the bees will deposit the forage there instead of the brood chamber. That one frame works as a swarm deterent and the bees will still put nectar into the supers because they'll be collecting it at a rate faster than they can convert it to wax for drawing the frame.
Thanks
one thing that was missing was how to build up the hive. Feeding sugar water will not increase numbers early. The Queen responds to Pollen being brought in as her stimulus to start laying again(which builds up the hive) I start pollen patties Feb 1 for mid march fruit trees. A decent pollen patty will get her stimulated, but the cold weather will keep it slow yet. The newbies (pun intended) will be good queen antendants as everyone else can forage come march 1 when the dandylions start.
Careful of SHB in the south when feeding pollen patties --- pull them before it gets too warm.
We usually start having some kind of pollen coming in around Mid-Feb. NC should be close behind. However too often we get a late freeze after the warm weather that takes out the bloom.
Brian,
Great info on post #4 ----sorry to say I have no specialty blooms in my area. We have tons of peaches but they do not need bees and to my knowledge yield no or very little nectar. Maybe it is just the type of peach tree?
Occasionally I see something someone calls "Peach Blossom Honey" :?
Anyone get what they call a peach bloom flow?
I have two and a half acres in blueberries at my place and the blueberry bees go crazy over them, but the honey bees....not much. So I doubt that would be a source of specialty honey for you either.
there must be something that blooms at the same time as your blueberries. when mine bloom, the bees cover them! it's one of the early blooms, so they probably don't have much choice.
You can also combine two hives together a week before the bloom to create a huge field force and save one queen in a nuc and divide after bloom to prevent swarming and get back numbers..
gmcharlie hit the nail on the head:
[The Queen responds to Pollen...]
You can feed syrup all year long, and if there isn't enough protein to rear brood you will have syrup bound mess.
If you feed pollen, the bees rear brood and you get a serious forage population.
And that forage population isn't looking for so much pollen (it will already have it), it will forage for nectar.
That is where you get a surplus.
The key is like he said:
[I start pollen patties Feb 1 for mid march fruit trees. ]
You have to have enough brood cycles to have a foraging force (2-3) before the desired flow.
thanks good info for my orchards